Looneyspoons veggie pizza with pesto, mozarella and feta

Hey!

Tired of too much meat in your meals and you feel like switching it up? Then this veggie pizza with yuuuummy cheeses will make your world go round! The original recipe is taken from The Looneyspoons, an all-time favourite book written by Janet and Greta Podleski. There it's called "It's a little pizza heaven" and the title doesn't lie ;) Of course, I tweaked it a bit, like I always do :))

By the way, I decided to go wild and I made my own pizza dough so I'll include the recipe for the dough too, just in case you wanna make your own.

Let's get started, shall we?

Ingredients for 2 pizzas:

Thin and flavourful dough: *recipe from chef Adrian Hădean
- 3 cups of 650 flour
- 1 1/2 cups of warm water
- 10g fresh yeast or 3g dry yeast
- 1 tbsp warm milk
- 2 pinches of sugar (used separately)
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 tsp dry oregano
- 1 tsp dry basil
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

OR 2 pizza doughs from Lidl ;)

Topping for 2 pizzas:
- 2 tsp olive or sunflower oil
- around 6 sliced mushrooms (put a variety of them if you can)
- a haldful of broccoli florets cut small
- a medium zucchini
- 1/2 red bell pepper thinly sliced
- a small red onion thinly sliced
- 1/2 jar Barilla pesto sauce
- 1/2 jar pizza sauce or any tomato based flavored sauce (I used Barilla Napoletana)
- 2 tbsp freshly grated Parm cheese
- aprox. 150g mozarella di bufala balls
- around 60g shredded feta cheese
*my addition, optional: corn (as much as possible :P)


Steps:

Making the dough:
1. Mix the flour and water.
2. Add a pinch of salt and sugar.
3. Dissolve the yeast in the milk and a pinch of sugar, then add to the flour mix.
4. Add the oregano, basil and olive oil.
5. Knead the dough for about 15 min by hand or with an electric mixer (I used the second option) until it's soft, elastic and it comes off easily. You might need to adjust the water/flour combo.
6. Let it rise for about an hour close to a source of heat.
7. Separate it into 2 doughs for your two pizzas and work it like a true Italian pizzaro until you fill your 2 trays of pizza:

Adding the topping:
1. Tomato sauce (I added too much and the pizza ended up soggy, so make sure you don't add too much)

2. Cooooorn

3. Add Parm cheese :)

4. Add the sauteed veggies coated in pesto - In a big pan or a wok over medium heat add the oil and all the cut veggies. Cook and stir for about 6 min until they are tender, then take them off the heat and add in the pesto. Mix well, then spread on top of the pizza.

5. Add the mozarella balls, yummm!

6. Final step: Add the shreded feta :)

And this is how the pizza looks before going in the oven for about 10 min if the dough is fresh or 8 min if the dough is store bought and thawed. Bake it at 230C until the crust is lightly browned and cheese is melted.

7. Final product:

Bon appetit! :D

Waldorf Salad

   It's SO hot in Cluj these days that you can't eat anything else but salads. Today we made the Waldorf salad from the Looneyspoons book for the first time and we decided to add our twist: fresh telemea from the farmer's market and chicken thighs. Fresh and delicious! You should try it too! ;)

Ingredients for 3 servings:
Dressing:
- aprox 180ml yogurt
- 2 tsp honey mustard (you can make your own by adding the 2 ingredients together)
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- 1/2 tsp salt
- a pinch of pepper

Salad:
- 250g chicken thighs without bone, cut into strips, salt and pepper and fry
- 200g telemea cut into cubes (Telemea is a Romanian cheese, but if you don't live in Romania, you can replace it with Feta)
- 200g pasta
- 4 small or 2 big red apples, cut into cubes
- half a small celery root, cut into long strips
- 35g toasted chopped walnuts
- a small red onion, minced
- 2 Tbsp minced fresh parsley

Steps:

1. Make the dressing by combining yogurt, honey mustard, lemon zest, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Put in the fridge until ready to use.

2. Make the salad by adding the ingredients in a large bowl, add dressing and mix well. Chill for one hour before serving. Bon appetit!