pizza my heart submissions update

hopefully this flyer explains everything in that last post a little more succinctly. again, if you'd like to contribute with anything at all, I'd l-u-r-v-e to hear from you so drop me an email!

pizza my heart - a rest in pizza zine

Hey everyone. Gonna take a break right now from the NON-STOP ENTERTAINMENT of reviews and talk to you about something else for a second.

I love writing restinpizza, and I hope that some of you enjoy reading it every so often. What I would really like to do more than anything is convert this lil blog of mine into an actual physical zine - 'pizza my heart' is essentially going to be the paper version of restinpizza, and whilst it might feature some content similar to that you see on the blog, it's also going to be a little more varied, with photography, interviews, illustration and lots of other cool stuff, hopefully with pizza contributions and points of view from people who aren't just me.

That is where you all come in - basically, if you think you have something cool to say about pizza or pizza-related topics, and would like your work to be featured in a dope-ass publication that you can hold in your hands, then please shoot me an email and your idea (no more than 200 words pls!) at restinpizza666@gmail.com - I would love to hear from you and collect the work of pizza aficionados in one tastefully designed place.

(if you think you'd like to submit or be involved, but aren't really sure what sort of direction you'd like to take, here are some ideas:

• a profile of the best pizza places in one city (written/photographic/whatever)
• recipes!  
• or you could just write about why you l-u-v pizza
• any sort of ~creative non-fiction~ 
• tbh, anything creative at all)

Please get in touch if you'd like to be involved; otherwise I'll be posting some sporadic updates about the zine, so pls keep an eye out! It should appear sometime in September. 

Thank u for reading, everyone; I will shut up now.

Lauren xoxo 

The Farm, Solihull - 19/7/2014

On Saturday I went for a ~meal~ for my stepdad's birthday at The Farm which is a v nice restaurant in Solihull. Solihull is basically Birmingham but the people who live there will vehemently deny this from inside their wannabe yummy mummy 4x4s on the way to taking Ellie-Mae to her violin lesson, whilst also telling Freddie to "shut the DS the fuck up I'm trying to make an eyebrow appointment". 

Ahem. Anyway so yeah. The Farm. This place is cool and the ambience is lovely and all, but I was not bowled over by their pizza, and as we all know, this is the most important test of any establishment. Ben and I had a pie with spring onion, olives and chillies on it, with added rocket and mushrooms to replace the mozzarella and anchovies we got rid of. The toppings were nice quality, but I did take issue with the chillies which were suuuper spicy and not very flavoursome. I really like spicy food but there just wasn't much else to compensate for the hotness. The sauce was just sauce really, and I actually wasn't hugely into the base, which had a texture which was too chewy for a dough as thin as it was. 

However, I'm not tryna hate because this is a cool place to eat and it's laid out really nicely, so definitely not all bad. Should you ever find yourself in Solihull (let me know so I can pray a rosary for your mortal soul) and stuck for somewhere pretty to eat, maybe you should visit The Farm.

The Inn at The Farm

Farmhouse Way, Solihull, B90 4EH

http://www.lovelypubs.co.uk/venues/the-inn-at-the-farm

recipe: PIZZADILLAS - 16/7/2014

Here is a pizzadilla what I made. Obviously it looks absolutely shit because all of the magic was happening inside (I forgot to take a picture of the magic before I put the second wrap on top because I was shitting myself about it burning sorry), but I assure you, these badboyz are dope. 

Before you do anything with actual cooking utensils, make sure you've a) grated lots of cheese (vegan or otherwise - I used Violife pizza cheese, but any grate-able cheese works), b) chopped up your veggies/whatever elses for the filling (I used red peppers and black olives), and c) made up a lil pizza sauce (passata/tomato puree/garlic/herbs), and perhaps added some extra kick due to the usually spicier-than-a-pizza nature of a quesadilla - I did so by using chilli powder, paprika, cumin and coriander. Alternatively, you could use a ready made pizza sauce, or even salsa from a jar. 

Once you have done that, start to warm up a frying pan and fuck a load of olive oil into it. Make sure both the pan and the oil are quite hot, and then put a tortilla inside it, flat. Wait until the tortilla starts puffing up a bit and little air bubbles start appearing, and then give it a flip over. Wait for the same thing to happen on the other side, and then flip it back to the original side. Then u must work quickly. 

Spread the pizza sauce, whichever you have chosen to use, onto the tortilla, like you would onto a pizza base. Then sprinkle most, but not all, of the cheese on, and crucially, wait for it to melt. It is rly important that the cheese melts for the next bit. 

The next bit is putting the veggies on top - if the cheese has melted, they have something to cling to rather than falling all over the place like me walking home after I've been out. Once you've put the veggies/whatever on top of the tortilla, sprinkle the remainder of the cheese on top of them. Then comes the difficult part. 

