Pizza al Volo [Speedy Pizza]

Have you noticed the posts getting more frequent? This is me waking up from my Christmas hibernation. A bit like school holidays, where you leave all your homework to the last weekend... Of course in this case it's the most pleasurable kind of homework. Dreaming of food. Researching food. Consulting about the food with people I'm fond of. Cooking the food for people I'm fond of. Photographing the food. Eating the food with aforementioned people. Revisiting the whole happy process in writing.

But I'm obviously still high-school age at heart, which is why I'm catching up on that last stage now. How disappointing that I'm just getting into the swing of it with just one day left.

Tonight's dinner was a split second decision influenced by a) the extreme cold walking around Spitalfields and back home, which required something hot, satisfying and comforting; and b) the remembrance of an great meal whipped up by my friends Bel, Lucy and Katey just before Christmas. Pizza from scratch.

People often assume that having grown up in an Italian household I must have feasted on fresh-baked pizza all the time, and must know a bit about how to make a good one. It's not really the case. Pizzas just don't form part of my repertoire. Between the Sardinian, Milanese and North-Eastern Italian influences at home, I ate plenty of traditional food lovingly and freshly prepared, but I'm pretty certain the only pizza that passed my lips (infrequently) was from a restaurant. I put it down to Italian purism about food. If you don't have a wood-burning oven in your house and you're no expert at chucking dough around, better to buy in. Let the pros handle it and tuck into the real thin and crispy thing without getting your hands dirty.

Fortunately, I am only a purist when it suits me; furthermore, I believe that when it comes to bread-based-products any amateur home-cooked effort is still bound to taste much nicer than the average (English) store-bought or take-away stodge. And Bel, Lucy and Katey proved to me just how easy it is two weeks ago.

I'm obsessed with potato on pizza, so there were wafer-thin slices on top of our anchovy and olive attempt. Shoo made one with pancetta and slivers of onion and courgette. There's still dough for two in the fridge.

The dough recipe is a Jamie Oliver special, quantity halved.