White Pizza with Pesto and Veggies

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This is another perfect recipe for Meatless Mondays - and one that is sure to be a crowd pleaser.  Who doesn't love pizza?  Crispy, crunchy crust with ooey gooey melted cheese... mmmmm...

I think I may be hungry.  It's really a shame that we devoured this entire pizza and dashed any hopes of leftovers.

Produce stands everywhere are overflowing with amazing summer goodies right now.  For the moment I've gotten the stone fruit obsession calmed, so now I'm on to things like summer squash.  There may or may not be another zucchini recipe lurking on the horizon...  You're on the edge of your seats now, aren't you? 

Hubby declared this pizza "really yummy" and I've got to say I agree with him.  This will definitely be joining our weekly rotation.  One of the great things about pizza is that you can top it with pretty much whatever your little heart desires.  It's a great way to use up some of the random unused veggies that tend to accumulate over the week. 

Happy Friday!

White Pizza with Pesto and Veggies
1 prepared pizza dough, at room temp
1/2 c (or so) of homemade or store bought pesto
1 1/2 c shredded mozzarella
1 bell pepper, sliced
1 small zucchini, diced
1/2 c chopped asparagus
Garlic oil (recipe below)

Turn on your oven to the highest it will go (ours is 550) and preheat (with the pizza stone in) for about an hour.  In the meantime, let the dough come to room temperature and chop the veggies.

Lightly dust a sheet of parchment with flour.  Roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin until it's about 1/4" thick.  Spread pesto evenly across the dough.  Top with shredded cheese, chopped veggies and a couple turns of fresh cracked black pepper.  Drizzle whole pizza with a couple spoonfuls of garlic oil.  Bake for approx 8 minutes, or until cheese is brown and bubbly and crust is crisp.  Drizzle a tad more garlic oil over the top and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Enjoy!

For the garlic oil...
Pour about a cup of extra virgin olive oil into a jar and toss in several peeled garlic cloves.  Let sit for a couple days so the garlic flavor infuses the oil.  Use on pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, etc.

Easy Peasy Pesto

Pin It Now! Ya know how we made homemade pizzas a couple weeks ago?

Well, see, a tomato basil pizza only uses so much basil.  But when you buy basil at the store, ya gotta buy a ton of it.  So after we used all eight leaves of it on our pizza, I thought "Now what in the heck am I gonna do with all this basil??"  Well, duh, make pesto. 

This is a very simple, basic pesto recipe.  Typically pesto calls for pine nuts, but those bad boys were expensive.  I used toasted almond slivers instead and it was just as delicious.  I've also heard that you can use walnuts in place of the pine nuts.  Having never tried that myself I can't back that up, so don't you go quoting me on that now.

Unless you try it with walnuts and it comes out great. Then you can say it was all my idea.

This makes about a cup or so of pesto.  Obviously this is great on pasta.  We've been putting it on pizzas and sandwiches, which is muy delicioso.  Aren't I fancy with my spanish?? 

Pesto
1 package fresh basil leaves (about two cups)
3-4 garlic gloves
1/2 c toasted almond slivers
1/2 c grated parmesan cheese
salt & pepper
olive oil

Rinse and dry basil leaves.  In a food processor, blitz basil leaves, garlic cloves and almonds until coarsely smooth (is that a term??)  Add in the parmesan and process briefly.  With the machine running, slowly add in olive oil until the pesto comes together and is mostly smooth.  Salt and pepper to taste. 

Have a great weekend!

Pizza Night: Margherita Pizza and White Pizza

Pin It Now! Who doesn't love pizza?  I'm a pizza fanatic.  I could probably live on pizza and sushi alone, no joke.  It's hard to decide what I like best - hot fresh pizza from the oven, or cold leftover pizza the next day.  I'm pretty sure there's a law somewhere that says you have to bite the tip off of a slice of cold pizza before reheating it in the oven.

We've attempted homemade pizzas in the past, and for some reason the dough always fights me to the point of wanting to stomp my feet like a child and throw the dough and rolling pin through the window.  Do you have any tricks for getting the dough to roll out without constantly springing back?  Sweet Marina from Yummy Mummy gave me great advice: let the dough come to room temperature.  Marina is a homemade pizza pro (have you seen her pizzas??  Go.  Now.  Stop reading my boring post and go check out her amazing pizza recipes.)  The dough rolled out with ease once it was at room temp.  Thank you, Marina, for saving my sanity!

And my windows.

We decided to make two pizzas: one classic margherita (with a little twist - feta!) and the other a white pizza with garlic cream sauce in place of the tomato sauce.  They were both delicious and extremely simple to put together.  For the white pizza toppings we went with artichoke hearts and bell pepper slices.  Have fun with your combinations.  What are your favorite pizza toppings?

Margherita Pizza
1 prepared pizza dough*
marinara sauce
shredded mozzarella
crumbled feta
tomato slices
fresh basil leaves

White Pizza
1 prepared pizza dough*
garlic cream sauce (recipe below)
shredded mozzarella
toppings of your choice

*Many grocery stores have prepared pizza dough available in the refrigerated sections.  We get ours from a small pizzeria down the street.

Preheat your oven to as hot as it will go.  For us this is 550 degrees.  You want your oven screamin' hot to get a crispy crust.

As I mentioned, the dough rolls out without incident at room temperature.  Save yourself from frustration and set the dough out about 30 minutes prior.  Simply roll out the dough and top with sauce, cheese and toppings!  Bake for approx 8 minutes (depending on thickness, of course).

Garlic cream sauce for white pizza
16 oz. heavy cream
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt & pepper
1/4 c shredded parmesan cheese

In a saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer, stirring often to prevent scorching.  Add in garlic, salt and pepper to taste.  Continue to simmer on low, stirring often, for approx 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat and toss in the parmesan cheese, stirring to combine.  Let the sauce sit while you roll out the dough and prepare your toppings.  Assemble and bake pizza as you would a tomato based pizza.  The leftovers of both sauces make a fabulous pasta sauce.  We combined them to make a sort of "vodka sauce" and made baked spaghetti.

Buon appetito!

Best of both worlds