Salami, mushroom and artichoke pizza with piccolo cherry tomato sauce
May 06, 2012 |
| Crisp and golden crust with melting mozzarella coating salty salami and meat artichoke |
Quicker than a take away, you can make your very own personal pizzas ready for a evening in front of a movie or as part of your evening's entertainment with friends.
Recipe:
You need to make the bread dough first for your pizza bases, the recipe is here http://bit.ly/Iv2iMy
Add an extra glug of olive oil in place of a table spoon of water, this will help your finished pizza base to really brown nicely.
For the sauce:
2 handfuls of piccolo tomatoes, you can use any tomatoes really but I find these tiny little ruby red gems have such a sweet flavour, they make an amazing pizza sauce.
5-6 leaves of fresh basil
1 tsp finely chopped garlic
dash of balsamic vinegar
half a mug of water
For the topping-
anything you fancy!
I used salami slices, sliced chestnut mushrooms and artichoke hearts that had been preserved in herby olive oil, topped with mozzarella. I then sprinkled over some rocket leaves and mixed herbs to serve.
To make your pizza bases follow the bread recipe but when it comes to form it into a shape, roll it out into a pizza round. How many pizzas you get out of the dough will entirely depend on how big your pizza's are, though you will happily feed 4 people with the dough recipe above.
Cover your pizza bases with damp tea towels and leave somewhere warm until they have puffed and doubled in size.
Turn the oven on to 200c ready for your pizzas once they are dressed.
To make the sauce, drizzle a little oil into a frying pan and pop in your garlic, slowly heat the oil with the garlic in it from cold, this will gently flavour the pan and not burn the garlic which which make it bitter.
As the oil heats roughly chop your tomatoes, if you are using piccolo tomatoes you will only need to chop them in half. When the oil is hot and the garlic has begun to gently sizzle, throw in your tomatoes and fry on a high heat for 5 mins, then throw in your balsamic vinegar. The vinegar should sizzle and reduce quickly into a sticky syrup, toss in the basil and pour over the water, stir everything together then turn the heat to medium and allow to simmer away.
After 10 minutes of simmering use a fork to smush the tomatoes into a rough paste, you now want to gentle cook away all of the liquid in the pan until you have a thick paste that looks like tomato puree.. but it will taste a lot better. You want the sauce to be quite thick as any excess water in it will make your finished pizza base a bit soggy.
To make your pizza, smother the base in with enough sauce to coat the base but not so thick that you cannot see the colour of the dough through it. Evenly spread your toppings over the sauce then tear your mozzarella, you are using fresh, or sprinkle your choice of cheese over the top. Try to make sure every piece of topping is covered by a little cheese so that it all sticks together well.
Bake the pizzas in the oven for about 10-15 mins, depending on their size. You want the crust to be golden a crisp and for the cheese to be melted, golden and bubbling.
Serve up with a sprinkle of fresh salad leaves.
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