Saturday evenings for me usually consist of homemade pizzas and a glass of wine. Why have pizza nearly every Saturday some might say? The great thing about pizzas is they can be any flavour you fancy, spicy, herby, fruity, cheesy, or covered with vegetables. I’m not sure if I have a favourite as I love trying new flavours a lot but I do love a good margarita with lots of fresh basil and mozzarella.
Once summer arrives I have pizza with lots of wonderful homemade salads, tomato and balsamic vinegar, shaved courgette with mint, garlic and chilli…
This pizza is wonderful and is better than usual vegetarian take away choices which normally consist of lots of random vegetables thrown on top. The goats cheese makes a nice change to just mozzarella and the lemon zest really brightens it. It would also be nice with a balsamic glaze drizzled over the top. I have to admit I make my pizza dough in my bread maker but it is just as simple to make it by hand.
Aubergine, Goat Cheese and Olive Pizza
Ingredients
- 300g OO pasta flour
- 1tsp salt
- 1tbsp olive oil
- 170ml water
- 1/2 an aubergine
- 1/2 carton chopped tomatoes
- handful fresh basil
- handful of green olives
- 50g goats cheese
- 125 g mozzarella
- zest of 1 lemon
Method
- If using a bread machine put the flour, salt, olive oil, water and yeast into your bread maker and put onto the dough/pizza setting and let it do all the work for you.
- Slice the Aubergine into 5mm slices. Place a griddle pan on the hob with a high heat, add 2tsp olive oil and then put in aubergines, turn over once they have charred griddle lines in them and then cook until they have griddle lines on both sides.
- Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Roll out the dough to the thickness you like, I like mine to be very thin. I roll mine out with semolina flour. Place the rolled out dough onto a baking tray/pizza stone.
- Spread the chopped tomatoes over the top of the base. Then place the basil leaves on top, the aubergine, olives, goats cheese and finally the mozzarella. Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Cook in the oven for 20 minutes near the top of the oven. Once the pizza is cooked add the lemon zest to the top
Enjoy! H x
