Zucchini Pizza

Today I experimented a bit with the pizza toppings on our seems-to-be-tradition-now Friday pizza. I went (gasp!) vegetarian! I thought I'd try some zucchini (that's courgette to you French-loving Brits) because there just aren't enough z's with just "pizza" and "mozzarella". The result was pretty good, but not without mistakes.

Not having any real clue as to what I was doing, I figured that the zucchinis might need a little more time to cook than the pizza itself, so I placed them on a tray by themselves, sprinkled with a little extra virgin olive oil, and placed them in the oven for 15 minutes (our oven sucks, so your time should probably be shorter).

Raw zucchini pre-bake.

Baked zucchini, ready for topping my pizza.

Recently, partly because of the extreme lameness of my oven and partly because I like a good crispy crust, I've taken to precooking my crust in the oven for 7 or 8 minutes before adding the toppings.

Raw crust in the oven. I made it a little too big for the pan, so there were some extra folds.

Crispy crust out of the oven. I probably overcooked it a little bit.

Now it's time for the toppings!

Some tomato sauce and the baked zucchini.

Five slices from one luscious tomato.

Some dried basil sprinkled on top. I can't seem to find any fresh basil these days.

Grated mozzarella with a little more sprinkled basil for extra pizazz. (Yay, more z's!)

The finished product.

Unfortunately, the main mistake I made was getting a little too hasty with the final baking time. Our oven, about which you know my opinion, tends to start billowing smoke after more than 10 minutes or so of operation, and I chickened out and took the pizza out too early. The mozzarella was barely melted and parts of the tomato were still only lukewarm. The zucchini, in the end, added almost no flavor whatsoever. The dominant flavors were the tomato, mozzarella, and basil. I think I'll drop the 'chini next time.

But the result was quite delicious and summery, just what was needed on this, the first day of Spring.