Sorry. I couldn’t resist the title.
Well New Years Eve in Smithy Brook was, like most other people’s this year a fairly quiet affair. Unable to go out or have visitors myself and Chelle opted for trying out our new pizza oven.
I’m mid way through building us an outside kitchen and dining area in anticipation of warm summer evenings eating outside. The project is almost finished except for some paving that can’t be completed until the overnight temperatures rises above zero degrees as it will damage the mortar.
Although the paving is not yet complete our new wood fired pizza oven did arrive a couple of weeks ago and I finished installing it in it’s new home last week. Still untested we decided that new years eve would give us the perfect opportunity to see how it performed.
Since the beginning of lockdown back in March both Michelle and myself have been carrying out weekly shopping trips for our isolating elderly parents. We’ve done that every Thursday all year and new years eve was no different. As we drove back home from North Yorkshire having dropped off their groceries we watched with alarm the external temperature gauge on the car plummeting, finally settling on minus two degrees as we got home at around 8.30pm. Undeterred we set about getting the pizza oven fired up having prepared bases and toppings earlier in the day.
I quickly got the fire in the oven started with some nice dry kindling and slowly fed it a few dry hardwood logs as it grew. We were told when we bought the oven that it would take around 20 minutes to reach the 220 degrees centigrade we needed to cook pizza. It actually took nearer an hour to get to temperature – although that could have been due to the winter weather along with my inexperience with the oven
Although it was a bitter cold evening with recent snow fall frozen solid on the ground and a full winter moon in an almost clear sky we were both wrapped up warm and it was actually quite pleasant to be outdoors. We spent a lovely couple of hours chatting about 2020 and our plans for 2021 – we had been due too get married on 15th August 2020 and having had to cancel we now have this to look forward to on 7th August 2021. Sat enjoying a pot of coffee for me and a glass of red wine for Chelle the full moon reflecting off the snow gave a surreal almost daylight feel to the evening.
Once the oven reached temperature it was a quick job to roll out our pizza bases and spread them with our toppings. 10-15 minutes later we were sat eating our first meal of wood fired pizza. Delightful. I’ve put our pizza base and passata recipes into the ‘In The Kitchen’ category of the blog.
As midnight came and went we were treated to a fabulous fireworks display as all the homes on top of the hill in Thornhill began setting off fireworks. There were so many and of quite some size we even wondered briefly whether it was some sort of organised display.
Despite all the challenges of 2020 I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I had a great year and look forward to 2021.
Happy New Year!
