Thursday, October 4, 2012
Are you a red or white pizza lover? With this spectacular pie, you don’t have to choose.
Last week’s farmers’ market tomato bounty led to my tomato-rich pizza margherita on Monday; I continued with the theme by featuring its tomato-less opposite on Wednesday, a garlicky white pie with herbed ricotta, artichokes, and arugula. There’s only one thing left to do now but bring these two outstanding recipes together. Enter today’s dish, which turns the usual cheese/sauce ratio on its head by dolloping zesty tomato sauce atop a bed of garlicky, cheesy goodness.
The baking details are here, the ricotta cheese mixture is here, and you could certainly just use the tomato sauce here or a basic marinara and be done with it. Or, you could do a little something fancier if you’re an olive lover like I am by combining chopped tomatoes, EVOO, garlic, diced onion, crushed red pepper, black olives, and a bit of balsamic to create a spicy tapenade. Reduce the mixture for 20 minutes or so and you’ve got a deeply hued, richly flavored sauce that provides a lively contrast to all that cheese.
It’s nothing short of pizza bliss for this tomato sauce lover who now also fully embraces the white pizza love.
Here’s what it looks like coming out of the oven.
The pizza is just lovely as pictured above but I always add microgreens to my white pizzas for color, taste, and texture, as discussed. Shown below is what I had hanging around my fridge (not arugula); use whatever you like.
Pizza gloriousness!
I could end there, but I feel compelled to say one more thing, and it’s pretty important given my blog’s focus on nutrition and not just good-tasting food. I mean, it can’t just be pizza, cocktails, and whoopie pies all the time, right?
(Stay with me, people, that’s a rhetorical question.)
My regular readers are starting to truly believe that I’m a moderate, which is a delightful way to live peacefully and joyfully with food that is perfectly compatible with a healthy weight and chronic disease prevention. Moderation can be tricky to quantify, though, so I wanted to be clear that I draw from both my 
photo library and daily inspiration (and/or what I’m teaching in my classes) when I write any given post. I did in fact make pizza margherita last Thursday, and it was so fantastic that I knew I needed to tell you about it immediately. However, yesterday’s artichoke pie was made in May, and today’s hybrid was made in July. On average, I’d say I make pizza about once a month. Even though my meatless and whole grain variations make pizza healthier for you and the planet, it’s still not one of my regular suppers as it’s heavy on calories, cholesterol, and saturated fat, as you well know. Thus, soups and salads are more frequently found on my dinner table.
Not as tasty as pizza, you say? I don’t agree. Pizza is a scrumptious treat, but check out my recipe page for tons of inspiration and ideas on making healthy food spectacular. (Lots of cocktail recipes there, too.) And, if you’re just tuning in to The Nutrition Doctor, some background reading on the general tenets of a healthy diet can be found here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do need to get to the farmers’ market. The end of the tomato season is drawing nigh, and I need to get a sauce on the stove and into the freezer for the winter months ahead.
