Mar. 14th, 2013

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So, I tried the Dr. Oetker's "Formaggi e Pomodori" pizza...

You cook it 13 minutes, which I find sinisterly pleasing*. It's a visually attractive pizza, in classic Margherita colours. It smells delicious. The crust is very light, dry, and crunchy, extremely well made. The toppings seem thinly applied at first glance, but they're in proper proportion for the crust.

The tomatoes are round slices of cherry tomato, with the chewy skins left on. The dark green blobs that I had at first thought to be spinach are actually whole leaves of basil peppered amongst the tomatoes in roughly equal proportions. It is a Margherita. I can taste a bit of olive oil beneath the tomato/basil flavour too, I think. It's not on the crust - the tomatoes may have been marinated in it.

The cheese blend is an unusual one, but works well. Shredded edam and mozzarella are lightly applied over the surface, and then chunks of a generic mild goat cheese (that look unfortunately like tofu, which is what I thought it was at first) are sprinkled over the pizza.

This is an excellent frozen pizza, much different from, but in its own way equal to, the Freschetta from the other night. It is a sparse, restrained pizza, but very well balanced, with all of the ingredients carefully chosen and working well together. Yez Brits may eat Dr. Oetker's secure in the knowledge that you're enjoying as good a frozen pizza as any we have in the States, and much better than most, even if it is made out of ground-up English villagers.*

That being said, I can see Americans not liking it, precisely because it is restrained and balanced. Excess seems to be the rule for most things here, and pizza is no exception. One of the current marketting campaigns for pizzeria pizza involves how much pepperoni one can fit on a pizza. They've gone past the point of having the pie completely covered, edge to edge, with pepperoni, and some places are now advertising multiple layers. That's the way things work here.


* [livejournal.com profile] murakozi opined that the name "Dr. Oetker's Ristorante" sounded like the title of a Hammer film about Christopher Lee turning his victims into pizza toppings and serving them in his pizzeria.

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