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
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Scatter the halved tomatoes randomly across the top. An artist would do this artistically!
- Top with thyme leaves. Again: randomly or artistic according to your ability.
- Drizzle a little olive oil over the top.
- 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.
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.
Pingback: Fiesta Friday #15 | The Novice Gardener
Yummy – looks like the perfect pizza to me! This is my favorite “style” of pizza to cook on the outdoor grill in the warmer months. The delicious, fresh veggies make me forget all about cheese…Thanks for sharing your great recipe at Fiesta Friday. 🙂
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Thank you. I thought it was the perfect pizza when I tried it. It was the first time ever I’d made a pizza without cheese on top and it’s surprising how well it works.
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A perfect pizza…. wow! I gotta make pizza this way sometime soon… 🙂
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Thank you so much. It’s worth the making as it is really good.
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I love pesto, I love eggplant. What a splendid pizza! It proves that cheese is not necessary when you have such delicious ingredients! Thanks for sharing your recipe with us!
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Thank you. It really is delicious.
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You make my day and I’m very flattered that my recipe has inspired you. Your Pizza looks fabulous 🙂 For sure, I will try your version and thank you for bringing this at FF 🙂
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Hello, it’s good to see you.
Your recipe was great. The only real difference is the workflow and the diameter of our vegetables. Our zucchinis are about 6kg (and so sweet), so dainty slices were not an option for us while we have our own harvest to eat through.
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Your pizza looks so good! Great addition to Fiesta Friday!
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Thank you.
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This looks so tasty – I hope you do manage to find a good gluten free pizza base – pizzas are so versatile and delicious, but it’s been a bit hit and miss since I went gluten free some years ago!
Looking forward to hearing about your recommended gluten free base…!
Emma. 🙂
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Thanks for the encouragement. We can survive with gluten, but prefer to avoid it in everyday meals where we can. I would be happy for any good ideas for a pizza base!
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How delicious!
I’m new to the whole idea of pizza-without-cheese. I had a vegan, cheese less, pizza while visiting Meghan last summer, and while it was very tasty I did miss the cheese. But I made an Asian Beef & Broccoli pizza without and we loved it.
I’m so looking forward to summer vegetables!
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We didn’t miss the cheese on top of this for even a second.
There’s a bit of Parmesan in this, but I reckon the pizza would be just fine without it. There are already enough strong flavours and they work together well.
Thanks for dropping by.
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Hi and welcome to Fiesta Friday #15! I am one of the hosts and it is wonderful to meet you! Thank you for bringing this delicious pizza to the party – I do love a veggie pizza – and I don’t mean green peppers, mushrooms and sweet corn! People are raving about using mashed cauliflower as a GF pizza base – have you tried that? Well – enjoy the party and I do hope you get a chance to make some new friends at FF #15!
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Thanks for the warm welcome. Thanks for the suggestion on the cauliflower. I seem to be gathering a list of uses for it just from people’s comments.
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I love the idea of pesto on pizza – this looks and sounds really good!
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It was really good, thanks.
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This looks fantastic! I love how rustic this pizza is with the chopped tomatoes and eggplants, and I bet the first bite and taste of the pesto base is surprising and pleasant all in one. One of my favorite pizzas has a pesto base with thinly sliced potatoes (double carb!), but I like your idea of the tang from the cherry tomatoes more. So glad to meet you at the party!
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You are so right. It was a surprise for this tomato-paste conditioned palate. Good to meet you, too.
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This is my kind of pizza! I want to make this one! Thanks so much for bringing this to FF! 😀
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Thanks for the friendly welcome. This really is one pizza worth appropriating into everyone’s notebook.Let me know how you go if you do make it.
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Thank you for reminding me that I also wanted to make this style of pizza! Yours looks really good, thank you for bringing the pizza to Fiesta Friday. I think it will be a really good idea to try more of each other’s recipes! 🙂
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Thank you! Trying other people’s recipes is half the fun. I’m finding so many new ideas here.
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Yum! Bet that’s so, so tasty. Delicious!
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A pesto pizza, with eggplant and zuchinni on top | Mermaid’s tresses
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