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What are you cooking these days? To kick off a month of summer produce, we’re excited to feature a delicious pesto and arugula pizza from Bettina Campolucci Bordi’s Happy Food. Bonus: It can be made gluten free! Here, Bettina shows us how it’s done…
Hazelnut Crust Pizza with Peppery Arugula
From Bettina Campolucci Bordi’s Happy Food
Recipe: Hazelnut Crust Pizza with Peppery Arugula
Serves 2–4
You’ll need:
For the dough (although store-bought works well, too!):
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour
1/4 cup hazelnuts, ground in a coffee grinder or food processor
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing
For the pesto (again, store-bought is also an option):
1 cup olive oil, plus extra for sealing
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 oz basil
1 garlic clove, peeled
1/2 tbsp each salt and black pepper
For the toppings:
4 tbsp pesto
1 red onion, sliced
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 red pepper, sliced
1/2 yellow pepper, sliced
Salt and black pepper, to taste
To serve:
Basil
Arugula
Drizzle of olive oil
Ricotta
Prepare your preferred pizza dough according to instructions. If you’d like to make your own gluten-free crust, preheat the oven to 400F. Add all the pizza dough ingredients to a bowl and mix well. The mixture will be quite runny, almost like a cake batter — it’s meant to be that way.
Line a baking sheet with wax paper and drizzle a very small amount of olive oil on the bottom. Pour the pizza batter into the tray and make sure you have a thin, even layer. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes until the dough has solidified. Once it has, take it out of the oven.
To make the pesto, add all of the ingredients to a blender and blend until your preferred consistency. Add your toppings and put the pizza back in the oven for another 15 minutes until it reaches the desired crispness.
Just before serving, scatter a good helping of basil, arugula and an extra drizzle of olive oil, plus salt and pepper. Add some ricotta dollops on top, too.
Tip: The pesto will keep in the fridge for at least 2 weeks. When you put it into a clean storage jar, make sure you cover the top of the mixture with a good layer of oil, as it serves as a natural preservative. 1/2 inch above the pesto is more than enough.
Thank you so much, Bettina! We love your new cookbook.
P.S. More recipes, including an avocado and asparagus tartine and a strawberry mascarpone tart.
(Recipe excerpted with permission from Happy Food by Bettina Campolucci Bordi published by Hardie Grant Books July 2018, RRP $29.99 hardcover. Thanks to Franny Eremin for helping with this series.)
