cutie pie cook: jenn's cooking blog: classic margherita pizza

With tomato season coming to an end, I'm finding any and every excuse to incorporate this fruitable (fruit commonly mistaken for a vegetable) into all my meals. One of my favorite quick and easy meals to make is the classic Margherita pizza. I just love how simple and distinct the flavor profile is for this pizza. The divine combination of tomato, basil, and garlic work wonderfully in unison to complement each other.

Though I wish I could make this totally from scratch, I just don't have time for all that during a hectic school week. My schedule usually leaves me feeling crunched for time which always has me searching for short cuts in my cooking.

My shortcut in this case was to use store bought, ready-made thin crust cheese pizza. It provides a blank canvas for a multitude of different ingredients. My favorites being tomato, sweet italian basil, and garlic.

Today, I used fresh vine tomatoes from the farmer's market and home-grown sweet italian basil. The garlic was store bought. First, I roughly minced the garlic and sprinkled that on the cheese pizza. Next, I sliced the tomatoes to my preferred thickness (about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch) and distributed them evenly across the pizza. I also sprinkled the pizza with some italian seasoning here.

(pre-oven) Margherita pizza in the works...

[[TIP]] You must sandwich the garlic between the cheese and the tomatoes for two reasons: 1) The garlic oils being released during mincing and heating in the oven are purposely trapped in between to allow maximum seepage into the cheese, pizza sauce, and tomatoes. 2) It keeps the garlic from burning in the oven. Also, if you're not a big fan of large slices of tomato, you can dice the tomatoes instead.

My thriving basil plants!

The rest of the steps are as follows: Bake the pizza for the recommended time or close to your desired doneness. Turn off the oven and take the pizza out. Rough chop some sweet italian basil and sprinkle it on top of the pizza. Drizzle a bit of extra virgin olive oil on the pizza as well. I usually throw the pizza back in the warm oven for another minute or two to warm up the basil and extra virgin olive oil. And voila, dinner is served in a matter of 15-20 minutes! Yum!!