Translate

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Pizza Marinara

This is an extremely simple pizza, no cheese!  In fact it seemed so simple and basic that when I saw the recipe I wasn't even going to try it because it seemed like it would be b-o-r-i-n-g!  I was pleasantly surprized to find that I was mistaken.  Like the the Pizza Margherita, I started by spreading some pizzaiola sauce on the prebaked crust.  I had frozen some sauce that I had left over from making the Pizza Margherita, so I used the thawed sauce and then arranged some sliced Campari tomatoes and sliced garlic over the sauce.  I am learning the importance of using high quality ingredients, and since this pizza is basically a showcase for tasty fresh tomatoes and oregano, spending the extra money for the best tomatoes was well worth it. 
 I used 3  cloves of garlic and discovered that the garlic really makes this pizza.  You could use a little less, but by no means leave it off.  Substituting the crushed garlic from a jar (which is what I usually do) would not work well at all with this recipe.  Over the tomatoes and garlic sprinkle a bit of dried oregano.  Dried oregano is more fragrant than fresh so it is generally considered the best to use at this stage in the recipe.  The next instruction in the recipe says to drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top, which seems to be a constant with most of the pizza recipes.  I decided to do a taste test to see if the more expensive olive oil varied greatly from the cheaper brands, and I'm afraid to say there is a definite difference.  I am finding that, especially in the simple pizza, the quality of the ingredients becomes of utmost importance. After the pizza was baked I scattered a bit of fresh oregano over the top and drizzled a little more olive oil.  The irony did not escape me as I was eating this pizza while watching The Biggest Loser.  While it certainly isn't unhealthy considering the lack of cheese cuts down on the fat content and sodium, and olive oil is healthy when used in reasonable amounts,  I'm still not convinced Bob and Dolvett would have approved!




No comments:

Post a Comment