Amy Sweeney's Vegetable Pizza

I suppose it serves me right for having chosen the least interesting of three recipes in an article about the glories of a Santa Monica farmer's market (but forgive me, because - after all - I was going blind with envy that they already have cherries to be roasted and served alongside a luscious polenta cake (polenta, really? Can't we just call it a cornmeal cake and be done with it?) and their market actually has someone selling fresh morels, sob), but this pizza was just kind of unspectacular. It was the only thing I could have actually made with local (well, sort of) vegetables, so I didn't have much of a choice.

I had to take "market" out of the title of the recipe because in the end, I was only able to find purple spring onions at our farmer's market here in New York and had to go to Garden of Eden to find the remaining toppings: Sungold tomatoes (but I flirted with disaster and instead bought mini hothouse heirloom tomatoes with the excuse that they cost the same and were FAR prettier, darnit), fresh marjoram, and baby zucchini. At home, I mixed up the dough, entirely forgetting to add a tablespoon of oil. I don't know what's wrong with me lately, maybe my brain is addled by spring, but it's a darn cold spring to be addling brains, if you ask me.

So I'll just go ahead and blame that lack of oil on the lackluster pizza dough that didn't bake up particularly well. Having had a look at the LA Times photo of the pizza, it seemed a bit overloaded for my tastes - and the pizza dough had that raw, glistening look in the middle that happens when there's too much going on on top. I halved the amount of topping ingredients, which made for light and crunchy pizza slices - we ate them crowded around a kitchen island as if it were an extended evening cocktail session.

The hothouse heirloom tomatoes roasted to a wilting state were surprisingly good, I liked the marjoram, which added a light herbal perfume, and the salty feta was an interesting addition (doing a good job of livening everything up, especially the baby zucchinis which tasted like nothing to me). Maybe it's because I'd still prefer to master the traditional Neapolitan pizza before anything else, or maybe it's because I didn't "forage" for my ingredients, but the pizza taken as a whole, well, it just wasn't special. It did a nice job of feeding us for dinner, but that was about it.

So I'm biding my time until cherry season by gorging myself on the one stellar thing at our markets right now: New Jersey strawberries. Juicy, fragrant, floral: they're coming out of my ears.

Comments

[foodmomiac]

I love feta on pizza. I love feta on anything really. :-)

I can't believe you don't have fresh morels there! We have them in Toledo - even at many of the supermarkets. Perhaps they'll be there this coming weekend.

[tokyoastrogirl]

The lighting in this photo is so appealing and summery. Thanks, as always, for taking on all of these recipes so that we can choose the best of them!

[tanvi]

I guess I never really thought about the abundance of fresh produce in California. I do believe I'll miss that aspect sorely when I move to Chicago.

[Garrett]

I agree on the strawberries. I have been gorging on them. I'm waiting for plum and figs to come into season so I can grill them and make upside down cake! Yumtastic! Also think, I'll try that Pizza!

[lobstersquad]

So jealous about the strawberries. We only have great whopping fresones, huge and tasteless. Also, no farmer´s markets. But plenty of cherries, so maybe I´ll give the cherry polenta cake a shot

[Lindy]

My farmbox starts up this week. I'm hoping for strawberries like mad.

[Randi]

That is the most amazing farmer's market. I lived in Santa Monica for over 10yrs. I was just telling my spouse about the lilacs that people used to line up to buy for 5 bucks for 3 stems. If you ever go to LA, you must visit the SM market.