Recipes: Cheat’s pizza at home
Greedy Girl is a bit reluctant to categorise this under ‘recipes’ because there’s so little effort and time involved. Rather than ordering online or heading down to the local pizzeria to wait for your slice to come out of the oven, this is an amazingly tasty and quick option.
In the US, where every day of the calendar is devoted to some promotion of a food or wine item, today is National Pizza Day. In honour of that excellent occasion, here’s gluttonous husband’s cheat’s pizza.
Basically you can top with almost anything you like. The key to ensure there’s not too much liquid, otherwise you risk a soggy mess.
Our pizza base is simply store-bought pita bread. Keep it in the freezer and it takes no time at all to thaw out. Once thawed, smear the top with a little tomato paste – it’s a great flavour base and also gives the other elements something to stick to. If you don’t have any tomato paste, open up a can of tomatoes and reduce down in a saucepan to thicken it slightly. If you scrape the bottom of the saucepan, it should be thick enough to leave a line behind. We also add a little olive oil infused with garlic and basil but that’s just because we have some in the pantry.
The pizza we’ve pictured above is topped with sliced chorizo sausage, black olives, thinly sliced mushrooms and sliced red onion. Place these on top of the tomato.
Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius and place a flat tray inside (you don’t need a pizza stone). Get the tray nice and hot and then you can (carefully) slide the pita bread on top. Bake for around 12 minutes. The heat from the tray will help crisp the bread (but not so much that it becomes a crumbly mess).
Once it comes out of the oven, top with some crumbled feta cheese and, if you like, some pesto (or a few fresh basil leaves). A few drops of olive oil also work well. Basically, this works with any kind of topping and if the ingredients are chopped into bite-sized pieces you don’t really need to vary the cooking time.
And you’re done. Inside less than 20 minutes, you’ll be tucking into a great snack. Be warned: you probably won’t be able to stop at one.
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