Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook!
For the next couple of days, I’ll continue to share how I used up my produce on last week’s Farmers Market Haul Challenge.
Today, I’m featuring pizza! I find that pizza is a great way to use up the bits and bobs left at the end of the week. They can come together in a flash–especially if you already have the pizza dough in your freezer–for a quick meal at the end of a busy week.
But first things first: Let’s talk about pizza dough:
It’s very easy to put together and when I make it, I tend to make a double batch because raw pizza dough freezes beautifully–just portion it out into quarters or thirds, depending on how big a pizza you want to make and freeze each portion individually. Once out of your freezer, it thaws in about an hour on your kitchen counter. While it’s thawing, you can heat your oven up and prep your sauce, slice your ingredients, etc. When the dough’s defrosted and pliable, it’s a breeze to roll it out, top it with whatever you find languishing in your fridge, pop it into your oven and you’re good to go!
I love serving pizza for either a main course or appetizer–mini slices of hot pizza right out of the oven is always a crowd pleaser at a get-together!
Alternatively, although I’ve never tried it, I’ve also seen pre-made raw pizza dough at my supermarket.
Another great option is this Vitolo corn meal pizza crust that I’ve shared before:
The first pizza I’m featuring is one I’ve shared before: asparagus, pine nut, pesto sauce and burrata cheese. If you’ve never used burrata cheese, most of the time it comes as a big ball that is comprised of an outer shell of mozzarella and a filling of cream and shredded mozzarella. It’s absolutely delicious, but a big mess to work with. The best way I’ve found to handle it is to just rip it apart over top of the pizza at the end of construction just before popping it into the oven.
Asparagus, pine nut, pesto sauce and burrata cheese pizza:
For the pizzas I made last week, I used pesto sauce I had made over the summer and put in my freezer for use during the year, but there are several good ready-made jarred pesto sauces out there. My current favorite is Pesto Di Basilico, which I found at my local Safeway, and it’s also available by mail-order.
This pizza is also divine with very thinly sliced zucchini instead of asparagus–pizza is very flexible–use up whatever you have on hand!
The next pizza I’m featuring is one I made using the remaining tomatoes I had on hand for a quick sauce, along with a link of Italian sausage I found in my freezer and the rest of the burrata cheese:
For the quick pizza sauce, I used those early girl tomatoes, some of the spring garlic, a shallot, some tomato paste, Italian seasonings and some seasoned salt, and, viola! pizza sauce!
While the sauce is simmering, prepare your meat if you’re using it. This sauce works great with Italian sausage, pepperoni or even just some seasoned hamburger meat. Top with mozzarella cheese, burrata cheese and some extra tomato sauce and you’re good to go!
I hope you enjoyed pizzas made with end-of-week refrigerator leftovers.
Tune in tomorrow to see the conclusion of my farmer’s market haul challenge!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
