Roasted Cherry Tomato Pizza

You may recall from our Kale Salad Pizza recipe my love of food blog 101 Cookbooks. Or maybe I only mentioned my enthusiasm for Heidi's raw tuscan kale salad and forgot to elaborate on how much I truly enjoy every single recipe she creates. Every. Single. One.

So I anxiously awaited the arrival of her latest cookbook, "Super Natural Every Day," and this summer have been working my way through the many delicious combinations of whole, healthy ingredients. I'm not getting a commission for selling cookbooks or anything, but if you have any foodie bones in your body, you should buy this book. Even if you don't like to cook, the pictures are stunning enough to set it on your coffee table and drool over it on a regular basis.

This pizza recipe emerged after flipping to a page describing how to make oven-roasted cherry tomatoes. We already enjoy cherry tomatoes on pizza for their juicy, punchy bite of tomato-ness, so intensifying and sweetening that flavor sounded exciting. Fortunately, we had several tubs of golden cherry tomatoes already on hand from our CSA.

OVEN-ROASTED CHERRY TOMATOES (from Super Natural Every Day):

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F with the rack in the top third of the oven.
2. Wash and remove all stems from 1 pint of cherry tomatoes. Slice them in half and place them in a large baking dish.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon maple syrup and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Pour over the tomatoes and toss to coat.
4. Arrange the tomatoes with the cut side up so that the juices don't run out and roast them for 45 to 60 minutes, until the tomatoes shrink and start to caramelize around the edges.
5. You can use them right away, or let them cool and store them in a glass jar along with any leftover olive oil. Top off the jar with additional olive oil to help preserve the tomatoes. They will keep for about 1 week in the fridge.

Cut-side up in the baking dish

Roasted, with more olive oil than the recipe calls for

Stored for later

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. Whole wheat crust, par-baked
2. An entire batch of oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, thinly spread over the crust, with any remaining olive oil. If you want an extra tomato-y pizza, consider using two batches.
3. Several handfuls of fresh basil, torn into large chunks
4. A chopped garlic scape or 2 minced garlic cloves
5. Grated mozzarella
6. Grated Parmesan

Bake at 450 degrees for 7 minutes. Top with another sprinkle of Parmesan and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil if it looks dry.

We had friends over for dinner that night and made both this pizza and our go-to-for-impressing-guests Potato-Leek Pizza and it was a toss-up which one people liked more.

Perfect Pesto Pizza

Here you can see a basil plant in our backyard:

What you can't see is the second equally enormous plant immediately behind this one, nor the big bunches we have been receiving each week in our CSA box. I suspect we would have basil growing out our ears if we weren't careful. Of course, there is only one logical option for such an inundation... make pesto!

PESTO:
I base my pesto on the recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply in Season, which contains wonderful everyday dishes using seasonal produce from the northern half of North America. It's the perfect cookbook if you shop regularly at a farmer's market or participate in a CSA, and provides helpful tips for how to eat seasonally and inexpensively.

First, toast 1/3 cup of pine nuts, walnuts or hazelnuts in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Personally, I like to use walnuts since they're a little less expensive than the others and we usually have them on hand. You don't need any oil, just keep stirring the nuts to keep them from scorching until they start to turn golden and smell fragrant. Allow the nuts to cool.

Next, put all of the following into a food processor and finely chop:

• 1 cup packed fresh basil leaves
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1/3 toasted nuts
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

With the food processor running, gradually add 1/3 cup (or more to get a consistency you like) extra virgin olive oil to make a thick paste.

If you intend to use the pesto within a few weeks, you can store it in a glass jar with a lid. When you first put the pesto in the jar and each time after you use it, flatten out the surface of the pesto with a spoon and pour a thin layer of olive oil over the surface. This helps the pesto stay a bright green color (it oxidizes and turns brown in contact with air) and keeps it fresh longer.

If you want to freeze pesto for use through the winter, omit the garlic and cheese and pour the pesto into ice cube trays. When frozen, you can pop the cubes out and store them in a bag in the freezer. It's easy to defrost a cube or two as you need them; just add garlic and cheese.

All of this talk about pesto might leave you wondering "where's the pizza?" Well, one of the best parts about making super delicious homemade pesto is that the pizza itself can be very simple. We put artichoke hearts on ours, but I thought they were unnecessary and over-complicated the flavors. The pizza would have been perfect with just three toppings:

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. Whatever crust you have on hand, par-baked. The very best pizza crust ever or the simple crust are equally delicious for this one.
2. Thin spread of pesto. A little flavor goes a long way, so there's no need to overdo it.
3. Grated mozzarella cheese or thin slices of fresh mozzarella
4. Thinly sliced fresh garden tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes

That's it! Bake at 450 degrees F for 7 minutes. There's no need to top this one with more Parmesan or olive oil, since the pesto supplies more than enough of those flavors.