You can do this in one of two ways - if you have lots of time and ingredients, you can simply fold one side of the tortilla over the other and flip it over a couple of times with a fish slice, so that it toasts evenly. Then, repeat all of the above using another tortilla so that you end up with four little slices of pizzadilla, as per the picture. You can put the one you've made in the oven to stay warm (obvious, but protip all the same). Alternatively, if like me, you are a disorganised mess and need to be quick, you can simply place another tortilla on top of the one in the pan, and flip them over so that the new one also becomes crispy. Obviously this flip requires great accuracy and strength of will, but I believe that you can do it without much issue if I was able to, because I am properly useless. I used two fish slice-y type things and held them underneath the pizzadilla on either side, and then quickly flipped it over. Surprisingly, it didn't actually make much mess, and crisis was averted.

Once you've overcome that hurdle, stick it on a plate and eat it. I had mine with fake garlic mayo and a red pepper and olive salad and it was delicious. Go forth and pizzadilla. 

PS: sorry for the lack of photos in this post - kinda shitty when I'm trying to explain how to do something! If you'd like any more clarification of the recipe pls just leave a comment and I'll get back to you on it :3  

VEGAN TAKEAWAY PIZZA: Village Pizza, London - 9/7/2014 and Papa John's, Sheffield - 13/7/2014

When you are trying to eat vegan something that can be annoying is finding decent takeaway pizza. Takeaway pizza has always been a very important aspect of my life at the core of who I am, and I will not allow anything to change this.

Last week I was gross (great) and ate a lot of takeaway pizza. This is a post about that. The first pizza place I'll review will be London's VILLAGE PIZZA (the Old Kent Road branch). Village Pizza is one of London's premier vegan pizza suppliers, even doing pies with vegan cheese (the old classic Mozzarella-style Cheezly from what I can gather) and fake meat. We ordered two pizzas: one 16 inch (ridiculous) Pepe Peppers, consisting of Cheezly, fake pepperoni, jalapeños, sweetcorn and peppers, and one medium Spaniard - Cheezly, fake garlic sausage, black olives, fresh tomatoes and red onion. Here they are in all of their glory:

bby Spaniard

Pepe Peppers, total giant bastard

I wanna first of all give props to Village Pizza for thinking of vegans and making sure they too can get dope, artery blocking pizzas. It is important, in the interests of equal opportunities and so on, that this happens. The slightly bad news was that in both cases, the fake meat (the main draw other than the vegan cheese really) was sort of flavourless and not particularly nicely textured. I was not overly into it. The veg was all really tasty, though, and the pizza sauce was good in a pizza sauce way. However, the dough - special vegan dough also, but tbh I don't understand on any level why anyone is putting milk/eggs in pizza dough - was a little too soft for me, considering how thin it also was. Sad :(. The pizzas were also sort of cold when they arrived. In general, Village Pizza is not my favourite vegan pizza I have ever eaten, but their good intentions are admirable, and next time I'm in LDN I'm gonna be jonesing to try their Hickory BBQ 'za. 

A few days later, this time in Sheffield, we ordered more pizza because the World Cup was on. In a slightly excessive move, we ordered two Extra Extra Large pizzas (the Garden Party, which has the sort of standard list of veggie toppings, and the Hot Pepper Passion which was delicious and really fucking spicy due to chillies and jalapeños) and a small The Greek (more veggies, but slightly hotter due to added peperonata) because there was obviously not enough already. 

A downside to Papa John's is that they don't offer a vegan cheese option, but unlike their main competitor Domino's, Papa John's bases are 100% animal product-free (FYI, in general, their crust is very similar to Domino's - it's chunky and chewy and just really pleasingly bready but not too bready. For these reasons, I think it is really good). So, when the pizzas came, we just grated Cheezly over them, whacked them in the oven and took them out when they looked like this:

close-up of Hot Pepper Passion 'cause it looked dope/I couldn't get
decent photos of the others bc I was too eager to stuff pizza in every hole on my face

Though this might seem like a lot of effort to go to for a takeaway, it was actually pretty minimal and it ended up tasting gr8. Papa John's pizza sauce is on some classic New York pizza shit, and rly complimented both the dough and the veg. I can't praise the dough highly enough, and Cheezly, which featured again on this pizza, is always really good. 

Of the two vegan pizza takeaways, though it required a lil more effort, Papa John's definitely ended up being the better tasting option. Their pizzas made for a more satisfying slice (I would know, I think I ate about 10 and that is not an exaggeration), and there was some left over for dinner the next day. Dope as fuck. 

Village Pizza pizza rating: 6/10

Village Pizza

230 Old Kent Road, SE1 5UB

http://www.villagepizzauk.com

Papa John's pizza rating: 8/10

I'm not going to put an address because their are Papa John's branches everywhere

http://www.papajohns.co.uk 

Pizza Hut, Birmingham - 2/07/2014

Yesterday I hung out with one of my oldest and most lovely pals, Hannah. Whenever we hang out we go to Pizza Hut because it is what we have always done since the dawn of time. 

