Eggplant Pizza with Pecorino

You're probably thinking eggplant on a pizza!!! But trust me it was delicious, although my 3 year old didn't agree, "I don't want the black things!!!!" I just went to the kitchen got another slice and pulled off the black things..ie. the eggplant and olives and told him this was his special pizza. Did the trick, disaster averted. My 16 month old was none the wiser and ate the whole thing.

The recipe came from Homemakers magazine Sept 2009 issue. Unfortunately the recipe is not online.


What's on it???

eggplant
tomato puree, I used strained Italian tomatoes
garlic, mmm.... what would a pizza be without it!!
Dried oregano & hot pepper flakes
black olives
Pecorino Romano cheese, this can be substituted with romano and mozzarella

Pizza dough from my local bakery



The Result

Half the fun of using this recipe was sourcing the ingredients. I love going to my local farmers market and picked up the eggplant and canned tomatoes there. I found pizza dough at my local bakery, which I had to order in advance and I found the cheese at an Italian deli. My grocery store didn't have all the ingredients, so I couldn't one-stop-shop.

The pizza was great, although next time I will cut back on the amount of cheese. The pecorino is pretty strong, but very flavourful.

I really like the eggplant, since it was salted, dried and then roasted in olive oil prior to contact with the pizza. Salting the eggplant draws out the moisture and helps prevent too much oil soaking into it and turning completely to mush.

Now the best discovery was this pizza dough, which was just perfect and so easy to work with. It came in balls sized for a medium pizza it stretched out easily to fit my pizza pan.

A few nights later I made up for the "black things" and made another pizza with my son's favourite topping, sausages. Now that I've discovered this awesome pizza dough, I will be experimenting with other toppings.