After recently being deported to London from Kent while waiting for my house sale to go through, I’ve been living on Tesco Meal Deals for lunch (much better value than the Sainsbury’s one, in case you were wondering) and pizza for dinner. I’ve had the new vegan Giardiniera from Pizza Express (not as nice as the vegan pizzas in Zizzi, in my opinion), a tandoori paneer pizza at Mr Singh’s (an all-vegetarian pizza place that will also sub dairy cheese for vegan cheese but, trust me, it seriously mings. I’d just go without cheese if you’re vegan) but mostly I’ve been heating up frozen pizza and especially ones from Dr Oetker, such as their Spinaci Pizza which has made a comeback after originally being a limited edition pizza back in 2013.
I know chilled pizzas are thought of as being superior to frozen but my pizza preference is always with frozen ones. I don’t know whether this is because when I was skint, I couldn’t afford chilled ones, so I’m sentimental about frozen ones (which doesn’t really make sense as I certainly don’t get sentimentally misty-eyed when I remember how skint I used to be) or maybe I’m just a peasant who doesn’t know any better.
Still, I don’t feel the inclination to pay twice as much for a chilled pizza than a frozen one when I find frozen ones just as nice. It used to be the case that toppings on frozen pizza were a bit stingy (probably because unlike chilled ones you couldn’t see if the pizza inside the box matched the topping-laden pizza in the picture on the box) but these days that isn’t the case, and certainly not in the case of the Spinaci Pizza, as you can see in the photo above. The Spinaci Pizza’s thin base – which crisps up nicely and doesn’t go floppy, so no need for a knife and fork – is covered with tangy tomato sauce, spinach, mozzarella, swirled with garlic sauce and as you can see the cooked pizza matches the pizza on the box – no stinginess here!
Despite Dr Oetker pizzas being premium pizzas, they don’t retail at a premium price. The RRP is £2.99 but they’re usually on offer in the supermarket and I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than £2.20 for one. There are 11 varieties of pizza in the Dr Oetker range but if you want to try their Spinaci one, you’re going to have to make a trip to Asda to get it as it’s only on sale there at the moment (but if you can get through all the fighting in the car park, Asda is great for bargains).
For more information on the Dr Oetker range, visit www.pizzaristorante.co.uk.