Seasonal local food recipe No.329 – Chard, olive and mozzarella pizza
My husband in his quest to create the perfect sourdough pizza adapted a recipe from London pizzeria Franco Manca‘s book Artisan Pizza To Make Perfectly At Home. They use wild broccoli or friarelli, but Frank used chard from this week’s veg box. Choose your favourite pizza base (Frank makes a sourdough base from scratch but you might prefer to buy one!) and then cook the pizza as you would normally.
Serves 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
4 pizza bases
200g chard leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 red chilli, finely chopped
sea salt
For the tomato sauce:
1 can plum tomatoes, ‘mashed’ by hand and ‘lumpy bits’ removed
1 garlic clove, finely grated
1 tbsp olive oil
1 mozzarella cheese
black olives
basil leaves
Method
To make the tomato sauce, heat the oil in a pan, ad the grated garlic and fry gently for 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until reduced by about 50%. Remove from the heat and leave until needed.
In another pan, heat the olive oil and fry the garlic and chilli over a medium heat. Add the chard leaves, some salt and a drop of water and cover. Cook for about 4 minutes. Drain well and squeeze excess water from the leaves before using.
Spread the tomato sauce over your pizza bases. Lay some chard down on the pizzas and then top with mozzarella, olives and basil. Cook the pizzas in your usual way.
