This decadent vegetarian pizza starts with your favorite store-bought (or homemade) pizza crust and flavorful marinara sauce, and ends with slices of creamy fresh mozzarella cheese. The toppings in between those ingredients are a sauté of red onions, garlic cubed eggplant and wilted, peppery watercress. Any of your favorite fresh greens would work well here: spinach, escarole, kale, or even Swiss chard come to mind. Yet another example of how easy and creative a homemade pizza can be.
(To view this recipe, click on the blue title of the blog post above*)
Pizza with Eggplant, Watercress & Mozzarella
Ingredients:
- 1lb. pizza dough (store-bought or homemade)
- Olive oil and cornmeal for the pizza pan
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- Crushed red pepper flakes, to taste
- 1 large eggplant, ends trimmed, cut into ½-inch cubes
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- ½ red onion, thinly sliced
- ¾ cup marinara sauce
- Salt and pepper
- ¼ cup dry white wine
- 4 cups watercress
- 8 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 6 rounds
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Cut a parchment round the size of your pizza pan; spray with olive oil and dust with a couple Tablespoons of cornmeal.
- Allow your pizza dough to rise at room temperatures; punch it down, let it sit again for 20 minutes. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a round that fits onto your prepared pizza pan.
- In the meantime, heat the olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes, garlic and sliced red onion over medium heat. Cook for 2 minutes; add in the cubed eggplant plus 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a big grinding of black pepper. Saute for 5-7 minutes or until the eggplant is beginning to get tender. Add in the white wine; reduce the heat to medium low and cook another 3 minutes. Add in the watercress and toss to wilt.
- On the prepared pizza crust, spread the marinara sauce leaving a 1-inch border. Top the marinara-sauced crust with the eggplant-greens mixture. Top with the mozzarella slices. Drizzle the whole pizza with a touch of olive oil.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the cheese melted.
Tagged: eggplant, fresh mozzarella cheese, marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, pizza, pizza crust, pizza with eggplant, red onion, sauteed eggplant, tomato sauce, watercress
This is perfect timing! We have eggplants coming in from our CSA (and our own garden!), I just bought some TJ’s pizza dough, and I was trying to think about how to incorporate the two.
Thanks!
Perfect timing indeed Lexie! Are you growing globe eggplants in your garden or the smaller Japanese or Chinese variety?
This pizza would work well with burrata cheese or homemade ricotta as well…
Buon appetito.
We’re growing these Listadas:
http://www.seedsavers.org/listada-de-gandia-organic-eggplant
I tried some Pitung in years past but didn’t have as much luck with them. MN I think just wasn’t hot enough but now that we’re back in VA I’m finally having some luck 🙂
Wonderful Lexie! Another one of my favorites with eggplant this time of year is a classic Pasta alla Norma–simple yet really tasty.