ZUCCHINI PIZZA WITH GREEN CHUTNEY

        “You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.”- Yogi Berra

                Hi there friends, HAPPY SUNDAY!!





The story of two hours minus the boys.

Today,  our home was silent from all the hustle and bustle from the kids.  It's been a 

while.  I remember  years ago, that a two hour drive, watching a movie and discussing it later was a norm.  The paradigm totally shifts once you have kids, we love all the chaos, but a controlled environment is fun too for couple of hours. 

 With coffee mugs in our hands and hours to ourselves felt odd.
  



I had some leftover pizza dough sitting in the fridge and a huge batch of zucchini from a friends's garden.
And what was better than that,  Mr G offered to help with the pictures and I didn't deny him the pleasure.

The next hour was like a military drill with Drill Sergeant G:
1. Set up the board, give me the pizza- take pics
2. Add the zucchini next to it  -   take pics
3. Set up the cheese                 - take pics
4. Hold the reflector properly...
5. Move the table to the lighted spot
6. Slice the pizza - take pics..
7. Move quickly, the lights going...
Should I be thrilled the next time he offers?? 





 Time to pick up the boys. He went and I enjoyed my zucchini pizza, all by myself. I deserve it.

Now to our pizza. The dough is awfully easy, dump, stir and let rise. It's is a thin crust mixed grain pizza, topped with pesto or green chutney spread all over with thinly sliced zucchini.  Do you believe when people say, 'it tastes way better than it's name and looks"?.  THIS WAS one of that.

ZUCCHINI MULTI GRAIN PIZZA WITH GREEN CHUTNEY/PESTO

Ingredients:

For the Pizza Base:

1 1/2 cup of Bread flour or All purpose flour

1 cup of Whole wheat flour

1/4 cup of rye flour

1/4 cup of cornmeal

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp instant active dryyeast 

1 tsp olive oil

1 cup of warm water(110 degrees)

For the GREEN CHUTNEY:

• 1 cup of basil
• 1 cup of coriander
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 green chilly
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp pine nuts
• 1/2 tsp salt or accordingly
• few turns of pepper 
• 
  
• Yellow and Green Zucchini thinly sliced

Method:

For the dough:

1.  Add the yeast in warm water with sugar and let it foam for 5 minutes, if it doesn't foam, chuck it and start a new batch.

2.  Once it rises and foams, with a paddle attachment in your mixer, add the flour, salt, oil and the yeast mixture.  Run the mixture on low till it forms a ball.  Let it run for 10 more minutes for the dough to activate the gluten.  Alternatively, if you have big muscle, you can work the dough by hand, which will take some time..

3. Let rise in a warm place for 2 hours.

For the Green Chutney/Pesto

1.  Add all the ingredients and grind to a thick paste and keep aside.

Putting it together:

1.  Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2.  Divide your pizza dough into 2.  Roll the half to a thin sheet.

3.  Spread the green chutney over it to a thin layer.

4.  Arrange the zucchini in a pattern all around.  

5.  Brush a little olive oil on top and sprinkle with little salt and Italian seasoning.

6.  Bake for 10 minutes or until lightly brown on top.

Serve with some salad or alone, perfect anyway.
Note- if you don't have rye or cornmeal, you can add the equal quantity of whole wheat flour.

ENJOY!!