Er…. National White Chocolate Day

* Sigh *

Like Sage, I’m not really a fan of doing yet another blog about something sweet. And to be quite honest, when it comes to chocolate (I know, I know, “white” isn’t really chocolate, but anyway), I prefer mine dark. With maybe some sea salt.

So I’m going to tell you about pizza instead. Yes, we’ve already blogged about pizza. Several times in fact. But when Janelle and Deanna blogged recently about cheese pizza, I was inspired to try my hand at the amazing dough Janelle’s been on about. Including her special “retarded fermentation” trick.

But since she’s already told you all about that, I had to do something special to make my pizza worthy of mention.

Oh, I know: oven-roasted tomatoes and sage pesto (with roasted garlic). Yum.

The trick to oven-roasted tomatoes is time. I happened to have a lot of that, which is good. You slice a goodly amount of plum tomatoes in half lengthwise. Place on parchment-covered cookie sheet and add about 1 head of peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle the lot with a good extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkle on some fleur de sel and freshly-cracked pepper, then throw in a 250° oven for about 4 hours (keep an eye on the garlic; it will probably be ready after two hours). I didn’t want my tomatoes completely dried, which would have taken about 8 hours (or overnight).

ready to go!

Roasting tomatoes this way completely concentrates the flavour, giving a burst of rich tomatoey goodness on the pizza.

roasted tomatoey goodness

Sage pesto: blanch a big bunch of sage by immersing in boiling hot water, removing immediately and plunging into an ice bath.

ice bath with some of the sage

Dry the sage as well as possible and place in a food processor. Add in about half the roasted garlic (put the rest on the pizza itself), about 1/2 C of some toasted nut (I used walnuts – they went really well with the sage). Grate in about 1/2 C of parmesan (more to taste) and add a pinch of salt and some freshly-cracked pepper. Process, drizzling in extra-virgin olive oil until smooth. I usually stuff my leftover pesto into an ice cube tray and freeze it. The next time you want pesto, you’ve got handy little cubes in your freezer.

To my pizza I added garlic-butter brushed prawns (lightly grilled) and some goat brie to tie it all together.