My Margarita must be eaten fresh from the oven it’s not going to deliver. I need molten cheese (still bubbling) and too-hot, tomatoes atop a chewy dough with golden crisp exterior. That moment of perfection lasts minutes. I even get jumpy in a pizzeria when I can see my order cooling on a counter.
If you’re going to take away — as we have to in the current climate — you need (at the very least) to go and fetch it yourself from the pizza parlour. And have available nearby, a vehicle (or bench) where you can immediately shove slices in your mouth. Every minute post-oven detracts from my pleasure.
Which is why the HomeSlice Take and Bake pizza delivery, last week, was perfect. Our pizzas arrived stone cold and (intentionally) part-baked. All I had to do was follow the enclosed instructions on how to finish them to perfection. The beauty of this service that they would go from oven to table in seconds. Genius. And the freshly made dough is a whole different class to a supermarket pizza.
My unadventurous children are happiest with a Margarita, and I had picked a more exciting mushroom, ricotta, pumpkin seeds and chilli flake topped one, which arrived with a soy truffle glaze in its own cute bottle.
All I had to do was bake and scatter on toppings.
The children declared the pizzas the best they’d eaten at home, and my ricotta mushroom one was also superb. The shiny, brown glaze packed such an umami punch that I drizzled it over the salad, bread and veg — anything I could find.
The bonus was the cocktail making kit that arrived with it. Four miniature bottles of Jameson’s whisky plus ginger ale and limes to make your own Jameson, ginger and lime. Like being out out; but in. At £25 for two pizzas and the drinks, it was a cheap night in. And the pizza I craved.
The only thing better for pizza perfection would have been my own proper wood-fired oven. Maybe I’ll find pop that on my Chanukah list…