Ratatouille Pizza

As I was afraid, when I googled ratatouille to make sure I was spelling it correctly, the first three search items were about the animated film. Nothing like associating French cuisine with a talking rodent.

Then again, in our apartment, we automatically associate ratatouille with an outrageous French accent and the gratuitous use of the three French phrases we know: oui, oui; impossible (approximately *ahm-pos-seeb-leh*); and les poissons. I had to turn on some Edith Piaf and stick my recently acquired Bastille Day flag above my desk in order to channel the appropriate je ne sais quoi for writing about pizza.

The wine, unfortunately, is Australian, so it's not helping much.

Ratatouille, for the layperson, is a traditional French dish of stewed vegetables, usually high summer veggies like tomatoes, eggplant (aubergine), zucchini, bell peppers, onions, garlic, basil and marjoram. I have always thought of it as a way to use up garden excess while producing a delicious, colorful meal.

Even though our zucchini plant succumbed to destructive squash bugs the other week and our tomatoes seem averse to actually ripening, we realized we had a pretty good assortment of the necessary ingredients on hand. There were a few leftover zucchini in our fridge, a green tomato fell off the vine when we were trying to fix the stake, our white Japanese eggplant were reaching full size, and various peppers were turning red.

 

The combination is tres délicieux, although you should feel free to substitute whatever fresh summer produce you have on hand.

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. Very best pizza crust ever, par-baked
2. finely chopped garlic
3. diced tomatoes (fresh if you have them; we used some leftover canned ones)
4. sliced green tomatoes (if you have abundant ripe tomatoes, combine #3 and #4)
5. very thinly sliced zucchini
6. thinly sliced onion
7. shredded mozarella
8. very thinly sliced eggplant, tossed in olive oil (I recommend small, skinny Japanese eggplants. If you use a larger eggplant, be sure to salt it for 20 minutes and press out some of the liquid before putting on the pizza)
9. thinly sliced red bell peppers or mild cherry peppers 

Bake at 350 degrees F (lower than usual) for about 15 minutes (longer than usual), until the eggplant is tender all the way through. Top with grated Parmesan and an assortment of chopped fresh herbs such as basil, marjoram, oregano, etc.

Bon appétit!

Pita Pizza

Imagine, if you will, two creative individuals with similarly creative careers (aka they work nonstop doing things they enjoy for piddling amounts of money) arriving at home late one evening after their respective gigs. They are a little hungry, a little grumpy and not at all interested in having a pile of dishes to wash. The fridge seems awfully bare and the pickings look slim, until—voilà—one of them notices that the stale pita bread in the bottom of the lefthand fridge drawer strongly resembles a pizza crust. Out comes a crusty-rimmed bottle of pasta sauce, a few soggy mushrooms, the last artichoke hearts floating in the jar, a chunk of leftover cheese. A few minutes in the toaster oven, and the pita pizza is born.

Hello Summer Pizza

City living isn't always kind to gardeners, but we have the good fortune to have a slab of fenced-in concrete for container gardening, a garden plot in a nearby community garden, and a CSA share from a local farm. Summer produce in abundance. Currently, our CSA has been overflowing with lettuces and kale and our garden plot has been exponentially producing cucumbers, so we've been gorging ourselves on salads while we wait for everything else to ripen. (Picked one cherry tomato today!)

But frankly, we're getting tired of salad and our various attempts to creatively prepare cucumbers are losing their novelty, so we recently gave in and picked up some tomatoes and peppers from a farmer's market.

Tonight, in spite of the 95-degree heat, we thought it was time for our favorite summer veggie pizza, so we fired up the oven (yikes), sliced tomatoes and already-roasted red peppers and walked out back to snip some fresh basil. It was exactly as delicious as we remembered it, although I'm sure when we make it again entirely with vegetables we grew ourselves, all of that hard work and nurturing attention will make it taste even better.

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. par-baked very best pizza crust ever
2. brush of extra virgin olive oil
3. minced garlic
4. shredded mozzarella cheese
5. sliced fresh tomatoes
6. sliced roasted red peppers
7. fresh basil leaves, snipped into small pieces
8. a sprinkle of salt

Bake at 450° F for about 7 minutes, then top with more fresh basil and a sprinkle of Parmesan.

Someday soon we need to experiment with grilled pizza and keep all of that heat outside!

Shaved Asparagus Pizza

ML: "If you had told my 14-year-old self that I would be wanting second helpings of asparagus pizza..."

