Homemade Pizza; Caprese Style

I do believe in using shortcuts when cooking. Making a meal shouldn’t be so time consuming on a daily basis that people start believing they can’t or shouldn’t cook at all. Yes, most dishes do taste better when made completely from scratch (brownies, corn bread and pasta seem to be my personal exceptions), but the trick is finding the right pre-made substitution. If I cook a whole chicken, I will make chicken stock from the leftover carcass, but I use much more broth than I am cooking chickens, so of course I am going to use a packaged substitution. Typically I was using bullion cubes or paste, until I started to pay attention to what is in them when I was cooking for a friend who is allergic to msg. It’s amazing how many ingredients are in one little cube and how impossible it is to find any without msg. So now I most often use the boxed broth – both chicken and vegetable from Trader Joe’s – at least I recognize the ingredients.

Trader Joe’s has been my food staple savior out here. While they are not typically known for supplying local foods, they have been doing a better job of sourcing and marketing some produce items from the area. Plus, they really can’t be beat for their prices on organic items. Most of my staples, like canned beans, nuts, nut butters, avocados, limes and fresh corn tortillas, all come from TJ’s. The one thing I don’t really like is how they wrap their produce in so much packaging. Fortunately, the Ardmore Farmer’s Market is right across the street from my local TJ’s. It’s a good alternative, as they supply fresh fish, meat and produce. (However, I still haven’t gotten over not being able to stock up on decent, inexpensive alcohol at Trader Joe’s here in PA).

I recently discovered that Trader Joe’s carries frozen garlic naan, which I purchased figuring I would make an Indian dish to serve with the bread. Tonight I wanted to make something quick for dinner and was looking at what I had in my kitchen - left over tomato sauce from the ravioli dish, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, and heirloom tomatoes. That’s when I started thinking the naan might also make a good individual pizza crust – especially with the garlic. The frozen naan comes thin and nicely oven toasted so that it has a wonderful thin crust pizza quality already. All it required was spreading the tomato sauce over the frozen naan, coating with grated mozzarella (1/4 ball) and parmesan (1 tbs) and topping with sliced fresh tomatoes, chopped basil and red pepper flakes. It cooked for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. The entire dish required less than 30 minutes from start to table.

I am not sure if there is an official Italian pizza called “caprese pizza” but since the so named salad uses most of those ingredients, it seemed like a good name for the pizza as well. Making it myself meant that I could control the type and amount of cheese that went on the pizza. I prefer the fresh mozzarella over the drier, more rubbery alternative and it doesn’t need a lot to be tasty. Just because it’s “pizza” doesn’t mean it has to be bad for you. This particular serving has 316 calories, 9.5 grams of fat and 3 grams of fiber (that’s only 6 points for WW followers). Next time I might add roasted eggplant for an even heartier plate.

Interestingly enough, all the ingredients came from Trader Joes’s so maybe I should have called it “my homage to Trader Joe’s”.