Pizza Party - Nectarine, Prosciutto and Radish Pizza

The pizza obsession I spoke of in my last post has created one of my favourite pizza flavour combinations so far - nectarine, prosciutto and radish. Sweet, salty and with a bite. Could there be a more perfect flavour combination? The nectarines go a little jammy on the bottom forming a lovely 'sauce'. For those of us who are in Perth, where nectarines (and stone fruit in general) aren't in season, this is also delicious with thinly sliced Beurre Bosc Pears, or Pink Lady or Fuji Apples. For those of you currently enjoying a Northern Summer - stone fruit away! As the prosciutto and capers are salty side, make sure your cheese is a less salty variety.

As with my last pizza post, this uses my chick-pea pizza dough, but use a pre-made base if you can't be bothered. The nuttiness of the chick-pea dough really does add a little something here.

Nectarine, Prosciutto and Radish Pizza

1 nectarine, sliced

6 thin slices Prosciutto, roughly torn

1 tsp capers
4-5 radishes, thinly sliced
50g brie, sliced as best you can

half of this pizza dough (or your own bases)
1 tsp cornmeal
Basil leaves to serve

Preheat your oven to 170C and prepare your dough, leave to rest while you slice all the ingredients.

Sprinkle the cornmeal onto a baking tray to stop your pizza sticking.

Roll out the dough into a rough rectangle, to fit your baking tray. Spread the nectarine slices across the bottom of the dough, then layer the prosciutto, capers, radishes and brie over the top in a vaguely even kinda way.

Pop in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the edges of the base are golden and the cheese melted.

Scatter basil leaves to serve.

Pizza Party - Pulse flour pizza with Ras el Hanout Mango Ricotta

 

 

Sometimes you need pizza. There’s no way around it. And it has to be real pizza. A real dough base, not just the usual cheat method of using a Lebanese loaf and spreading on your toppings. And then you need a beer and to sit outside in the fresh air and sunshine with your pizza and your husband and reflect on how good life can be. That despite being bone tired from a long and hard crabbing session that was mostly fruitless (although eating the crab hot out of the pot that night with fresh bread and butter still made it feel worthwhile), an afternoon of good food, good weather and good conversation is all it takes to get over the exhaustion.

 

This is a pretty simple dough that was made a bit more exciting (not to mention good-for-you) through the addition of two types of pulse flour. I had a little bit of lentil flour left over from my Secret Cake Club baking, and added some chick pea flour to total half the flour. You could use all chick pea flour seeing as that is pretty easy to get, but making your own lentil flour is pretty easy if you’ve got a coffee grinder. In which case, you could also use all lentil flour. As with my baking experimenting gone awry, the addition of a little arrowroot powder ensures the dough binds properly. The molasses in place of the normal sugar adds a smokey sweetness to the nuttiness that the beans bring. Leave it to proof for half an hour while you make the sauce and chop some veges and it’s a pretty quick way of getting a real pizza base in your life.

 

This makes two just-bigger-than single serve pizzas, by themselves enough for around 3 serves. Or 4 serves if you have a side salad. The toppings are fairly easy to change in and out of the sweet and spicy cream cheese sauce. Mine were what were to hand. Although the sauce and lentil base is flavoursome enough that the toppings play textural counterpoint as much as anything. Fresh greens on top are one of my favourite things to do with pizza, you could probably get away with just that.

 

 

Pulse Flour Pizza Base

½ cup lentil flour

½ cup chick pea flour (or one cup of chickpea flour)

1 tbsp arrowroot powder

1 cup plain flour

2 tsp yeast

1 tsp molasses

½ teaspoon salt

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp cornmeal

 

 

 

Ras el Hanout Mango Ricotta Sauce

150g smooth ricotta

1 mango

2 tsp ras el hanout

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp tamarind puree

 

 

 

Toppings

¼ roast chicken, meat shredded

¼ zucchini sliced into thin rings

½ red capsicum, sliced into thin strips

Snow pea shoots

 

Mix the flours together in a large bowl with the salt and yeast. Make a well in the centre and add the olive oil, warm water and molasses. Stir the liquids together first, then slowly bring in the flour until it becomes a shaggy mess. Knead for around 5 minutes until it forms a smooth ball. Pop in an oiled bowl and cover loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to double in size.

 

Meanwhile, mince the garlic, dice the mango and mix all of the sauce ingredients together until well combine. Slice your toppings as desired. Heat your BBQ or oven to 160C

 

Punch down the dough to remove some of the air, then divide the dough into two. Roll the each ball of dough out to around 2cm thickness. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of cornmeal on two baking trays and lay the pizza bases on top. Cover with toppings and bake in the oven, or on a lidded BBQ for 15 minutes or until base is golden at the edges and the cheese mixture is browning.