A Little Time With Roz – Pizza Margherita

As I’ve said before, I don’t read recipe books and use very few (although Bev will on occasion), as I prefer to let you who love them do the reading, make the meal, and post the recipe on your blog along with your comments and improvements.

We like both tomatoes and Italian food and this summer, Roz from La Bella VitaCucina has been posting some dishes we wanted to try, so I decided to just devote a week or so to them - first up is Pizza Margherita.

We made the recipe as she posted it, with a few deviations, and rather than recopy it here, you can click on the link above for the recipe and some hunger inducing photos.  This was a joint effort between Bev and I, where she handled the crust and I did the topping.

Now for the deviations.

1. We used Publix made-in-store pizza dough

2. We made a pizza sauce using The Best Pizza Sauce Ever recipe and really liked it as it was, so we omitted Roz’s sauce amendments.  This will now be our go-to pizza sauce.  

Ingredients:

2 T olive oil

1 T butter

½ C onion, chopped

¼ C celery, chopped

1 clove of garlic, chopped

8 oz. tomato sauce

6 oz. tomato paste

2 T grated parmesan cheese

1 t basil, dried

1 t oregano, dried

½ t salt

½ t sugar

¼ t black pepper

1 bay leaf

1 t fennel seed

Instructions:

       Melt butter and heat olive oil in a large pot over med heat.  
Add the onion, celery and garlic and saute until soft

             Remove to blender and puree until smooth then return back to the pot
Add in tomato sauce and tomato paste and stir
Add the rest of the ingredients and allow it to simmer on lower heat for 30 to 60 minutes
Remove the bay leaf before using on your pizza

      3.  I ran the sauce and toppings out to the crust edge rather than leaving a 1” edge - just because it never made since to me to do it that way.

4.  I adjusted the baking to suit our oven (I thought), using convection/bake and this was a mistake as the pie ended up spending too much time in the oven getting the crust bottom done – next time, I’ll do what Roz tells me.

Here are some shots but check Roz's site for some good ones.

I thought the pizza was outstanding and would make it again in a heart-beat – the dark sauce on the edges (due to the long oven time) tasted fine, as did the very dark basil (but both kept it from being pretty).  If you are looking for a Pizza Margherita recipe, this one is hard to beat – thanks Roz for a fine supper.

Tune back in for the another offering during Roz week or so.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/18/14 meal date