Karen Wright: A platter sized taste of the Mediterranean

I think it was in the mid to late seventies that Italian restaurants started to appear in my neighborhood. I can recall the first time that I dined in one, and I know we ordered pizza that night.

It was a restaurant in Leeds called Bibis and I went there with my friend Caroline, her husband Dave and my then boyfriend Stavros who had surprised me by turning up on my doorstep a few days earlier, directly from Greece!

I remember we had to queue outside to wait for a table, and he was bad tempered about that!

Over the years I have made pizza from scratch hundreds if not thousands of times. It is always far superior to anything you can buy in the supermarket, and it is easy and economical to make too.

As I am eating a low residue diet now, it was a revelation that if I made a basic Margherita pizza, I could enjoy a delish pizza and stay within my regime.

It is said that this pizza was named for the Queen of Italy Margherita as it was her favourite and it was also the colour of the Italian flag: red, white and green (tomato, cheese and basil).

To make three medium sized pizzas I weighed out 500g of strong bread flour and added a sachet of dried yeast, about 10g of fine salt and then mixed in 325ml of lukewarm water and a splash of olive oil.

I kneaded this mixture for about five minutes until it was a smooth and elastic dough. Then I oiled the bottom of a bowl and placed the dough into it and covered it with a tea towel and left it until it had doubled in size, which was about an hour as it was a warm day.

Then I cut the dough into three lumps and rolled them out to make the pizza bases. My toppings were tomato passata, grated cheddar cheese and a sliced-up ball of mozzarella.

To cook the pizzas the oven needs to be 200 degrees, and the pizzas take about fifteen minutes and then you can enjoy your made from scratch pizza.

If you are not on a restricted diet, you can top the pizzas with anything you like!