Coming on 5 pm tonight, I was overtaken by a sudden lazyness at the thought of having to prepare yet another meal. I don’t know about you, but for me it seems to work in cycles. For many days I’ll find inspiration in the kitchen without strain and then suddenly, blank page, and every meal becomes something of a hassle.
Anyway, that lazyness lead me to pizza, as in where the hell could we find decent pizza to take away in Dundalk (Any idea I am much interested!). But then my responsible self took over. With half a crate of fresh spinach harvested yesterday (the rest went in a quite nice buckwheat and eggs gratin yesterday night), and fresh portobello mushrooms that are starting to need serious attention, I can’t not cook tonight. Finally, the pizza plan remained, but in the lazy version of the « white » pizza, where you skip the tomato sauce and replace it with fresh cream, or in our case with almond cream. You’re left with a dough to put together, and a few veggies to chop, as quick and easy as it gets.
Don’t be misled by this pizza’s unassuming ingredients, the cooking gods were apparently with me today, this turned out to be quite something – and I cook pizza rather regularly. And please don’t skip the cumin, i think it is the twist that made the dish.
So ladies and gentleman, without further ado, I give you the spinach, mushrooms and goat’s cheese white pizza
Note : I try to use the Dunany organic spelt flour more and more (love to use local products made with care), but it is quite coarse. Lacking imagination tonight I cut it with a bit of wheat flour (hopefully my second half’s belly will cope). If you have a finer spelt flour 100 % spelt should be fine. Or 100 % wheat of course.
Makes 1 family pizza
For the dough
- 150g coarse spelt flour
- 100g wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- Half a small pack quick yeast ( or see instruction on the pack for 250g flour)
- About 10 cl lukewarm water
- (I usually add 1 or 2 tbsp olive oil to my pizza dough but forgot tonight. The crust turned out crispier, which was a nice surprise, so adjust depending on your taste)
For the filling
- 6 Portobello mushrooms
- A few leaves wild garlic (or 1-2 cloves garlic)
- 2-3 big handfuls spinach (be generous it melts a lot upon cooking)
- 60g fresh goat’s cheese
- 30-50g Manchego cheese or Parmesan
- Sundried tomatoes (optionnal)
- 1 small tbsp butter or 2 tbsp olive oil
- 100 ml almond cream
Start with putting together the dough. Place the flours in a bowl, add the salt, cumin, yeast and combine. Add the lukewarm water little by little until the dough comes together as a ball (that’s were you would add the oil). Kneed for a few minutes, until the dough gets smoother. Leave to rise in a floured bowl, covered with a kitchen towel, in a warm place, for 30 minutes to 1 hour ideally (I had 10 minutes and it turned out ok).
Whipe and chop the mushrooms, rinse and thinly chop the wild garlic. Gently heat/melt the olive oil or butter in a pan. Add the wild garlic, stir briskly, add the mushrooms, season with black pepper. Leave to cook gently stirring occasionnaly until mushrooms are tender (about 5-10 minutes).
Take the bigger stems off the spinach, rinse and chop the leaves roughly.
Cut the goat’s cheese in bite size pieces, grate the hard cheese, chop the sun dried tomatoes.
When ready to assemble the pizza, pre-heat the oven on 180°C. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until quite thin (I make 1 big pizza covering the entire baking tray, about 30*40cm), transfer to a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Spread the almond cream on the whole surface. Sprinkle the mushrooms, add the spinach, goat’s cheese, tomatoes, finish with the grated cheese. Add black pepper / chilli to taste.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes until crust and cheese are golden. Serve right away.
Kitchen Rendez-Vous 