Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Pheasant McNuggets Contest Entry 15

Yep, one more entry has arrived. Please enjoy it and remember to let these folks know what you think.
Ze's the writer in our family but she persuaded me to send you a ramble because she said you were desperate for some. So I thought I'd tell you of my misadventures with pizza and why it's important to specify exactly what you mean by 'plenty'.

I was at college and my cousin was coming to visit me. She'd been really good to me over the years and I wanted to cook something special for her. Nowadays I do most of the cooking because I'm quite good at it since I took a Cordon Vert cooking class. That's like Cordon Bleu but for vegetarians. But at the time I lived on take out or meals sent by my room-mate's mother who was a first-class cook and I didn't have any idea how to cook for myself.

My room-mate was half Italian and her mother had a genuine Neoploitan pizza recipe that was to die for so I asked if she'd share it. She did and in her slightly accented English she told me exactly what to do and emphasised that the important things were lots of kneading of the dough and lots of olive oil. She said that twice - use plenty of olive oil.

I assembled all the ingredients and got to work. It all went really well and I was pleased. I remembered her advice about the olive oil, I put plenty in the dough - it made it a bit sticky but I worked it well. And I drizzled it over the finished pizza. I was worried though. I had a half-litre bottle and it was still half-full - maybe I didn't use enough. I poured the rest of the bottle over the pizza to make sure of it and put it in the oven.

My cousin arrived just as the timer rang to tell me it was done. She told me she loved pizza and sat down to enjoy it.

The brown, crisp discus I took from the oven looked nothing like any pizza I'd ever seen. I'm sure could have thrown it Xena style against the wall and caught it on the rebound undamaged. It had fried to a biscuit rather than baked.

My cousin, bless her heart sat down and ate it. Telling me that anything cooked with that much love had to be worth eating. It took her quite a time as it was very difficult to cut and almost impossible to chew. She did it though.

I've cooked many excellent meals since that day, most of which she's eaten and enjoyed but I do wonder if that's the reason she doesn't eat pizza anymore.

Aries


LOL Sorry, Aries, but I'm not sure I would have been that polite. As for being 'desperate' for new rambles... if that gets folks to send them, then yes, we're desperate! We're very pleased with the responses we've gotten so far on the contest and I hope y'all have enjoyed them as much as we have.

Now on to the updates, enjoy.

Elisa

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