Parma ham, salami and mozarella cheese pizza

“I want to make pizza this weekend,” Mr. P declared out of the blue one day.
“With what?” I asked.
“With the Cockroach!”

Our dear friend, ZL, had given us a convection oven two years ago, which we nicknamed “Cockroach” because the red lid looks like a smiling cockroach with its arching handle and two big knobs. We never really thought of using it to cook pizza until Mr. P was struck by this latest bout of culinary inspiration.

Since this pizza project was conceived by Mr. P, he had to take charge of the cooking process. And it’s so much easier when he takes the helm in the kitchen, leaving me to concentrate on the photography. (Most of the blog posts here, from preparing to cooking to styling to photographing, were undertaken by me alone—but it’s fun!)

We started by applying a thick layer of puree tomato on the pizza base, trying to smear it as close to the edge as we could.

Then we dot the pizza with salami.

Parma ham came next. At this point I thought our pizza started looking crowded.

And then we dressed the pizza with lots of diced mushroom and mozzarella cheese.

Just when we were about to slide the pizza into Cockroach, Mr. P suddenly remembered that green peppers would be a nice addition. Out came the green peppers from the fridge; with a quick wash and slice, they were sitting on top of the pizza.

We set Cockroach to work at 180 degree Celsius for 15 minutes. Once the baking process started, a lovely waft of melted cheese floated across the room. We couldn’t wait for the pizza to be done!

Ding!

While the crust could be thinner—nothing much we could do since we used ready-made pizza bases—the taste hit the notes correctly. Not too bad for our first attempt. While munching on our homemade pizza, I made Mr. P promise that we would visit Italy one day to taste real pizzas lovingly made by real Italian chefs. Meanwhile, we’re definitely going to experiment with different toppings. ^^