Friday, April 11, 2014

Dainty Radish Pizza and Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust (Pizza Night!)

Dainty Radish Pizza and Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust (Pizza Night!)

Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.

Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.

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In the early weeks of Spring, while we're eating out of the tail end of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve and scraping frost off the bags of vegetables in the freezer, I start to moon over the upcoming Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) season.  I dream about trying old favorites, or new recipes with the vegetables I know I'll be getting, and ponder what might be new on the farm this year. One standby that will be in Spring farm share boxes is the radish.


Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.


I knew I was going to put radishes on a pizza long before the CSA season began.  Shoot, I throw so much other CSA produce on pizzas, such as kohlrabi greens, kale, broccoli rabe and sweet potatoes--see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index for ideas--why not radishes? Since I'm the primary radish fan in the house, and I don't want to overwhelm the neighbors with radish gifts, I wanted to try to entice my family in a new way.


Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.


One way for me to keep things interesting is to change up the way I prepare a vegetable.  If I'm used to roasting something, why not shred it, like this butternut squash-stuffed Chicken Saltimbocca?  I've already enjoyed slicing radishes on sandwiches, and shredding them in sandwich spread--but when I sliced a mess of pretty Easter egg-colored radishes on my Benriner (link to Alanna's post that had me searching one out for my own) I needed share this, and share this in time for Easter.


Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.


I knew that radishes with butter and salt make a lovely sandwich, and that's where I was going with this pizza.  What I didn't expect was how delicate the pizza would look and taste.  It's a very dainty pizza, feminine, if you will, just like Crystal the composting guinea pig's delicate, feminine ankles [you're welcome for my not posting a picture of a dainty pig ankle, but know that I really wanted to]. However it is robust enough for my son (who would happily live on meat forever) to eat all the leftovers.  I think the combination of cheeses put it over the top for him--feta, goat, and shredded Italian blend? I'm in!


For more recipes using radishes, please see my Radish Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


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Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.
Missing: goat cheese and shredded Italian blend cheese.
Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.
Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.

Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust, makes 2 crusts 

(yes, I'll post a Fresh Herb pizza too)


Ingredients

  • 8 ounces (by weight) whole wheat flour (approximately 2 cups)
  • 1½ ounces cornmeal (approximately ¼ cup)
  • 11¼ ounces unbleached all purpose flour (approximately 2½ cups)
  • ⅜  cup olive oil
  • 1⅓ cups water
  • 1 Tablespoon sugar
  • 2 packages pizza crust yeast (2¼ teaspoons per package)
  • 1½ teaspoons salt

For general directions on making pizza crust, please refer to my Pizza Primer post.  [If you don't like jumping around the blog to get the recipe to make the crust, please let me know in the comments--this is the first time I've tried this technique with a pizza recipe and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it shortens things if you know how to make pizza dough and want to try this. On the other hand, I'm not really helping if you want to make this dough and need to refer to the primer. Let me know.]

Dainty Radish Pizza

Ingredients

  • Tender/Crunchy Pizza crust (above) or the pizza crust of your choice
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 clove roasted garlic (here's how I put up my garlic crop each year)
  • 1 cup thinly sliced radishes
  • ¼ cup crumbled goat cheese
  • ⅓ cup crumbled feta cheese
  • ½ cup shredded Italian cheese blend
  • a healthy pinch of kosher salt
  • several grinds of pepper

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and if you've got a pizza stone let it preheat as well. Here's an Amazon affiliate link to a stone similar to mine.
  2. On an oiled piece of parchment paper or a cookie sheet, stretch out dough into a pleasing shape. 
  3. In a small bowl combine olive oil and smashed garlic until blended.
  4. Spread across prepared dough. Top with radishes, cheeses, and salt and pepper.  
  5. Bake for 5-8 minutes, then slide the parchment out and bake directly on the pizza stone another 3-5 minutes until cheeses are browned. 
  6. Slice (Amazon affiliate link to my beloved pizza slicer) and serve.  Leftovers reheated well.

Since Friday nights are Pizza Nights around here [even if I don't post a pizza recipe, know that we're eating pizza] and Friday Night Pizza Nights are worthy of Fiestas, I'm glad to share this Dainty Radish Pizza with Fiesta Friday. Another Friday we'll really get our Fiesta on with a Cheater Margarita Smoothie, but I need more taste testing  . . . nah, the recipe is fine--I just want to do more taste testing!

