I love making pizza at home. It’s easy, I can put a lot of vegetables on it, and it always tastes good. A perfect one-dish meal.
Today I made pizza using the ingredients from my CSA box and from my garden. Oh my! I have a lot of produce to use up at this time of year. I set out to use braising greens, new onions, sungold tomatoes, fresh pesto and mozzarella cheese.
Cooking time at my home is a little hectic. I have two young children and a cat, and invariably someone is always talking to me, fighting with their sibling, or begging for a bowl full of dry food crunchies while I’m cooking. I love to spend time pouring over cookbooks and cooking blogs and I do try to follow the recipes as written, but sometimes I get distracted and I have to change a recipe on the fly to accommodate my circumstances. That happened tonight while I was making the pizza.
I started by slicing an onion thinly and carmelizing it with olive oil in a heavy stockpot over medium low heat. I left it to cook for at least 30 minutes, long enough to see that the garden was sufficiently watered, the cat was happy, and my kids weren’t gluing their fingers to the craft table.
Back at the stove, I started another stockpot with a little olive oil and I added a few handfuls of braising greens I received in my Denison Farm CSA box. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them, but I thought if I wilted them, they would make a nice pizza topping.
While the two pots were going, I cut up two summer squashes into tiny cubes.
At this point I got distracted and when I came back to the stove, the braising greens were turning olive green and were very wilted. The onions were looking great – nice and brown. I took both pots off the heat, tasted the braising greens and decided they belonged in the garbage, not on my pizza. I had good intentions, but they just didn’t work out.
Into the now-empty braising greens pot went the chopped summer squash. I cooked it on medium-high heat for a few minutes, stirring frequently until they were golden brown and a little crispy. Yum! No soggy, waterlogged squash goes on my pizza.
Now I was ready to assemble the pizza. On the crust went tomato sauce, then carmelized onions, crisped squash, dabs of pesto (thank you Christine for giving me the idea to use almonds!), halved sungold tomatoes, and on half of the pie, some shredded mozzarella cheese. When the pizza was cooked through I removed it from the oven and covered the other half with fresh mozzarella. Presto! Dinner is served!
This pizza looks wonderful. I want this pizza. let me try in home to make this type of pizza.
Let me know how delicious it is for you!
Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we thought. Your pizza looks terrific and I’m sure was enjoyed by all.
That just about sums it up Karen!
Mmm caramelized onions. Good thinking.
mmmm, hmmmm!!!!!