Commercial Feature

Online recipes are being sought by a pioneer of the natural and organic restaurant movement in a bid to discover the most creative and environmentally-friendly pizza type.

A gourmet pizza company is celebrating the Italian dish by launching an online video contest to encourage pizza lovers to post their favourite recipes on video sharing website YouTube. The competition, which is accepting chicken recipes and vegetarian recipes, will remain open throughout April before the winner is announced on May 1st.

Vaughan Lazar, the company’s founder, said people’s favourite, earth-friendly pizza “masterpieces” can be shared online for the whole world to see. “We decided to make this campaign 100 per cent paperless to raise awareness for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day,” he commented.

Mr Lazar added that the online recipes will be judged on their creativity, how environmentally-friendly they are, entrants’ overall presentation and, somewhat crucially, the pizza’s edibility.

One of the competition’s judges paid tribute to the Italian dish, which can be used with a variety of herbs and spices, and said that pizza is one of his favourite dishes to cook with the family: “In our house, it’s about having fun in the kitchen and tossing around some creative, spicy pizza recipes.”

First prize in the competition is a trip for two to an organic and sustainable vineyard, a year’s supply of organic drinks from Honest Tea and Give Natural Spring Water, a Trek Eco-Design bicycle and the winning recipe posted on Pizza Fusion’s website.

The company was established after realising an unmet demand for organic pizzas, and those inspired by the competition can use an array of herbs and spices to create their own gourmet take on one of Italy’s most famous foods.

While a wide range of pizzas are expected to feature in the competition, one of the more unusual pizza ingredients is fajita seasoning, which can be made mild or spicy depending on a person’s taste.

After preparing and pre-baking the pizza crust, a couple of chicken breasts can be cut into strips and mixed with fajita seasoning in a medium-sized bowl, tossing the strips gently. Using a large frying pan, the coated chicken should be heated in oil with chopped onion and garlic and a bell pepper. Once the chicken is cooked and the vegetables are tender, the frying pan can be removed from the heat before adding salsa and green chillies.

This mixture can then be divided between two pizza crusts and spread to cover them before topped with cheese. The pizzas then need to be baked for between 15 and 20 minutes at 220 degrees C until their crusts are golden brown and the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Those looking for some vegetarian recipes, though, may be interested in a prize-winning pizza created at Clipstone Brooke Lower School in Bedfordshire.

During the county’s healthy school meals competition, pupil Shelby Thompson entered her mini muffin pizza recipe, which will become a permanent fixture on the school’s menu after winning praise from judges at Eden Foodservice, the Leighton Buzzard Observer reported.

The winning entry consisted of an English muffin as the pizza base with a tomato paste made up of tomatoes, celery and carrots, with a sprinkling of cheese added as the finishing touch. Teacher Karen Gibb told the newspaper that the pizza was “delicious” and that the class was presented with a box of organic vegetables to be eaten as an accompaniment to the pizza.

The initiative was praised by Councillor Anita Lewis, who said it had encouraged children to understand the importance of eating healthily and getting involved with their school dinners.
“These competitions have shown that by making food fun, children are exposed to healthy options that will benefit them in the long run,” she explained.

The popularity of organic pizzas seems to be increasing across the UK, and youngsters at a Dorset school recently benefitted from a trip to La Caverna restaurant in Dorset.

Pupils at Milbourne St Andre First School tried their hands at kneading pizza dough, sampling various toppings and devising their own recipes during their visit, the Dorset Echo reported.Audrey Andrews, the school’s deputy head teacher, explained to the newspaper that children had been growing their own herbs ahead of their visit in the hope of using them when creating their own pizzas.

After deciding on their favoured herbs and topping, the pupils watched their pizzas being cooked before sitting down at the restaurant to eat them.

Pizza has come a long way since its creation in Italy in the 1700s, and few back then would have imagined using fajita seasoning when making their early creations from garlic-topped bread, butter and salt, with only the more expensive types using cheese and basil.

The famous Italian dish went global in 1905 when Gennaro Lombardi opened a pizza outlet in New York City, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that it became popular with Italian migrant workers. 1943 was something of a landmark year, with the first deep-dish pizza created in Chicago – converting it from a snack into a main meal.

Such is the popularity of pizza nowadays that, according to US market research company Packaged Facts, each person in America eats an average of 46 slices of pizza a year, which means that more than 13.8 billion slices are consumed in the country each year.

Pizza is hugely popular in the UK, too, and many families are taking advantage of healthy eating initiatives to create their own take on the Italian dish.

The Daily Mail reported last October that, in 2008, Brits spent £721 million on pizzas. Principal dietician at London’s St George’s Hospital Catherine Collins told the newspaper that pizzas containing char-grilled vegetables are particularly healthy because of their rich potassium content, while tomatoes contain lycopene, which has been shown to reduce the chances of men developing prostate cancer. “If a pizza contains more than 3oz of vegetables, either through the tomato base or topping, then it counts as one of your five-a-day, and you can always add a salad”, she explained.