Parma Ham, Fig and Gorgonzola Pizza

Last night instead of spending ages preparing a new post, I wanted to make a really nice dinner and be able to sit down with D and have a relaxing night playing scrabble and sitting in front of the fire. Our scrabble abilities are pretty shocking. It is almost as bad as me playing tennis, but like in tennis, we bend the rules slightly and allow certain moves that technically shouldn’t be allowed. But hey, it’s only family right? This is also true for last nights pizza. I bent the rules slightly and made a quicker pizza dough. Usually I go to the bother of mixing it, kneeding it, letting it rise etc but I was simply too tired to do this, so I made a dough that was pretty yummy actually! It was thin and crispy and possibly one of my better dough attempts.

I had picked up some lovely ripe figs on my way home and then dashed into the supermarket to buy a handful of other ingredients such as Parma ham, Gorgonzola, tomato pesto and mozzarella and adding those ingredients to the few I had left in the fridge we were in pizza heaven. We devoured the pizzas and there were even a couple of slices left for breakfast this morning. Nothing better then cold pizza for a hungry tummy! I’m sure many of you are tutting at the idea of cold pizza for breakfast and thinking it’s not very nutritious but we’ve all done it, no?

Ok so here is my quick pizza recipe. Add any toppings you like, these are just my suggestions:

QUICK AND EASY PIZZA

For the dough:

140 g self raising flour
125 ml water
pinch of salt
drizzle of olive oil

For the topping:

200 g good tomato sauce (As this is the cheats pizza, I didn’t make my own tomato sauce. I used fresh tomato pesto instead. )
100 g mushrooms, sauteed
1 ball of mozzarella,
handful of grated parmesan,
2 figs
handful of cheery tomatoes, halved
50 g gorgonzola cheese
2 tsp pesto (this I did make)
6 slices of parma ham
rocket to scatter after cooking (optional)

THE HOW

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees (fan oven) or 250 (non fan).

In a food processor, mix half your flour, and all your water, salt and oil. You will have a sticky mixture. Slowly add in the rest of the flour until your dough resembles a firmer ball. You want the dough to be elastic and damp but not sticky! Cut the ball in half and make each half into a ball shape. Roll each ball out until it is nice and thin (3 mm) with a floured rolling pin.

Once done, heat a large frying pan. Dry fry the flat dough to give it some heat and to help the crust to crisp for a minute. Don’t let it colour or burn, it should look like one of those pale, firm shop bought pizza bases.

Spread your tomato sauce over the base, lay out your mozzarella (or what ever cheese you want), add your toppings, for this one I used tomatoes, mushrooms and pesto. For my second pizza I used figs, parma ham and gorgonzola cheese.

Slide your pizza onto a preheated baking tray and bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes until cheese is bubbling and pizza is golden. In the case of the fig pizza, I cooked it for slightly less (6 minutes) as I didn’t want the ham to over cook and go too crispy!