A pesto pizza, with eggplant and zuchinni on top

An eggplant and zucchini pizza with pesto as a base? No tomato paste?  No mozarella cheese on top? No, none at all. Just a few cherry tomatoes to add a bit of zing. With thanks to La Petite Panière for the inspiration, this pizza is now a family favourite and well worth a try.

There’s no recipe for pizza base here. That’s waiting for another day as I try to find a gluten free one.

Pizza with a difference: a pesto base for eggplant and zucchini slices and just a few small tomatoes

A pesto-based vegetable pizza

• Time: up to an hour
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients

• pizza base (buy one or make one, it’s up to you)
• a thinly sliced eggplant
• thinly sliced zucchini
• a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• extra virgin olive oil
• the leaves from a few sprigs of thyme
• pesto: a bunch of basil, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of pine nuts, salt, olive oil, a spoonful of Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Before you start: sprinkle salt onto the eggplant slices and let them sit for about half an hour. Wash the salt off really well and let the slices dry while you make the pesto.
2. Make the pesto sauce by mixing all the ingredients together in a blender. Add the olive oil last, and slowly so you can stop when you have the consistency you like. Spread the sauce generously onto the pizza base.
3. In a pan, saute the onion slices in the olive oil until they are a nice golden brown colour. Then arrange it on top of the pesto.
4. In the same pan, cook the zucchini and eggplant slices for 20 to 40 minutes. Add more olive oil if you need to (you might need 2 or 3 tablepoons all up). When they’re soft, take them out of the pan and arrange them on top of the onion on top of the pesto on top of the pizza base.
5. Scatter the halved tomatoes randomly across the top. An artist would do this artistically!
6. Top with thyme leaves. Again: randomly or artistic according to your ability.
7. Drizzle a little olive oil over the top.
8. Bake in a 200 degree Celcius (375F) oven until the pizza base is well cooked and the tomatoes have that crumpled, well-baked look.

Notes

Source: Is imitation the greatest form of flattery? La Petite Panière posted the inspiration for this pizza a few weeks ago. It was probably the yummiest pizza I have ever had, and so we changed very little from the original, other than to adapt the workflow for certain family members.

Pizza with a difference: a pesto base for eggplant and zucchini slices and just a few small tomatoes

I’m taking it to Fiesta Friday. If La Petite Panière is there, maybe she’ll try it and tell me what she thinks?.

Update: I’ve now met our co-hosts: Jhuls@The Not So Creative Cook and Selma@Selma’s Table.