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| Broccoli Pizza |
“Who puts broccoli on pizza?”
“Congratulations Smitten Kitchen, you’ve ruined pizza!”
To be fair, what my husband and I wanted was broccoli rabe because broccoli rabe is exceptional on pizza, with or without crumbled sausage and a unholy amount of red pepper flakes, but one by one, our offspring have turned against the bitter stalky, leafy florets and now that they make up 50% of the opinions in our family, and the loudest ones too, we ceded to their demands. This one time.*
Also in the name of fairness, my childhood experiences of “white” pizzas, those without tomato sauce,” were terrible so I understand the resistance: dry and flat in flavor. But as an adult I love them especially with vegetables I think taste better when not competing against the acidity of tomato sauce. It helps to take a few a few pages from Jim Lahey here, as I always do when making pizza (and if you haven’t bought his pizza tome yet, you really really should for endless weeknight pizza inspiration) — adding a layer of a quick, easy bechamel sauce under the cheese (I added garlic to it, garlic bechamel > non-garlic bechamel, almost always), using a mix of mozzarella and provolone and then taking a few tips from my beloved broccoli rubble and adding a little lemon juice, zest, pecorino and chile flakes to keep it from flatness.
The result is an ideal weeknight excuse for pizza for dinner, very green, not too heavy but not abstemious either, and if you’re lucky, with the best leftovers there could be. I resisted — for once — finishing it with an egg on top or baking in onto the pizza but I will not next time and you shouldn’t either.
* “One time” = Basically every day from 6:30 a.m. until the last call for water at 8:15 p.m. It’s a good thing they’re cute.
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