Tomato, Mozzarella and Basil Thin-Crust Pizza

One of my absolute favourite salads is the Insalata Caprese, a simple Italian salad made from buffalo mozzarella, fresh tomatos and basil. Good buffalo mozzarella is a real treasure: silky and pale, rich but surprisingly light. It's tasty enough not to warrant much seasoning (just a little olive oil works wonders for me) and is great when paired with a nice, ripe but firm tomato and a leaf of basil. Wondrous indeed. 

I was hankering for the flavour of an Insalata Caprese but wanted something a little more filling and so I decided on making a pizza using buffalo mozzarella, oven-dried tomatoes and basil. Kinda like a pizza margherita.

Step one: Oven roasting the tomatoes. Simple halve the tomatoes and lay them on a baking sheet, skin-side down. Drizzle some olive oil on the tomatoes and put them in the oven (200C) for about 45 mins.

Step two is making the pizza dough: I made a simple flat bread as I wanted a thin crusted pizza. 

What you will need is:

13/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1/2 cup water

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the water and oil and, using a wooden spoon, gently mix the flour and the liquid till a dough forms. Knead the dough a few times and then roll in on a lightly floured surface till you get a 1/2cm thin crush (you can roll it into a circle but if you, like me, like a rustic pizza, shape doesn't quite matter).

Transfer the dough onto a baking sheet and drizzle the top roughly with some olive oil (about 1 tbsp should do).

Step Three is assembling the pizza. You will need about 1 cup of basil leaves to be placed on the based of the dough. Now, arrange the oven-roasted tomatoes around the dough, on and in between the basil. Next dot the spaces between the tomatoes and basil with the buffalo mozzarella (which comes in rounds, usually).

Step Four: Season the pizza with salt and pepper.

Step Five: Bake in a preheated oven (220C) for about 10-15 mins or till the crust is cooked. 

Step Six: Eat! Lick fingers! Eat some more!

You say tomato, I say bring 'em on

I will be  going away for a week and so, I have to clean out my fridge ... at least of perishables that would undoubtedly be at an advanced  stage of rot by the time I get back. The last thing I want after a 20 hour flight is to open my icebox for a glass of water and  be greeted by slimy tofu or fossilised mushrooms. Eeks.

I had three ingredients that were high on the potential specimen list: a bowlful of cherry tomatoes I bought close to a week back, a block of tofu and bean sprouts. The bean sprouts were easy, I just cooked some noodles for dinner and used them up. Of course, the meal was more bean sprouts with  noodles than the other way around but who's complaining.

Tomatoes. Yellow and red, they looked quite lovely all plump and fresh. A pity I had to drastically end their life span (even if only in the cool ice box) this way. Well, if you're gonna go (and I don't mean to sound crude; I really believe this), go in style. I decided to slow roast them to shriveled up perfection and eat them as a snack while I watch Letterman on TV tonight.

It's the easiest thing to do but it sure takes a heck of a long time. All you gotta do is wash the tomatoes, half them, lightly cover them with extra virgin olive and season them with salt and herbs. I only had dried herbs so I made so with dried Italian herbs. Lay them out on a tray (skin side down) and bake at 110 C for 3-4 hours.  Yes, that long. In fact, some take their slow roasting extremely seriously and bake those red fellas for 8 to 10 hours.

[caption id="attachment_838" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="After 2.5 hours."][/caption]

Good things come to those who wait. I decided to slow roast a batch for 2.5 hours and another for 4. Just to taste the difference. They both taste great but the flavour of the second batch (the 4 hour cookers) were much more intense even though there was hardly any juice.

I decided not to snack of these gorgeous tomatoes. Instead, I am going to make myself a bowl of tomato soup tonight! With the storms we've been having, it should be just the thing to have.

Now I only have to worry about the tofu.

For more recipes on slow roasted tomatoes, check out http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/slow-roasted-tomatoes/

or http://www.cooksister.com/2007/09/slow-roasted-to.html