So. I had a Veggie pizza with no cheese and extra olives on a Pan base. The Pizza Hut Pan base is a thing of immense beauty and I want to take a second to honour it now - at best (i.e. when it's just been freshly served) it's soft and comforting yet crispy. The crust gives just a tiny bit of resistance when you first bite it and it's completely dope. It makes me sort of sad that the colder the pizza gets, the less crispy and more doughy the Pan crust gets. If Pizza Hut could find a way to solve that, they could well have one of the world's most delicious doughs on their hands. And I do not say that lightly. 

The toppings were all very nice and fresh-seeming (though I do take issue with Pizza Hut's black olives which are weirdly shrivelled), and I appreciated how inviting the pizza looked 'cause of all the bright colours. Not too much green, which does often become a problem with veggie pizza, imho. 

Basically u know what you're getting with Pizza Hut (Peep Show fans amirite??) - tasty comfort food AND a free salad bar (big up Pizza Hut couscous tbh) AND free fizzy drink refills. Not bloody bad. 

Pizza rating: 6/10

VEGAN PIZZA DAY!!! @ Grove Café, Leeds - 28/06/2014

On Saturday it was apparently #veganpizzaday. I do not like hashtags but this one was very relevant to my interests. We were near Leeds because we went to Ikea (I bought a cuddly pig and some cacti fyi) so I suggested that to celebrate that most sacred of days, we revisit one of Yorkshire's most beloved vegan pizza joints, Grove Café. 

Ben had a Soya Delight which he always has because he's an old man (it has tofu, peppers, vegan cheese and maybe mushrooms or something on it. tbh it's pretty nice.), and I got a vegan Margherita and added sweetcorn, peppers and olives which is obviously a superior topping combination. The pizza was gr8 as it was last time, and though my issue with it still remains the same (the dough is chewy and not crispy), it was tasty as all heck and totally did the job. However, we are weaklings and couldn't finish it so we had to take like half of each pizza back home. It is for this reason that I also just want to talk about the extent to which Grove pizza comes into its own when it's 5am and you've just got in from dancing in a cage at a class gay bar. It is a great extent. 5am post-Dempsey's meal is the role this pizza was born to play. 

So yeah, hope all of my ~readers~ had a nice fun #veganpizzaday and ate lots of pizza, vegan or otherwise depending on your inclination. Mwah or whatever. 

Pizza rating: 8/10

Grove Café

133-135 Cardigan Road, LS6 1LJ

Nether Edge Pizza @ Café #9, Sheffield - 25/06/2014

Nether Edge Pizza is one of those sort of annoying sort of cool once a week type deals - every Wednesday, two fellas and a fucking massive wood oven rock up to Cafe #9 in Sheffield and make pizza for all those who flock to them. It is like the feeding of the five thousand but with less people and crispy dough instead of loaves and fishes. 

The pizza is pretty good. For £6, I got a ten inch margherita pizza (with *whisper it* vegan cheese, kindly purchased for us in advance when Ben messaged one of the guys to ask about their non-dairy options. That was very nice of him) with black olives and jalapeños and a fuckload of salad (see below - that was my original photo for this review but I figured it didn't really give too much away tehe). However, it still left me feelin' a lil bit hungry, so me and Ben had to order another to eat on the walk home ('had to', lol). 

The standout part of this pizza was certainly the dough (the olives, jalapeños, and sauce were all nice but pretty standard when you eat pizza the way I do aka a lot) - it was crispy and crunchy and all the things I love from a thin pizza. So big up the Nether Edge Pizza guys for that. 

Though the pizza was pretty satisfying (once I'd had another half of one), there were some drawbacks to the Nether Edge Pizza Experience. First of all, the service was pretty all over the place - four of us visited, and one didn't get his pizza until way after the rest of us had finished (sorry Cheesman) - and second of all, Cafe #9 appeared to be hosting something of a ~jam session~ that evening, so we were treated* to heartfelt ukulele playing, an electric saxophone of some kind, and many many many Marcus Mumfordisms. Which is not necessarily what you're after when you've just popped out for a quiet pizza. We finally gave in and had to leave when someone started playing the bongos and everyone in the place entered into a particularly rousing rendition of I Walk The Line. That actually happened.

So basically - stay for the pizza, leave for the music. Or sit outside, which is what we wanted to do all along. 

Pizza rating: 7/10 

(extra marks for the vegan cheese, otherwise the rating would have been much lower due to the disorganisation and genuinely off-putting atmosphere of people shaking makeshift maracas along to acoustic numbers with lyrics by Sixth Form Poet)

Nether Edge Pizza @ Café #9

9 Nether Edge Road, S7 1RU

*NB: it was not a treat.