It's been finished for two months, Hades the woodfired pizza oven sitting like a giant pink bald head not far from my back door, and if I'd given you the update early it would have been a sad story of failures. Our first two pizza nights were abject, and on both these Saturday nights we resorted to cooking dinner inside. The first time we used the oven it was nowhere near hot enough to cook anything, and the second time it was so hot the pizzas were destroyed within 30 seconds. On the third Saturday night we got it right, so right we've been struggling to do as well since, but it's all been great fun.
You may recall my account of building the woodfired oven in my backyard (on this blog at May 12), and a month or so after that I made the oven door out of timber scraps and the job was done.
The pizzas cook so quickly it is almost flash cooking and the result is very different from the American-style pizzas of the chains. For a start, the base is thin, very thin, and the toppings are a single layer rather than a thick conglomerate. Cheese is used sparingly. Our favourite pizzas so far are shredded Chinese barbecued duck, thinly sliced red onion and sparse mozzarella on a bed of chilli plum sauce (or hoi sin or sweet chilli sauce), a reworked margherita of sliced tomato, anchovy, sparse mozzarella and a sprinkling of parmesan with a pesto bed, and sliced apple or pear with blue vein cheese on an olive oil bed. Another pizza we particularly like is roast pumpkin, fetta, thinly sliced red onion on a bed of garlic-infused oil with a few dollops of pesto.
We've also made garlic squid in a camp oven and pastry-wrapped baked apples in a caramel sauce, and while these have been great the big surprise has been casseroles cooked overnight in the oven. They are different from casseroles cooked in the kitchen oven - perhaps it is the steadily falling heat, perhaps the slowness of the cooking. We've also cooked a leg of lamb with white wine and whole garlic heads in a camp oven (with lid), and in the morning the meat is falling off the bone. On Sunday night we put a whole Jap pumpkin in the oven overnight, and it emerged as a whole roast pumpkin my wife has made into a soup.
We haven't exhausted our ideas yet but we could always do with more. Questions about the building or the cooking are welcome, and I'd appreciate your suggestions for pizzas and anything else we can cook in Hades.
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