Well, 14-year-old selves might need to take a back seat, because this is one tasty grown-up pizza. The idea started when our friend KB, who knows about our pizza obsession and was one of the tasters of the breakfast pizza, told us that a coworker of hers regularly makes a pizza with shredded asparagus. We happened to be on our way to a u-pick farm and market, which happened to have enormous bunches of beautiful asparagus. Coincidence? Fate??

To get an idea of where to start, I looked up asparagus pizza recipes and found one on smitten kitchen's blog, which is among my very favorite food blogs. We liked her idea to isolate the asparagus, which certainly deserves a bit of a spotlight, but realized our own pizza ideal involves a more deliberate mingling of flavors and textures. AKA we thought it needed garlic and bacon.

First, we chopped fresh garlic, tossed it lightly with extra virgin olive oil and put it in a little tin foil packet on the pizza stone while the oven preheated.

Then we par-cooked a couple strips of bacon (can be done either in the microwave or on the stove), just enough to make it edible, but not enough to be crispy. (Yet.)  For vegetarians, the pizza would still be delicious without the bacon.

Next there was the matter of preparing the asparagus. I followed smitten kitchen's recommendation to use a vegetable peeler to shave the asparagus into long strips. The result was attractive, but the process was tedious and my vegetable peeler seemed inadequate for the task, so in a pinch I think the right food processor attachment could speed up the job. If you do it by hand, you'll want to hold the asparagus by the tough end of the stalk (the part you would usually cut off), lay it flat on a cutting board, and shave from the base of the stalk to the tip.

We also opted to feature more Parmesan saltiness and less mozzarella gooeyness on this one. The rest of the pizza came together easily and tastily, the perfect springtime pizza. I confess, I might have had third helpings...

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. par-baked simple crust
2. drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
3. generous spread of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
4. light dusting of shredded mozzarella cheese
5. pile of shaved asparagus, tossed with extra virgin olive oil and a dash of lemon juice, and seasoned to taste with salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes
6. chopped scallions
7. roasted garlic
8. chopped, par-cooked bacon (optional; if you omit the bacon, add an extra dash of salt)

Bake at 450° F for about 9 minutes, until the bacon starts getting crispy and the crust edges have browned. Top with an extra sprinkle of Parmesan.

Simple Crust

We know that nothing quite compares to our very best pizza crust ever recipe, but ML was interested in trying out a simpler, egg- and dairy-free recipe. He is the resident pizza crust expert after all, responsible for all of the kneading and stretching and rolling out into a nearly circular shape. He has good dough instincts. This simple New York-style crust has a denser, dryer texture than our original recipe — less like bread, more like a cracker. We always make it with part whole wheat flour, which may contribute to the denseness, but also makes it healthier.

The bread/cracker distinction would be a helpful guideline in deciding which crust to use for which toppings. If you would prefer to eat the toppings in question on a slice of bread, then go with the very best pizza crust ever recipe, but if you'd just as soon pile the toppings on a cracker, this is the recipe for you. Vegans, of course, will want to use this recipe, as would anyone with egg or dairy allergies. I suspect it could even be adapted for a gluten-free diet without too much finagling.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) active dry yeast
• 1 cup lukewarm water
• 1 1/4 cups cold water
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups whole wheat bread flour
• 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups regular bread flour, plus more for dusting

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in lukewarm water. Let stand until frothy, about 10 minutes. 
2. In another small bowl, combine cold water, 1 teaspoon sugar, salt and olive oil to dissolve the sugar and salt.
3. Mix together the two types of flour in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center of the flour and add the yeast and cold water mixture, mixing to incorporate as much of the flour as possible.
4. Knead the dough for 10 to 12 minutes on a lightly floured surface, until soft and elastic. 
5. Place dough in a well-oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise in a warm location. Let rise until the dough has doubled in volume, about one hour. 
6. Punch down dough. Separate it in thirds and reshape into balls. Cover again with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. 
7. During the second rising, preheat oven to 450 degrees F. If using a pizza stone, place the stone in the oven for preheating. If using a baking sheet, lightly flour it (but don’t preheat). 
8. On a well-floured surface, roll out one ball of dough until it is approximately the size of your pizza stone or baking sheet. 
9. Prick the surface all over with a fork to prevent bubbling in the oven.
10. Par-bake the crust until barely brown and rigid, about 3 minutes.
11. Remove the crust from the oven and let rest on wire racks to avoid sogginess. Top with your favorite toppings and return to the oven for an additional 5-10 minute (depending on toppings), until the cheese is melted and the edges are golden brown.

Recipe yields three crusts. Dough can be made in advance (through step 6) and refrigerated for up to a week or frozen for up to a month.