RECIPE: Pizza party with Nat’s What I Reckon!

The world’s a confusing and chaotic place. We thought lockdown was over . . . it wasn’t. We hoped life would go back to normal . . . it hasn’t. But Nat’s What I Reckon knows one thing is definitely still true: jar sauce can get f*cked. So, to help champions keep levelling up their cooking skills and making ripper feeds from scratch at home, Nat has created a collection of 25 sh*t hot recipes that will get you out of a jam — Death to Jar Sauce: Rad Recipes for Champions.

Today, we’re having a pizza party on the blog, Nat’s What I Reckon style, so you can learn all about how to make the perfect pizza (dough and all). Happy cooking!

Pizza Party

Serves: 2
Cooking time: about an hour
HECTOMETER: 6/10

Who the bloody hell doesn’t love pizza? A crowd-pleaser if there ever was one. Then there is the old frozen pizza wrapped in plastic with all the shit on it that has slid to one side and cooks into a disappointing hot cardboard UFO that tastes about as good as the box it came in. Making your own pizza dough is pretty fucken easy and so fucken cool, and you can extend the recipe to suit a shitload of legends at once. Definitely a big feeling of joy when you manage the whole event yourself.

Ingredients

Dough
300 g Tipo ‘00’ flour or strong plain flour, plus extra for dusting
¾ cup (180 ml) warm water
big pinch of sea salt flakes
1 teaspoon caster sugar
7 g sachet dried yeast
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
50 g semolina flour or polenta, to dust bench

Pizza sauce
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic
small handful fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon tomato paste
400 g can good quality peeled tomatoes (San Marzano if possible)
½ teaspoon brown sugar
pinch o’ salt

Topping
150 g mozzarella (the hard stuff, or even grated)
2 balls buffalo mozzarella, torn
150 g prosciutto
fresh basil leaves
handful of baby rocket
shave of parmesan cheese if you like
chilli flakes, optional
(but add whatever you like, it’s your bloody pizza, mate)

Method

For the sauce, heat olive oil in a saucepan over a low–medium heat and sauté the garlic for a minute or two, then add basil, tomato paste, the tin of tomato shit plus the sugar and a good pinch o’ salt and simmer for 10 minutes until thickened. Blend that shit, stick-blender style (it may be easier to blend it in a jug as there isn’t a lot of sauce), and set aside to cool completely, then bung in ya fridge for ’ron.

Have that 180 ml jug of lukewarm water ready to party. Dry the kitchen bench and dust with flour.

Make the dough by sifting ya flour into a large bowl. Make a hole in the centre if ya like, and away we go with the water, salt, sugar, yeast and olive oil, combining with your hands. Once that’s roughly a ball of annoying shit, dump it on the floured bench and knead the fucken shit out of it for at least 5 minutes.

I like to put it this way: you know those moments when you’re watching someone serve you food from a bain-marie behind the glass at a fast food place and it makes you want to punch your own face in ’cause you’re a control freak and can’t stand that they put a dumb amount of sauce in the corner of ya plate and you can’t say shit, or they place the tomato on your sandwich wrong and you want to implode with frustration?

Imagine that moment, but in this instance, it’s the salt, yeast, sugar etc not being mixed properly in the dough!

It’s like that, so . . . After the metaphorical tomato has been placed perfectly on the sandwich, place the dough in a lightly-oiled bowl, cover in plastic wrap and store somewhere warm for at least an hour until doubled in size.

After the amount of time your patience will allow, lightly punch the dough in the centre to release the air – you’re not trying to fight the dough, so take it easy, tough guy. Now, separate the dough into two bits.

Crank your oven as hot as the fucken thing goes and bang a tray or pizza stone inside.

This next bit is a moment that may challenge your mental health, but trust me, it doesn’t’ matter what the fuck it ends up looking like. Pizza bases are conceptual in some respects; it’s all more or less pizza in one way or another. I’m not gonna lie, I dip in and out of being pretty average at the old ‘make this fucken ball of dough look like a round pizza base’ game myself.

Dust your bench with semolina flour or polenta and plonk the first ball on it.

So, the idea is that you wanna try work the ball of dough from the inside outwards to make a base. You’d be surprised how thin this bad boi can get and still bake into a sick af pizza. I have made bases that look like an alien being birthed from an egg in the movie Aliens and it’s still ended up a bloody stonking win, so don’t get down on yourself if your base looks like a goblin’s wallet – you’ll be right.

Gently massage it by splaying your fingers outwards, slowly pushing from the centre towards the edge and shifting the base about until you flatten the fucken thing out into a shape that looks like a pizza-able surface. You don’t heaps want to flatten the crust edges, so don’t use a rolling pin unless you can’t be fucked or don’t give one either. I reckon you want to keep the crusts thicker so they cook into pillowy things. Always work the dough outwards, spinning it about and stretching with the outer edge of the crust bit being the thickest part, if ya can.

By all means throw it about in the air if ya feeling brave, ya sick lord, but trust me, the possible mishaps are endless: holes in the dough, dough on the ceiling, dough the on floor and also the fridge and on ya mate Craig. Practice makes perfect, Master Luke.

Now we need to get that alien creation onto a piece of semolina- or flour-covered baking paper that’s resting on a flat surface. On goes a tablespoon of cold sauce from earlier. Take it easy on the sauce and shit you add to the pizza – a wet sloppy mess is not what we are chasing – so a tablespoon or two of sauce should be enough to spread evenly over the base with the back of a spoon, being careful not to break the film on the egg and release the alien.

I like to use fresh buffalo mozzarella but it can get a bit watery if you go too hard with it, and of course it usually comes in a tub of liquid so is naturally predisposed to being fucken wet, so play around with it a bit if your first pizza comes out a touch cheese wet. If you wanna play it safe then only put it on the pizza after the base has been in the oven for a few minutes already, or alternatively use a harder mozzarella.

Now, depending how you like ya pizza, you can add the meat now or once it comes out the oven to let the heat from the pizza cook it through. Let’s say you’ll wait, so pull out the hot af stone or tray from the oven and carefully drag your baking paper masterpiece onto the hot one, then bang it straight back into the oven for 10 minutes or until your weird oven (and whatever it calls hot) cooks it.

You’ll know when it’s cooked ’cause it looks fucken like it should.

Pull it out, add ya prosciutto, basil and rocket and shave with fresh parmesan. You can even sprinkle over chilli flakes if ya feeling tough.

Of course, these are just my fave things to put on pizza so experiment with your preferred sick mix of shit; my only advice is to avoid putting all of your beloved things on earth on the pizza at once ’cause it will just end up a soggy pile of shit and tears. Less can be more in this instance.

Repeat with your second pizza base. Way to go, what a journey. The Ninja Turtles would be proud.

—Death to Jar Sauce: Rad Recipes for Champions by Nat’s What I Reckon and illustrated by Bunkwaa, Glenno, Warrick McMiles and Onnie O’Leary (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.

Death to Jar Sauce

Rad Recipes for Champions

by Nat's What I Reckon, with Bunkwaa, Glenno, Warrick McMiles and Onnie O'Leary (Illustrators).

Our favourite sweary, anti-jar-sauce warrior is back . . . and he’s actually written a whole cookbook this time.

The world’s a confusing and chaotic place. We thought lockdown was over . . . it wasn’t. We hoped life would go back to normal . . . it hasn’t. But Nat’s What I Reckon knows one thing is definitely still true: jar sauce can get f*cked. So, to help champions keep levelling up their cooking skills and making ripper feeds, Nat has created this collection of 25 sh*t hot recipes that will get you out of a jam...

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