Date I made this
recipe: Sunday, March 31, 2013 (Easter
Sunday)
Babe’s Country Cookbook (from the movie, Babe) – 80
Completely Meat-Free Recipes! by
Dewey Gram
Published by: GT Publishing
ISBN: 1-57719-354-7
Recipe:
Crisp Pizza with Fontina, Gorgonzola, and Sage – p. 120-121
So Easter was upon us and
for most people that means two things:
lamb or ham. I could take or
leave (mostly leave) lamb but do enjoy ham – but only a serving or two and not
the 10 pounds of leftovers that need to be utilized in everything from (green)
eggs with ham to scalloped potatoes.
Enough, I say, enough!
I was already thinking how
to avoid this noid when I uncovered yet another of my friend, Carol “Tall”
Voight’s, cookbooks – Babe’s Country
Cookbook – 80 Completely Meat-Free Recipes! Even if you haven’t seen the adorable movie, Babe, the photo of Babe on the front
cover is enough to dissuade anybody from making ham. Plus there’s something just a bit “naughty”
about going against convention and avoiding ham all together. Its so “un-Easter” that it almost makes
sense.
It didn’t take me and Andy
very long to find our “un-Easter” Easter dinner in the form of this phenomenal
pizza and I do mean PHENOMENAL. This is
seriously one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had and that is counting the ones I
ate on a trip to Italy. And it for sure beats the heck out of the
frozen variety and honestly, for a few more bucks, skip that frozen cardboard
concoction and impress your friends with the real deal.
Thanks to modern farming
techniques, finding ripe tomatoes at this time of year was not the challenge it
used to be and when it came to purchasing the dough, cheese and olives, I knew
just where to go: Broder’s Cucina Italiana in South Minneapolis
where I used to work.
And so fresh from a
three-hour Saturday breakfast with a friend (and I must confess, we both had
bacon), I motored over to Broder’s and got my Italian food grove on. I purchased the Fontina and then opted for a
slice of fresh Mountain Gorgonzola instead of the crumbed variety. Instead of crumbling the cheese on top of the
pizza, just slice a thin piece of the cheese and put that on top. And instead of pitted black olives, the type
usually found in the canned condiment aisle of the grocery store, I went with
Kalamata (Greek) olives. I think this
olive added a bit more taste and interest than the black, canned variety. (Note:
Broder’s has black olives but they were mixed in olive oil and cracked
red pepper flakes and I didn’t want that extra spice.) And no visit there is complete without fresh
pizza dough in just the size I needed – 12 inches.
After that excursion where
I talked to my old boss, Wendy (Hello again, Wendy!), I went up the street to
Lunds where I purchased everything else I needed except I forgot to get a red
bell pepper. Shoot. Fast forward to Easter Sunday: Andy and I were doing things around the house
and then decided to go to the store to get said pepper but we weren’t paying
attention to the time and pulled in moments after the stores closed (two of
them, Cub and Rainbow, are a block apart).
No worries though, as Andy came up with the brilliant idea that we could
just stop at one of the Asian grocery stores nearby (As a rule, Buddhists do
not celebrate Easter) and sure enough, the place was open and it was
packed. I walked away with four red
peppers for $2.00 and would use one for the recipe and the others for
snacking. Score!!
All that needed to be done
to complete the deal was puree the tomatoes, put them through a strainer and
then simmer them along with the onions, garlic, peppers and olives until
reduced, add the Fontina cheese and the sage and you are done. Then prep your pizza dough, put the sauce on
top, dot with fresh basil leaves and the gorgonzola cheese and you have a
winning pizza pie.
Now, besides the cheese,
you might need to make a few other tweaks:
cook the saucer longer than indicated (about 30 minutes total); cook the
pizza for longer than indicated (about 15 minutes total) and oil the bottom of
your pizza pan as ours stuck to the pan and made it a challenge to remove the
pizza slices intact.
As to the non-ham Easter
theme, seriously folks, every time I look at that cute picture of that pig on
the book’s cover, I am so glad we went in another direction, especially since
this pizza was so damned good. Both
Carol and Babe would have been thrilled with our “un-Easter” Easter!
Crisp Pizza with Fontina, Gorgonzola, and Sage
(with a tomato sauce filled with onions, red bell pepper, olives and garlic –
molto bene!) – makes a 12 inch pizza
10 ripe tomatoes (about 3
¼ pounds) (Ann’s Note: try to use
smaller tomatoes as the flavor is usually better; large tomatoes can get
“grainy.”)
¼ onion
½ red bell pepper
8 black olives, pitted
(Ann’s Note: I substituted Kalamata
(Greek) olives)
5 cloves garlic
6 tablespoons olive oil
¾ cup (about 4 ounces)
diced Italian Fontina, or Danish is good too
1 tablespoon chopped fresh
sage
½ teaspoon salt, or to
taste
¼ teaspoon freshly ground
black pepper, or to taste
1 fresh large ready-to-use
pizza bread-crust (about 12 inches) or your favorite pizza dough
½ cup (bout 2 ounces)
Preheat your oven to
325.
Core all but two of the
tomatoes, cut them into pieces, and puree them in a blender or food
processor. Force the puree through a
strainer into a bowl, and reserve. Peel,
seed and dice the last two tomatoes. Or,
if you really need to get dinner on the table in a hurry, just dice the two
tomatoes – skip the peeling and seeding.
Reserve this separately from the puree.
Finely dice the onion and
red bell pepper. Finely chop the olives
and garlic. In a roomy skillet, heat 5
(of 6) tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper, and sauté for
a couple of minutes. Just as they begin
to brown, add the pureed tomatoes, chopped olives, and garlic. Simmer over medium-high heat until the sauce
begins to thicken, about 15 minutes. (Ann’s Note: at 15 minutes, this mixture was still too
watery so I went another 15 and it was perfect.) Add the two diced tomatoes. Simmer briefly. Remove from the heat, and stir in the diced
Fontina and fresh sage. Season with the
salt and pepper.
Brush the pizza crust with
the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil to prevent it from becoming soggy. (Ann’s Note:
Oil the bottom of the pan to make sure your crust doesn’t stick.) Depending on how crisp you like your crust,
pre-bake it in the oven for 5 minutes.
Spread the crust with about half the sauce. You’ll have some sauce left over –
refrigerate to use as a pasta sauce or for making another pizza. (Ann’s Note:
I used this on pasta and that was a bad idea as it needed just a hint of
sugar to make it an acceptable pasta sauce.
But it makes a fabulous pizza sauce so go ahead, make another!) Sprinkle the pizza with the crumbled (or
sliced) Gorgonzola and the torn basil.
Bake is the 325 oven for 5
minutes or until the cheese is all melty and the sauce is hot. (Ann’s
Note: I baked my pizza for 15 minutes
and it was perfect; 5 minutes nets you a soggy pizza crust.) Cut and serve right out of the oven.
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