Pizza night and the taboo of photographing under white, ghastly kitchen light


If there is one thing I absolutely refuse doing is having my family live in submission to my blog. They always come first, and our un-styled and un-glamorous life will always prevail over any other thing. I refuse planning meals thinking of recipes to photograph for the blog, I refuse to do my shopping in function of what I find is trending right now, thinking I should be onto that bandwagon, I refuse to have us live around this, but insist it must be the other way round.


So when the kid said he wanted pizza one of these nights, I thought it would be a great idea to post a pizza recipe over at this blog, as I find my husband's pizza to be the best in the world. We always have pizza for dinner, not for lunch, and we usually have it on a saturday's night, as it is a recipe that is a bit time consuming, and there are hardly ever any leftovers for lunch on the next day, so we came to the conclusion that saturdays are the perfect days for a pizza night. And I mean night, as we would hardly have time to cook a pizza for lunch on a saturday, unless we were on holidays.


See, we normally do the shopping on saturday mornings so we're left with the rest of the weekend to do whatever we deem right for us as a family - and that might include staying home cooking the whole of the weekend, I don't see how that's wrong! And during weekdays we always make it a point of having leftovers for next day's lunch: Hugo always takes a packed lunch for work, and the kid comes home from school at noon for his meal, so when I cook dinner it is always with the thought of making another three portions out of it, besides the dinner ones. And so it comes to pass that pizza is for saturday evenings, and if I wanted to put it on the blog, I would have to forego any idea of photographing it under natural light.


I have said it before, I don't have much of a problem with artificial lighting, sometimes I believe a shoot will look better for it, if you're intent on giving it a certain mood, or telling a certain kind of story. I have publish pictures here I have taken under that cold white light most of us have in our kitchens - and mine lacks of natural light in a very big way! - and I do not find them all that bed. It's how you choose to tell the story of the meal you're photographing that will make for the pictures, and if you choose to shoot a pizza in a setting that's reminiscent of a trattoria somewhere in Italy, under restaurant lights, using certain props and creating a certain ambiance, then why won't you? Why not just own it and do the shoot as naturally as when you're having dinner with your family? It's what I did with this pizza, and even if the photography seems to lack the lustre that sunshine can provide to food, I find these images quite appetizing, making me crave a piece of this two flavours pizza.


And how do you come about it, you ask? Well, in order to bake yourself thes white pizzas, you'll need:

  • 350gr flour
  • 7-8 gr yeast
  • 200 ml, scarce lukewarm water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • a sprinkle of dried oregano
Place the flour inside a bowl, making a hole in the middle where you will place the salt, the olive oil and the oregano. At the edges of this hole, scatter the yeast. Pour the water into the hole, and using a fork start whisking it all. On a floured work surface, drop the mix and knead until it's smooth and elastic. Then replace it in the bowl and let it proof for at least two hours. Now get started on the toppings.


  • 25 ml olive oil
  • three garlic cloves
  • pinch of salt
  • dried oregano to taste
  • 1 tsp vinegar
On a food processor whizz all of these ingredients untill you get a runny paste. Now get your dough and on a floured surface, use the rolling pin to roll it into the shape you want - we go for square pizzas, except when it comes to our boy, who cares for his pizza round, not square. Place the dough onto an oven tray and with a cooking brush, apply the runny paste liberally to the top of the dough. Now all that's left to do is choose your toppings! For one of these two pizzas we used one tin canned tuna, fresh tomatoes, olives and buffalo mozzarela. For the other we went with a slim chorizo, mozarella, tomatoes and olives, but feel free to add whatever you prefer - just don't go with pineapple, please! - to your toppings. Take to the oven at 180º for about half an hour and serve with a good chianti!! Buon appetito!





Comments

  1. pizza para sempre!! e eu odeio a chamada luz de cozinha. ahah parece filme porno amador

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pá, mas pizza porn a mim soa-me bem, oh Nance!!! :P

      Delete
  2. Ai mas que delicia, já tinha salivado para esta pizza no teu instagram e agora que de aqui um saltinho tenho a certeza absoluta de que "vou ser obrigada" a replicar a receita. Cá em casa somos muito entusiastas de pizza caseira, mhami!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Não há pizza melhor que aquela feita em casa, digo eu!

      Delete
  3. : ) pizza é mm ao jantar, concordo ctg. fogo, eu comia pizza TODOS os dias, no joke. Pão, tomate e queijo. Whatelse?????

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. só te digo uma coisa, então: mini pizzas. consegues imaginar? all day long muahahahahah!

      Delete
  4. homemade pizzas são obrigatórias cá em casa à sexta feira e esta está de se comer e chorar por mais. vou rapinar a receita ok?

    beijinhos

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. rapina á vontade, e se tiveres combinações diferentes toca a divulgar!!!

      Delete

Post a Comment