This weekend I’m mostly on my own as the lovely wife is off to AnimeIowa. So I started poking around AllRecipes.com to see what I could make for dinner. Given that we’ve gotten a fair number of tomatoes from our CSA share and that tomatoes tend to trigger an acid reflux attack on the lovely wife; I decided to hunt for a recipe to use up a bunch of tomatoes. I’d thought I’d seen a quick/easy stuffed tomato recipe recently, but couldn’t find that. After a bit more searching, I ran across this recipe for Four Cheese Margherita Pizza which sounded good. So I went to the grocery store, got some ingredients and whipped it up. My version was tastier than the recipe sounded. *grin* Below is my altered version of the recipe.
Multi-Cheese Margherita Pizza
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil[ref]I used an extra virgin olive oil.[/ref]
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 8 Roma tomatoes[ref]I didn’t have 8 roma tomatoes. Instead I used 3 large and 2 medium tomatoes[/ref]
- 2 (12 inch) pre-baked pizza crusts
- 16 ounces shredded Mozzarella cheese
- 16 ounces shredded Pizza cheese[ref]This is a blend of Mozzarella, Parmesan, Romana & Provolone (with “smoke flavoring”) cheeses that my local grocery store sells.[/ref]
- 10 fresh basil leaves, washed, dried
- 4 ounces crumbled feta cheese
Directions
- Slice your tomatoes and put the slices into a large mixing bowl.
- Pour the 1/4 cup of olive oil over the tomatoes.
- Sprinkle the tomatoes & oil with the coarse kosher salt.
- Peel the garlic cloves and chop them into fine pieces.
- Add the chopped garlic to the tomatoes and mix everything thoroughly.
- Allow the mixture to sit for at least 15 minutes.
- Wash and shred the basil leaves.
- Preheat your oven to 400° F (200° C).
- Brush each pizza crust with some of the tomato marinade (the juice & oil mixture at the bottom of the large mixing bowl containing your tomato mixture).
- Sprinkle the crusts evenly with all of the Mozzarella cheese and about half of the Pizza cheese.
- Arrange tomatoes on top of the pizzas, then sprinkle with shredded basil, the remainder of the Pizza cheese, and feta cheese.
- Bake in preheated oven until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown, about 15 minutes.
Notes for Next Time
- Spread the cheese out more evenly, espeically the feta.
- Prepare the tomato mixture sooner, to allow it to marinate longer.
- Use minced garlic rather than trying to chop the garlic cloves myself.