Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

As a Muslim, I can’t eat any pork/pig-related products. Rules are fairly similar to keeping Kosher – and this is generally an annoyance outside of certain small areas of Japan since most people aren’t very careful about mixing pork with beef. (there was a criminal court case about this just a few days ago). As a result, I often do my own cooking, for better or worse.

As I have said all-too-often, Japanese pizzas are awful, terrible, et cetra. Olives are at a premium – and are my favourite ingredient to boot. As a result, I had to learn to make my own. Originally I used store-bought bread, but I took a chance a few days ago and made some flat bread of my own. I used the recipe here:

http://ifoods.blogspot.com/2007/03/easy-flat-breads.html
^ A very good starter on making bread.

This bread is a bit sweet – great for dipping sauces but not ideal for pizza, as I would find out

I greased the platter with a very small amount of extra-virgin olive oil and took the bread (which I had flattened beforehand) and spread it across this. On top I added some homemade tomato sauce (basically – fry onions and ginger, add whole tomatoes, crush in pot, add thyme and blend together after simmering for a few minutes, add some spices and then simmer for 1 hour), and various vegetables. I tried going for a little geometry here, I normally don’t bother.

I added tomatoes, green peppers, paprika, mushrooms, green olives, pepper, pepper, onions and cheese. I have Halal (which is to say Islamic Kosher) chicken that I could have used. (Usually when I do, I soak it in pepper and lemon juice after defrosting/skinning and chopping into cubes).

I put this in the oven for about 20 minutes at 220 degrees (Celcius, about 430 F). The pizza top was ready before the bread itself – the bread took about 5 minutes extra. In the future I would probably just bake the bread first for a bit and then add the toppings before continuing.

End result:

The pizza was good, but not great. In short, it was not spicy enough and the bread was too sweet. I wish I had used Chicken in retrospect, it would have added some much needed flavour. Instead of using chilli powder in the tomato sauce I should have used jalapeno powder – it would have been tastier as a result. The cheese was also let-down – I should have gone with pure mozzarella, but it is not really available readily in Japan in quantities that I can use on Pizza. The bread in the crust just didn’t have the right taste to go with the toppings – in the future I will put some crushed sesame seeds or pepper/olives directly into the crust while preparing it.