When I came home from work today, I found DM hankering after a home-made pizza. I’ve been working on technique for pizza for ages and ages because I just couldn’t get them so they don’t have soggy middles.

My technique suddenly fell into place about a year ago when I discovered semolina. A quick sprinkling of it makes a world of difference to the moisture levels. Before that, I’d tried everything, including making the sauce really ‘dry’, wrapping the mozzerella in kitchen paper to get the excess moisture out, cooking them really hot – all of which I still do and all of which help. The basic problem still existed though until I got the semolina thing.

It has been a real trial of endeavour over technique really because I was so arrogant as to think ‘it can’t be that difficult – they’re being made all over the world by millions of people all of the time’. I actually think they are one of the most difficult dishes to get right.

So, DM put on the Panasonic for the dough while I set about making my own special spicy pizza sauce. It’s a corker. It’s quite chunky relative to the sauces used in pizza restaurants and it’s very spicy. – in essence, it’s minced onion, chilli and garlic sautéed until soft, a tin of chopped tomatoes added, a big squirt of tomato puree and a good grinding of black pepper, cooked slowly so all of the moisture disappears and the flavours get time to develop. It ends up the sort of consistency of a really good chutney.

While I was doing the sauce, I was looking at the can-opener on the side and thinking what an interesting shape…….see SBF – it gets ingrained into your psyche eventually. So, I plonked it on the side, got the macro lens and ‘Bob’s your uncle’ (well, he’s mine anyway). It comes complete with a nice thick layer of tomato juice on the blade and rust on the rivet but I reckon that adds to its charm.

Any minute now I'm going to be doing exactly what I was doing this time last year!