Saturday Night It’s Pizza Time! How About A Spinach Base And Mint Sauce This Time?

Okay, I admit it again, we love pizza. I make it at least once a week and if I have cheese and other ingredients stocked, I make it twice. He even has his pizza days sorted out – Thursdays and Saturdays, and if I happen to ask him what to cook for dinner on these days that is definitely not taken lightly; after all, how can I forget his pizza days and ask him such an appalling question. And him asking for it, I take that as a compliment! :P 

So today is Saturday (I wrote this post on Saturday but posting it late), it is pizza day again and I got an idea. A wonderfully weird idea, if I may call it so. Every week a local farmer does door delivery of his produce here, mostly the fresh leafy kind – like spinach, fenugreek leaves, cilantro, mint leaves and the like. Do not get me wrong, we are not much of vegetarians, but we both love these greens and so I end up buying those. Sometimes it stays so in the refrigerator for a while and sometimes I use them up in not time – depends on what I am cooking that week. So I have some leftover spinach leaves and extremely flavourful mint leaves and cilantro, and I wondered how it would be, if I could incorporate these in the pizza today.

I often use baby spinach as pizza topping, so that meant nothing new. Pureeing spinach and adding it to the dough sounded fresh. Talking about mint leaves and cilantro – I have always enjoyed spicy mint chutney, but have never tried making it. Recently one of my friends served her version of it and it tasted just perfect. It was perfectly minty, adequately spicy and a little tangy too - I have been behind her for the recipe since then, and got hold of it today. Thank you Ekta, you rock! So my plan was to add this mint chutney to basic tomato sauce I usually make for pizza. Sounds weird??? Well, it did to him! What pizza means to him is a perfect base loaded with meat and cheese and yes, this sort of contradicts that idea.

Spinach Pizza Dough / Base:

So I started with the dough first. To the basic dough recipe here, I added ½ a cup of pureed spinach. I did not want it to be overwhelming for him and also this was the first try. Once done the dough will have a beautiful light green hue.

Mint Tomato Pizza Sauce:

Making mint chutney is easy, save for the task of separating mint leaves from the stem; it’s sort of a boring task and since I needed only about a cup that meant a little less work for me. Coarsely chop the mint leaves, ½ a cup of coriander leaves, ½ a medium sized onion, about 4-5 cloves of garlic and one green chilli, and paste these in a blender. Finish off with juice from half a lime. Add this to about 4-5 tablespoons of the basic pizza sauce recipe here and cook this further.

Pizza Topping:

Keep the topping of your choice ready or refer here for basic topping idea. I used minced chicken, salami, a few spinach leaves, onion, red and green capsicums along with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

Assembling and Baking:

When ready to bake the pizza, divide the dough into two equal portions and working with one portion at a time, roll it out into thin base. Apply the mint tomato sauce over it, making sure you work towards edges. 

Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese, followed by the topping and finish off with more of Parmesan and mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle a bit of pepper powder. Transfer to pizza stone or baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 250 degree Celsius for 12-16 minutes. Read full and detailed instruction here.

Enjoy hot from oven and feel the flavour burst as you bite into each slice! I’ve a feeling that you’ll thank me for this :P Let me know!