This post is also shared with the From the Farm Blog Hop, the Clever Chicks Blog HopSimple Supper TuesdayFresh Foods WednesdayWhat's Cookin' Wednesday

17 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Sue,
      Thank you! I appreciate you stopping by!

      Delete
  2. That is a great pizza idea, especially in the spring when we have so many wonderful radishes.. I must get me some of those purple ones. I have grown the red, the white and the pinwheel, but never seen the purple before.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hilda,
      I've never heard of pinwheel radishes--I bet they look lovely sliced! Our second CSA in Virginia grew French Breakfast Radishes and I loved to dip those in salt and eat them.
      Thanks!

      Delete
  3. Radish pizza sounds really interesting and delicious!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Saucy,
      Thanks--I thought it may be weird, but I'm so pleased with how it turned out. And I'm inspired to build on this version this Spring--maybe some bacon?

      Delete
  4. Would love to invite you to share your food photos with us over at Food Foto Gallery . com - There's no complicated approval process like the big sites. Any photos related to food (that are not watermarked) are accepted & get posted automatically. We also share our daily faves on social media, giving exposure to food bloggers when we can. Let me know if you have any questions and hope to see you at the site :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great Idea. You are right, why not? I love how dainty it looks and I can imagine how delicate, yet zippy, it must taste.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Stacey,
      It did taste terrific--I know if my son cleans up all the leftovers it's an all-around winner.
      Thanks for stopping by! And I love your blog name--I started counting up all the legs in my kitchen!

      Delete
  6. Wow, another creative recipe from you, Kirsten! Love this! It must have tasted incredible. Can't wait for my radishes to be ready for the picking. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Angie,
      I'm envious of you and your radishes--but I know that soon I'll get some from our farmers, and coupled with the giant vat of Feta from my last Costco trip I'll be set.
      Thanks!

      Delete
  7. I have put radishes on a pizza before, but I included them with so much other stuff, you couldn't really tell. That is not the case with your dainty and feminine pizza. It is very pretty, and I would have liked to have seen Crystal's dainty ankle as well. This pizza sounds wonderful, and I can't wait for the first rush of CSA radishes so I can make it. Although I've never gotten purple or white radishes before.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Meghan,
      No purple or white radishes?!! I'm going to have a talk with your farmers! I've had a variety of colors from the various farms we've joined--and liked them all, but thought the pretty colors looked especially pretty on this pizza.
      Thanks!

      Delete
  8. I think this is the first time I've made a recipe off your site that did not turn out "as advertised," but this pizza crust didn't work for me. I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong. After rising overnight, it was the texture of, um, spongy clay--not at all elastic. It was impossible to stretch thin. Is it because I used regular yeast? (I can't find pizza yeast here.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Andy,
      I'm sorry your experience with this pizza crust wasn't mine--I know how frustrating it can be when a recipe doesn't work out right.
      [In fact, I've got a ½ loaf of dense, moist Multigrain Sourdough bread on the counter right now. It's about half the height of a light airy loaf I made the very next day. I think I waited too long between feeding the starter and making the bread for the dense loaf.]
      Back to your pizza crust--the problem is not using regular yeast since you let it go overnight. The beauty of the pizza crust yeast is that it has dough conditioners in it, allowing you to mix and go right into making pizza without letting the dough rest.
      You planned ahead and let your dough rest, so that's not it.
      Other things to think about--was your yeast fresh? Did you weigh or measure the flours? How hot was your water?
      When I have brick doughs, it's either because my yeast was old or I mis-measured either flour or water (our hot water heater is preset to be not too hot for kids so I don't think the hot water out of my tap could kill my yeast).
      This week I did plan ahead and made my dough, but next Friday I'll re-make Tender/Crunchy pizza crust with regular yeast and report back.
      Thank you--I appreciate your comment!

      Delete
    2. Kirsten, thanks for the suggestions. The yeast was well within date, and I did the same thing I always do (with success) with water temperature (measured on my inside wrist), and flour (not weighed, but gently scooped and leveled). I shall try again, and since I think I've just rearranged my kitchen in a way that actually allows access to the scale, I'll try weighing the flours. It does sound yummy, and it didn't really taste bad...so I am motivated to get it to work.

      Delete