Wing-it Pizza and Arugula Salad

Pizza and Salad anyone? We made this super simple and restaurant quality pizza and arugula salad the other night. It looked stunning, smelled amazing and made us feel like a million bucks eating super yummy yet healthy dinner!

Here is how we made it.

At the super market, we felt like home made pizza for dinner. So, without searching for a recipe, we just winged it. We grabbed some assorted olives from the olive bar (majority was for snack, shhh), a chunk of fresh mozzarella cheese, an heirloom tomato, a bag of arugula and a can of whole tomatoes (I followed experts’ advice, bought a 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes) and we went fancy, bought 4 slices of prosciutto, and a ball of fresh pizza dough (this is a true life saver, I didn’t have to slave myself kneading the dough and spending quite some time letting it rise, and store bought fresh pizza dough is always spot on). I know I have onions, shaved Parmesan cheese, fresh lemon, shallot, garlic, fresh basil from my garden, we are good to go!

After we got home, first thing first, the pizza sauce needs to be made (or you can cut corners even more, and get a good jar of pizza sauce). I diced a small onion, smashed 3 cloves of garlic, and threw them into a heavy bottom sauce pan with a table spoon olive oil heating on medium high heat. Then I moved onto opening the can of tomatoes. I let the onions and garlic sweat in the sauce pan for a couple minutes, I dumped the can of tomatoes, juices and all, into the pot. I was too lazy to squeeze the tomatoes through my fingers and didn’t feel like making a mess. So, I poked them with a wooden spoon and broke them up in the pan. Don’t worry, at the end of the cooking process, the tomatoes will break down beautifully anyway. Immediately, I filled the tomato can with tap water and dumped that into the pan too. I didn’t want to waste any flavor of the tomatoes. Once the sauce came to a boil, I lowered the heat to medium low. I added a pinch of chicken bullion (or instead of the water and bullion, you can add chicken broth, or even good white wine). I loosely put the lid on, and let it go.

I took out the pizza dough, stretched it out to fit the nonstick pizza pan I have, sliced up the onions, mushrooms, pitted black olives, heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese. I gathered my fresh basil leaves. Music was on, a glass of wine was served, life was good! I had a few more minutes to spare while waiting on the tomato sauce, I pulled out the baby arugula and dumped the whole bag into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, I mixed 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about half a fresh lemon), 2 tbsp avocado oil (figured it’s a nice alternative to good old extra virgin olive oil, and it turned out I was right!), I put in a finely diced shallot, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground multi color pepper (black is good too, multi color pepper corn was what I had on hand, it does give any dish a nice little color boost, it’s fun). I whisked the dressing until it is emulsified. Here is a mistake I made, I dumped the dressing into the arugula bowl at this point, and mixed it up. The baby arugula wilted a little by the time the pizza was finally done. Even though I had a good time sampling the salad along the way, because the slightly peppery salad was really good, next time, I would leave the dressing separate until the last minute just before plating.

By now, the tomato sauce was done. I turned on the oven to a piping 450 degrees Fahrenheit,  I added in just a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. I ladled some sauce in the middle of the stretched out pizza dough, mirroring exactly what I see on TV from pizza restaurant commercial, spreading the sauce from center outwards, in a circular motion, using the bottom of the ladle. We had fun laying out the mozzarella slices, vegetables, and half of the basil onto the pizza. Can’t forget the prosciutto slices. We hand torn those and laid those pieces loosely on top of everything else.  Into the oven it goes. One thing to pay attention, don’t over load the pizza with veges, it will be too watery and makes it soggy.

We turned on the oven light, acted like little kids, sticking our faces on the oven door, waiting for the pizza to be done. 20 minutes and a facial tanning session later, the pizza is finally done!

A slice of pizza heaven, a handful of simple yet scrumptious baby arugula salad, some fresh basil and shaved Parmesan, dinner is served.