Rustic Pizza

I made this about 6 weeks ago, but have obviously sucked at updating my blog. I got two new cook books for my birthday from Megan and am very excited about making several recipes in them. This is the first recipe I have tried. The cookbook is amazing, it's called 100 Great Recipes: Vegetarian. The great thing about it is that it gives you the recipe to serve 2 or 4 and lots of pictures. I really like pictures. There is a good chance I will never try to make something if I don't get to see the picture along with the recipe.

I came across a recipe for a roasted-vegetable and mozzarella tart that looked really good, but I had a hankering for something more pizza-ish. So I started out by changing the recipe a little...then a lot. But will probably make the original recipe sometime too, but it looks real good.

Ingredients:

1/2 of a yellow onion, peeled and cut into wedges

1 red bell pepper, deseeded and cut into thin strips

3 1/2 inch slices of eggplant cut into 1/4 in strips

4 vegetarian meatballs(cut each ball in half)

1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese(I used the veggie shreds kind)

pizza sauce to the amount of your liking(I like a lot)

Box of pizza dough mix(lazy, I know)

Start by slicing your vegetables and tossing them in a bowl



Add the olive oil and toss:

Spread out on pan and ready to go in the oven

Preheat your oven to 400F. Once cup/sliced/shopped to the above specifications, toss the vegetables with little olive oil, place in a roasting pan. Roast for 25 minutes. I threw my pizza stone in the oven while the veggies were roasting to heat it up.

While your veggies are roasting, search through your pantry to for a box of pizza dough mix. Find one, discover it is expired and mix it up anyway, thinking that it should still turn out alright. I had originally planned on making homemade pizza dough but it was getting late and I didn't have time for it to rise an hour when the box mix is ready in five minutes.

I like it saucy:

Mix up that dough(follow the simple directions on the box) and spread it out. Next, look in your pantry for some pizza sauce, realize that you don't have any either and reach into your fridge and pull out some sundried tomato and olive marinara, add some extra Italian herbs and call it pizza sauce. Spread desired amount on to crust.

Now there are a lot of toppings on that beast:

Once the veggies are properly roasted, pull them out of the oven and arrange them any way you would like on your pizza sauce. Strategically arrange the meatball halves so they are about equidistant from each other. Then top with motz. Put this beast on your pizza stone and bake until crust is golden brown and cheese bubbly.

Maybe put a little too much cheese on it, but it was delish!