Cassius RIP

We come here not to bury Cassius, but to praise him.

Tragedy has struck. And Cassius is no more. The bitterly cold winter and blanket of snow sapped away his strength and left him in pieces. But rather than be sad and mourn his departure, let’s instead celebrate his incredible life and feast on pictures of the sensational pizzas he blessed with his scorching heat.

Cassius. You were amazing. You set the Summer of 2009 on fire. And we’re going to miss you. So much.

Maybe Phoenix might rise from the ashes of his demise?

For further posts about Cassius click here.

Update from Cassius

Cassius is going from strength to strength. The summer rain and sun has widened his cracks, but he doesn’t care. We’ve tried to add coats of protective clay but he isn’t interested. He just shrugs them off and demands to be used. If we cook in the Aga he starts sulking like a moody teenager. Our efforts in Cassius to date have been great. But we are constantly trying to improve our technique.

So in preparation for a party in Somerset, I bought a cast iron rectangular skillet to act as a DIY pizza stone. So far we’ve been using upturned baking trays, but in light of the fact that we have ruined 3 of Cowie’s parents’ pans, I thought it would be worth the small investment.

The other area we’ve been keen to improve on is the dough. We’ve been following a Jamie Oliver recipe that demands semolina flour, but have always cheated and used plain flour. The bases have been tasty but lacking the authentic bubbles that you get at places like Franco Manca. So we visited At the Chapel in Bruton who have a pizza oven and to our delight they gave us not only a bag of their semolina but also a small pot of their sourdough starter! To say that I was excited would be the understatement of the century. (More on “Simon the Sourdough Starter” another time)

The combination of using dough made with semolina and the cast iron “pizza stone” resulted in our best pizzas yet. The skillet got so hot in the embers that it had the pizza base dancing and bursting. The pizzas cooked in around 3 minutes flat and tasted of Napoli!

A simple parma ham and mushroom pizza kicked Christened the new skillet…

The “La Reine”, excusing the lack of olives, put Pizza Express’s version to shame.

A plain, tomato and mozzarella pizza was simply brilliant. Some torn basil and a twist of black pepper had us shouting with greedy delight.

And a fully loaded beast with mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and chilli that we’ve named “Arnie”.

Our Eggy Pizza was a triumph as well. The yolk oozed across the plate and acted as a fantastic dipping sauce.

Cassius is loving life. He’s just getting better and better. The combination of semolina and skillet has made a huge difference to the bases. They’ve become much lighter and are developing the bubbles we’ve been hankering after. For our next trick we’re going to make our bases using “Simon the Sourdough Starter” that we’re lovingly nurturing… If you’ve got any suggestions for awesome toppings let us know.

Tandoori Chicken

Every time we visit Cowie’s parents is another excuse/opportunity to experiment with Cassius, our clay oven. It has excelled at cooking pizza and roast lamb so we thought we’d see how it coped with tandoori chicken.

We took inspiration from Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe and just added more fire. The basic idea is to create a marinade from greek yoghurt, lime, garam masala, chilli, ginger, garlic and coriander. You blitz this together, add some salt and allow the marinade to tenderise the meat and penetrate the flesh with the Indian flavours. About 3 hours will do the trick, but over night is ever better.

Given that we were catering for 10 we needed 3 chickens so we had to par-cook the legs and wings in the aga and blasted the breasts in the Cassius when he was at full heat. We’ve not been able to measure the temperature yet, but it is way hotter than any oven I’ve ever used.

The breasts cooked in about 15-20 minutes. They emerged with a charred, spicy crust and dripping with moisture inside. It’s a great technique. It wasn’t a bad result given that it was our first attempt. Next time I’m going to add more chilli to the marinade and make some naans.

What shall we cook in Cassius next?

Cowie’s Pizza Oven

Being the amazing girlfriend that she is, Cowie took it upon herself to build a pizza oven from scratch over Easter whilst I was back at home with my family. Not only is this an incredibly brilliant thing to do… it is also enormously selfless as the wheat in pizza dough doesn’t really agree with Cowie’s stomach. So it was quite literally a labour of love.

I’ve been desperate to have a clay pizza oven ever since we saw one at River Cottage. I bought the book , by the amazingly well named Kiko Denzer, that they recommended and became engrossed in the incredibly passionate world of DIY clay oven sites such as “instrucatables” and “clayoven”. I love the idea of crispy based pizza. Of charred, smoky crust.And of puffy dough.Of that Neanderthal smell of primal food. I guess it has brought out the latent Ray Mears in me.

If you want full instructions please visit this brilliant, brilliant site. But here’s a quick overview of how we bodged our oven together.Or rather how Cowie went about creating the best pizza oven anyone has ever made for me!

1.Persuade parents, landlords, other-halves etc. that they simply cannot carry on living without a pizza oven. Don’t underestimate how important stakeholder buy in is.
2.Build a base for your oven. This should get to a height at which you’d like to cook at.
3.Use a concrete slab as the floor to the oven. Or fireproof bricks.
4.On top of you base, build a dome of wet sand. Make sure the dome is the right size. You want space around the outside to form the clay oven. The sand is essentially mapping out the negative space that will become the inside of the oven.
5.Coat the outside of the wet sand with wet newspaper.
6.Dig up some clay and moisten. Mix with sand and build a layer of clay that covers the newspaper. Ensure this is around 2 inches to 3 inches thick. Make it as strong as possible.
7.Leave a hole at the front that is 63% of the height of the oven itself. Apparently this is the perfect ratio to allow the oven to breathe.
8.Once the dome is formed and secure, pull out the sand.
9.Light a small fire and allow the oven to dry.
10.Add a second skin of clay to fill in the cracks that will have formed.
11.Light another fire to continue the drying out process.
12.Add a third layer of clay as a cosmetic layer. Make it as smooth and attractive as possible.
13.Light a proper fire and get baking!

So far we’ve got to number 9. We got a bit overexcited and decided to cook in it straight away. To our joy it worked! (We’re going to finish the process next weekend.)

Cowie made some dough following a Jamie Oliver recipe and we threw together a collection of toppings. Given that we didn’t have any mozzarella we’re delighted with the results. The pizzas were gorgeously smoky, crispy and authentic. Step aside Zizzis!

We now can’t wait to evolve our technique. For instance I’m keen to make sourdough bases, buy a herd of buffalo and to harvest my own wheat. Also, if anyone knows where we can get a bakers’ paddle, please can you let us know.

I want to build an outdoor pizza oven

I need some help.

I’m determined to have a pizza party next summer in our garden and need to construct a fully functioning pizza oven in the spring. I’ve had a good look around the internet and can see there are a whole bunch of people building outdoor ovens for pizzas and general cooking purposes.

Can anyone offer me any advice about the pitfalls and things to watch out for. What design should I use? And are they easy to build?

I’ve found this video that seems to sum up what I want to do. I want to be able to stand there in my apron, put on my best Italian accent and wave around my massive baker’s spatula.

I found these photos on HeatKit which seems to be a Mecca for all things to do with building pizza ovens.

If there’s anyone out there who wants to help me build a pizza oven at my parent’s house near Bedford please get in touch. I really need some help!