Eat your beets: A recipe for beet pizza

Today as I was making a salami, home-grown tomato, home-grown basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Havarti Cheese pizza, inspiration struck for dinner. I eyed my bubbling pizza in the oven, watching it with amazement. Out of the corner of my eyes I noticed the leafy bundle of beets I had picked up at the farmer’s stand down the road a few days ago. Then hunger and curiosity began to titillate my taste buds and stimulate my mind.

Beets are certainly among my top ten favorite foods. My favorite way to eat a beet is to roast them. Roasting is simple and allows the beet to showcase it’s rich color, sweet taste, and firm, juicy bite. Rinse, peel, and remove greens. Cut the beet into good bite-sized pieces (I like triangular shaped). Lay them out evenly and closely on a roasting pan. Drizzle with enough oil to get them nice and gleaming. Sprinkle on some sea or kosher salt. And throw them in the oven to roast for about forty minutes at 350 degrees. The beets absorb the oil well so you may wish to re-apply. To avoid burning or uneven crispening, shake the beets around a few times. You’ll know they’re ready when they can easily be stabbed with a fork and show signs of crispness. Occasionally, I like to dress-up my roasted beets with fresh rosemary or thyme, ground black pepper, or add a few sweet potatoes to the mix. You can’t go wrong with roasted beets.


Today I decided I was going to try something new. Roasted beets had become such a staple to my diet that they were just barely starting to (and I mean this in the smallest amount possible) loose their excitement. Of course, the instant I sit on the toilet and watch my magenta urine any escaped excitement floods back into me.

Anyways, since I was making pizza, and I had beets, I thought, “why not try a beet pizza?” I like pizzas that are topped with crisp, fresh greens, such as arugula. Since I would be using the red beets in the pizza, I figured I might as well use the flavorful, nutritious beet leaves as well so as to leave nothing wasted. I love goat cheese and figured the tangy, slightly bitter goat cheese would compliment the sweetness of the beets, not to mention that I happened to have some local, artisinial goat cheese I’d picked up at the farmer’s market a few days back. Having cippolini onions on hand I figured they would add a nice sweet crunch to the mix (boiling onions would also work here). In the end, I had one flavorful, colorful pizza that can be prepared nearly any time of the year.

Here’s exactly how I did it:

Serving: 1 ten inch pizza

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Or if you happen to have more than one oven like I do, heat one to 350 (for roasting the beets) and the other to as hot as your oven can stand (preferably convection). The hotter the better for pizzas. Add a pizza stone (if available to the hotter oven).

Ingredients:
4 small beets, or three large beets and the greens
4 Cipollini or boiling onions
Goat cheese or feta (as much as you desire to sprinkle over the pizza)
4 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 table spoon of balsamic vinegar
A sprinkling of fresh rosemary (about ¾ a tablespoon)
Salt

Directions
Roll out some pizza dough (well floured so as to avoid sticking) into a nice ten inch, flat surface. You may either purchase pre-made dough from the grocery store or hand-make it as I did (but that's another recipe all in itself).

Cut and peel three or four cippolini or boiling onions. Chop.

Rinse the beets and greens.

Remove the beet greens by cutting the stalks, and hard stalk-surrounding from the top of the beet. Discard for later use.

Using a peeler or paring knife, remove the skin from the beets

Chop the beet into thin, flat circles.

Put the beets and the onions on a roasting pan. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Roast at 350 degrees for thirty minutes. If only using one oven, remove the beets after 30 minutes and increase the temperature to as high as your oven goes.

In the meantime: add the beat greens (removing most of the hard, red stalk) into a skillet or pan on medium-low heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and allow the greens to soak up the oil. Add a pinch of salt and a table spoon of balsamic. Stir. About 8 minutes.

Drizzle the flat, ready pizza dough with olive oil. Add the roasted beets and onions. Add Rosemary. Sprinkle cheese over (to your desiring… I don’t like to go too overboard, as it will overwhelm the flavors).

Put the pizza in the oven preferably on a pizza stone, or on a large baking pan. My oven reaches about 550 degrees, which requires about ten minutes of cooking time. Keep an eye on the pizza depending on the strength of your oven. For pizza, the hotter the oven gets the better. The best pizza places have ovens that reach over 800 degrees, and thus require as little as four minutes cook time.

When the crust looks golden, the cheese has melted and the juices are bouncing, remove the pan with the pizza and add the sautéed beet greens evenly on top.

Allow the pizza to cool, slice and enjoy!

So, there you have it. Hope that you get as many compliments as I did. Most recently, my friend who is spending a few months in Sienna, Tuscany made this Pizza for her Italian family and friends, and apparently they were doubtful at first, but then loved it.

-written August 07