Potato-Pesto Pizza

Ah the 3 P’s of weight gain. Well maybe not the pesto, but potato and pizza, what can be better.

For those select few, lucky individuals out there who have the honor of following me on twitter, you’re probably still mouth watering over that delicious picture I posted the other day of that potato-pesto pizza, and honestly, I don’t blame you. It was pretty freaking good, and easy. So without further ado, I present you potato-pesto pizza.

I originally saw this recipe on foodwishes, and I’ve tried it before with great results, and now you too can do it!

First thing first, let’s make some pesto. Oh, you’re not sure how to make pesto?? Well I guess that means you need to do some TKG (TheKosherGastronome if you’re new to the show) review. I mean seriously, it was the last thing I posted, for goodness sake. Ok so the pesto is good to go, now we can focus out attention on this pizza.

I’m no expert on pizza making, but one thing is for sure, you need that oven hot. If you want some sort of gauge how hot you want that oven, come over to my apartment any Friday afternoon, and you’ll get the idea. For home ovens, that means cranking it up as high as it goes, which will be around 500 degrees, and even that pales in comparison to what real pizzeria ovens will get up to.

Also, if you’re using a pizza stone, which I recommend, you’re going to want to pre-heat the stone and oven for at least 45 minutes. There’s really a good reason for all this. A pizza stone is actually not the best conductor of heat, however, it can hold on to a ton of heat (i.e – it has a high specific heat capacity), so it needs to heat up for a while to amass all that “heat.”

Now to make the potato part of this pizza, we need to cook the potatoes, and I find that the best way to do that is by cooking the potatoes in the microwave, for like 4-5 minutes. Just poke a bunch of holes in it with a fork, and zap away. (Remember we cooked potatoes that way for the gnocchi we made a while back? Yeah me too…this is such a nostalgic post). Then slice them up, pretty thin, and while you’re at it (slicing things up that is), slice up some onions. I didn’t have any red onions, so I used some sweet Vidalia onions, and it came out fine.

As you can see, the potatoes are actually not cooked all the way through, and that’s fine, it will finish cooking in the oven.

For this recipe, I used the Trader Joe’s pizza dough, and I can pretty much bet, that if there are any comments on this post it’s not going to be about how awesome everything was, but rather why/how I didn’t make my own pizza dough. Bunch of pessimists. Well, I hear you, and usually I would make my own dough, but this time I didn’t, so there, you smell. But you have no excuses, so for when you make this, here’s a great recipe for you.

Anyway, the rest is simple – sprinkle some flour or cornmeal on your pizza peel, and arrange your dough on it.

Then spread your pesto on it, arrange your potatoes and onions over top of that.

And top with the cheese. I used goat cheese and gouda. Goat cheese, because I really like the salty, tangy, earthy-ness of it; and gouda, because that’s what else I had. However, you can use any cheese you like, but I would stick with something a little salty like feta or something like that for this.

Bake until the crusts begins to brown, like 8-10 minutes, and allow the pizza to rest like 10 minutes before devouring, and enjoy.

One last note – if you don’t have a pizza stone, another trick you can do, is make your pizza on a baking sheet, and bake the dough on the floor of your oven for the first few minutes (to get a nice crust), and then finish it off on the middle or lower rack.

Ingredients:

• pizza dough
• 3 Potatoes
• 1 large sweet Vidalia onion or red onion
• Pesto
• Goat or Feta cheese
• Gouda/mozzarella/or any other type of cheese

Directions:

1. Place pizza stone in oven, and preheat for at least 45 minutes at the highest setting of your oven.
2. Stab the potatoes with a fork a bunch of times, and place on a plate, and microwave on high for 4-5 minutes.
3. Slice the potatoes and onions into thin rounds.
4. Shape the pizza into the desired shape you want, and spread the pesto over top, and top with potatoes, onions, and your cheeses of choice.
5. Bake until the crust begins to brown, about 8-10 minutes.