A slice of (the good) life

PIZZA is wrapped up in many splendid memories for me. My mum used to buy those very small frozen ones.

They were individually wrapped and stacked in packs of five. They were so thin you were able to grill them.

Cooking those, I use the term in its most generic sense, was one of the culinary achievements of my teenage years.

I was fortunate to be taken, by my parents, to Bardolino in Northern Italy and Sorrento in the south and remember narrow side streets with tiny trattorias and eating pizza the size of a bike wheel, or so they seemed. Sweet tomato sauce, mingled with oozing cheese and a smattering of torn, fresh basil, the base, unctuous and moist in the middle and crispy and crunchy at the edge, mottled dark brown and black from the pizza oven.

I spent, possibly more evenings than I should’ve when I lived in London, rolling out of the Ministry of Sound, Heaven or Velvet Underground and heading like a bee to a flower, for the twinkle twinkle little electric neon stars of Leicester Square and the many shrines to dough that criss-crossed that garish night-time playground. I lapped up and lingered over the delights of the £1 a slice pizza with greedy gusto.

In New York, standing in Times Square gazing at more artificial twinkles, I hungrily munched through a cheese smeared slice. I tried to recollect the episode of Sex and the City when Miranda and Carrie have big talks over triangles and wondered how they still looked glamorous and didn’t have hot cheese scalding their chin and a little dollop of red on their jumper.

More recently I tried pizza served with less technicolour from The Artisan Cook. This, for those yet to discover the delights, is a mobile wood fired oven.

It was parked up on Sully sea front and my children and I called there recently. The pizza is pulled and pressed, shaped and topped in front of you and then popped into the fiery furnace. My children loved chatting to their pizza chef and watching the transformation from ball of flour and water to wonder of marguerite magic.

This is seriously good pizza, tasty sauce, good cheese, crispy and freshly made, with the same mottled brown edges I remember from childhood Italian holidays.

We’re also big fans of Villa Napoli restaurant at The Glendale Hotel in Penarth. The greeting is very warm, the proscecco is very cold and the pizza is very fine indeed.

My daughter is a purist, always a "cheese pizza" for her. I like all the smelly stuff thrown on, anchovies and lots of olives. A few sliced artichokes and I am in pizza paradise.

I make my own pizza, to a Nigella recipe but alas space has eluded me. So with thoughts full of pie I shall close and smile serenely to myself knowing I have some really good olives in the house and my fingers are twitching to get kneading some dough.