Deconstructed Ratatouille Pizza
Deconstructed Ratatouille Pizza, prepared with traditional ratatouille components; eggplant, zucchini, and peppers, finely sliced atop a pesto-covered pizza base.
What Is Ratatouille?
Ratatouille is a pastoral, French countryside recipe that features a variety of cherished summertime garden produce.
When you cultivate numerous tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant during the warm seasons, you often find yourself with more than can be consumed.
Ratatouille serves as the solution to an unruly garden, and once roasted, it can be stored in the freezer for colder months, allowing you to relive the tastes of your summer garden.
The vegetables are simmered and cooked down, reminiscent of a stew, alongside many of the Herbs de Provence; thyme, basil, marjoram, oregano, and, naturally, a bit of wine.
This European summer concoction condenses a wealth of vegetables and pairs excellently with crusty bread, served over pasta, or frozen in small portions for the winter.
In this manner, we can savor our summer garden all over again.
Deconstructed Or Constructed
If the charming French interpretation of a summer garden entails compacted veggies into a delightful spread, why not present them in a novel fashion!
Let’s assemble those same vibrant summer garden vegetables, while they still appear full and colorful, into the most exquisite topping for a pizza; a Ratatouille Pizza!
After all, a Mediterranean Ratatouille Crostini features the reduction of summer’s produce atop a crostini, making for a delightful appetizer or tapas dish.
So why not roast the same vegetables in visibly larger strips and serve them arranged atop a homemade pizza dough, the very dough I favor for crafting a Stromboli!
Homemade Pizza Is The Best
Who doesn’t adore pizza! Whether thick or thin crust, there is something utterly delectable about well-considered toppings on a homemade crust.
When a pizza crust is made from scratch, what goes into the dough can be as deliberate as what is placed on top.
With a simple recipe (truly, all my children have been preparing this dough since their teenage years), Homemade Bread dough, the remainder is straightforward!
I frequently incorporate grated cheeses, sometimes garlic, and always herbs to ensure the pizza crust is just as much the star as the toppings.
What better way to enhance the roasted ratatouille components on this pizza than by incorporating fresh garden herbs into the crust as well!
Green Sauce For A Deconstructed Ratatouille Pizza
Tomato sauce isn’t the sole sauce available!
Indeed, once you’ve tried ‘green’ sauce on your pizza, you will comprehend where the true essence of flavor in your pizza originates.
Pesto, salsa verde, and Chermoula are all green sauces devoid of tomatoes.
For this pizza, I opted for the Moroccan Chermoula sauce. It’s quick to prepare and lasts in the refrigerator for several days.
Chermoula is a blend of parsley, cilantro, garlic, lemon, olive oil, smoky spices, and a pinch of heat.
Nothing extravagant, no cooking required. Simply toss the components into a food processor or blender, and in under a minute, you’ll have a delicious sauce.
Prepare a large batch. Enjoy some on your pizza, and on another occasion, consider roasting a Whole Fish or lamb with Chermoula.
If you have any left, freeze it for your cold-weather soups and stews.
Plan Ahead Ratatouille
While my initial ratatouille was crafted at the end of summer from garden produce or my local farmers’ markets, this pizza was concocted on a brisk spring evening.
Creating this pizza confirmed which vegetables and herbs I intend to plant in my garden this summer.
In fact, the seeds have already been sown indoors, so I can relish the anticipation of the coming months and the numerous batches of ratatouille I will prepare.
Ingredients Required
Equipment Necessary
- Baking sheet pan or pizza pan
- Rolling pin
- Cutting board
- Chopping knife
- Sauté pan
- Slotted spatula
- Food processor
- Oven
- 1 Pizza dough Homemade or store-bought
- 1 Eggplant medium
- 2 Zucchini medium
- 1 lb Multi-colored Mini peppers
- 1/2 cup Pesto Homemade or store-bought
- 1/4 cup Olive oil or as needed
- 2 tbsp Butter
- 1 tsp Smoked paprika Homemade or store-bought
- 3 tbsp Coarse salt
to reduce bitterness in eggplant and season
- 1 tsp Sumac
- 2 Garlic cloves mashed
- 1/4 cup Manchego cheese or alternative hard cheese, shredded
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Halve the eggplant lengthwise. Next, cut numerous thin strips while preserving the eggplant’s shape. Sprinkle 1-2 tablespoons of salt on each side and let it rest for an hour to eliminate the bitterness from the eggplant. Pat it dry.
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Slice the zucchini and peppers similarly and place them aside. There’s no need to reduce their bitterness.
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Warm a large sauté pan with 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. Add 1 clove of crushed garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of paprika, and sumac, quickly glazing both sides of the eggplant. Take it out of the pan.
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Incorporate additional oil, butter, garlic, and seasoning, glazing the zucchini followed by the peppers in the same manner as the eggplant. Remove.
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
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Roll out the pizza dough and press it into your preferred pan, whether round or rectangular. Crimp the edges.
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Evenly spread the pesto over the dough.
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Artfully layer the glazed vegetables on top of the pesto-covered dough. Sprinkle with cheese.
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Bake until the crust turns golden, around 20 minutes.
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