What Makes A Great Pizza?
There’s no doubting that pizza is one of the most popular types of food in the world whether you’re picking one up from your local Clapham takeaway or dining out a restaurant. Given it’s so popular you’d be mistaken in thinking pizza’s been eaten in the UK for centuries but in fact Brits have only been enjoying the dish in their own country since after the second world war.
Despite its relatively short history in food terms (the first shop selling the dish opened in 1738), pizza has become the most widely eaten dish across the planet with billions of slices sold each year. Although the people of Europe and North America consume the most, every continent and country has a love of a good pizza. Asia is now closing in on America in terms of the revenue generated from demand for the dish.
Toppings vary depending on where in the world you are and they typically reflect regional tastes and cultural preferences. If you find yourself in India, you can expect the locals to have toppings such as mutton, cottage cheese (known as paneer) and pickled ginger. The Russians like a fish combination of sardines, mackerel, salmon, red herring and tuna. Japanese people like a pizza topped with eel, squid, mayo, potato and bacon. Take a seat at a local Clapham pizza restaurant and you’ll find most British diners enjoying pepperoni with extra cheese. Of course just because these toppings are considered the most popular in each country, doesn’t mean that’s what you have to order.
The beauty of the dish is that no matter what your food tastes, there are many ways and unlimited topping combinations to ensure you can have a delicious meal. The basic constituents have remained consistent as bread base, tomato sauce and cheese, but even these elements have been developed and improved by restaurants in different countries. Changes to the type of cheese, the tomato sauce and even how the dough for the base is made produces remarkable and delicious results.
Pizza is also considered a healthy food when the ingredients are well balanced and the cooking method is correct. Depending on the use of toppings it can provide a nutritious meal largely because of the health benefits of tomatoes, vegetables, olive oil, garlic, herbs and spices. These elements form the basis of the ‘Mediterranean diet’ which is considered to be the healthiest in the world. This is due to the ingredients containing antioxidants which help prevent chronic diseases such as cancer. In fact, recent studies have shown pizza can be beneficial in reducing rates of throat, skin and colon cancer.
So what makes a great pizza? Well, we all have our favourite toppings and preferred bread base whether its thin, deep pan or stuffed crust. However, you have to base a good pizza on the original recipe created by the Neapolitans in Italy because everything else is just personal preference. The base should light with a chewy crust and the dough made by hand each day. Top it with a sauce made from the best crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (from cow’s milk) and basil. Ideally it should then be cooked in a brick or wood-fired oven which can achieve a high temperature (900 degrees or more). Get this right and the pizza emerges with a light, sumptuous, and slightly charred base with oozing cheese and a tangy, fragrant sauce. Perfect.
The ‘Eco’ Friendly Clapham Restaurant
What does good eating mean to you? Is it the quality of the food, good service and a great atmosphere? Perhaps the provenance of the ingredients is high on your list of priorities when dining out. Maybe you look for a healthy menu or the ‘green’ credentials of the restaurant. Now, what if you could find a Clapham Common restaurant that caters to all of those criteria? Well, there is one, and it’s aptly named ‘ECO’.
The healthy approach
This Clapham restaurant questions the way it sources ingredients, cooks them and then disposes of surplus waste. In doing so they’ve developed a healthy approach to eating and a healthy approach to the environment. When dishes are created fresh, the food looks and tastes better and with that comes a reputation for serving fantastic meals. And when a restaurant builds that type of reputation they naturally become the destination for discerning food lovers.
How food is grown, gathered and delivered is a high priority for cooking nutritious meals but today’s consumer is also looking for convenient menu options that are of the highest quality. The need to eat on the go, or when there’s no time to fit in a home-cooked meal, puts the emphasis on restaurants and takeaways to step-up and offer food that people really want. Unfortunately, the food in most high street establishments just doesn’t cut it.
