The flavors of a summer vegetarian pizza: shredded zucchini sautéed with leeks and corn then topped with feta cheese on a roasted garlic oil-brushed pizza crust.
Pizza in the summer should be easy. Not that pizza in the winter should be complicated or anything, but there's something about the bounty of ripe produce coupled with spending more time outdoors
doing yard work that lends itself to easy meals. With such delicious stuff coming in the the farm share box
the pizzas practically make themselves (
let's be honest, I'm doing the work here) the idea of what veggies to combine in a pizza practically falls into your lap. At least that's what happened with this pizza. Sometimes,
the ingredients choose you (Meghan is so wise).
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Note: I made this pizza in January. It's true! I'd love to show you a photo with the pizza and the 3 inches of snow that fell in the morning, but in fact it was wicked cold and dark so I have no 'outdoor' natural light photos. |
Over the winter, while rooting around in the freezer for something else, a bag of shredded zucchini, a bag of corn kernels, and a bag of chopped leeks fell into my lap. How did I make a pizza using zucchini and corn in the midst of winter? Easy! When I am overwhelmed with my
crazy garden volunteers, or we get more than my family can eat in the week's CSA farm share box, I put it up. The zucchini was shredded (love the fine shred disc on my food processor, the smaller and cheaper version of
this one) then bagged, and frozen. The corn was
cooked in a cooler, cut off the cobs, frozen on a tray, and bagged. The leeks were sliced, washed
a lot, spun dry, and frozen loose on a tray before bagging. That way, we can enjoy summer flavors all year long. And this taste of summer was delicious after shoveling snow!
When I made
this pizza, I knew that I eventually wanted to try
leeks with corn on a pizza as well. When I got leeks in my farm share I even did a little happy dance. Tonight's pizza is very summery in nearly all respects--it's loaded with ripe-in-summer produce, tossed with
pesto, flavored with a hint of
garlic . . . but I think I may have used an
eggnogandbutternutsquash crust. So here's today's lesson, folks!
Always Label Random Bags of Pizza Crust In Your Freezer. The crust tasted just fine with the toppings. In fact, it may have been just a
plain butternut squash pizza crust (is that an oxymoron?). I'll never know, because I didn't label the bag!
If this pizza looks delicious enough for you to want to make it now, not wait until January, just make sure to squeeze the shredded zucchini until it's as dry as you can get it. If you don't have leeks, substitute onions, shallots, or even green onions--but add them to the skillet at the very end because they burn easily. At least in my skillets. Now that my garden is growing some of these ingredients, I'm already planning my next "summer pizza" though this time I will know what dough to use.