At ECO, the provenance of ingredients is vital in creating fresh, delicious pizza and pasta dishes and preparing food the right way increases efficiency of output (to help reduce wastage and energy costs). As an example, the base of their famous ECO sourdough pizza is the lightest and healthiest in the country. Although created using a slow fermentation process, dough is prepared well before the torrent of orders come flooding in so the chefs can load pizzas into the ovens and have meals delivered to hungry customers quickly (but with an eye always on quality).
As a popular Clapham pizza restaurant they also take their responsibility to the local community and the wider population seriously. Rather than sending food waste from the cooking process (not from the customers’ plates because there’s rarely ever anything left!) such as peelings, bones and skins to landfill or incinerators, ECO operate an environmentally friendly program that sends it all to be bio-degraded. Now that’s socially conscious dining!
The ECO experience
Of course all the quality and convenience of the food is sometimes meaningless if service and atmosphere fall flat. Until you experience it, you’ll have to take the word of the local Clapham community and their understanding of good dining out.
Take a stroll to Clapham High Street and see for yourself how many people enjoy the ECO experience. If it’s not happy diners it’s happy children spending a Saturday morning at the restaurant’s unique kids pizza school. They really do cater for everything and everyone.
Clapham Pizza – the Healthy Option
If you drew up a list of health foods would pizza be on it? Well, according to scientific research, the Italian dish has emerged as a healthy dietary option with further news that it could help play a part in preventing some types of cancer. Of course we’re not talking about the fully loaded fat-laden cheese fest you get from the large high-street restaurants. The healthy choice is to be found at the more discerning eateries such as Clapham pizza restaurant ‘ECO’.
The food facts
Let’s take a look at some of the facts. On average, a large slice of pizza from the big chain restaurants contains around 300 calories (a meat lovers’ slice can push 480!). Now consider that you get about eight slices and the calorie count hits four figures. Ever ordered a takeaway and found it slopping around in the cardboard box? That’ll be the high levels of fat. Ever felt incredibly thirsty after devouring a takeaway pizza? That’ll be the high levels of salt. So, you can easily eat most of your daily calories in one sitting and fall the wrong side of your daily salt intake. Not good for health.
The big culprits are cheese, the oils used for cooking, meat toppings (particularly pepperoni which is 80% fat) and the dough base. While the dough contains carbohydrates, which play a role in digestion, it’s typically made with unhealthy high gluten flour and the carbs from the bread and crust turn into sugar and eventually into fat.
Hopefully you’re starting to realise how too much of bad thing is…well, bad. But there’s no need to deny yourself one of life’s pleasures, you just need to “takeaway” a different approach. And as one of the great Clapham takeaways, ‘ECO’ ticks all the right boxes.
Clapham Restaurants – Where to Eat
Whether you live in London or find yourself visiting the capital city as a tourist or day-tripper, you’re always on the look-out for somewhere that offers good affordable food, attentive service and a great atmosphere. The great news is that transport around the city is so efficient that you’re never too far from good eating. Some of the best places to eat outside of the city centre can be found in South London so why not head to Clapham Common and grab a bite to eat at a Clapham restaurant.
Eating out in Clapham
London really is a food-lovers paradise due to more than 6,000 cafés, bistros, gastro-pubs and restaurants spread across the various boroughs of the city. You can find yourself in any part of London and be just a stone’s throw from somewhere to have a lunch-time snack or enjoy fine dining. But with so many places to eat, how can you be assured of getting good food?
If you’ve lived in London for some time you’d have had more opportunity to try out different restaurants either by exploring for yourself or getting recommendations from friends and family. However, being such a vast city you’re never going to know every single one and for those exploring London for the first time the choice can be even more mind-boggling.
To help narrow down your search for somewhere new to eat, how about taking a trip to Clapham Common where you’ll find some great small restaurants that cater for every taste. Not only that, but you’ll also be visiting one of London’s largest open spaces where you can spend a few hours relaxing away from the hustle and bustle of city life.