In the Midnight Hour She Cried More More More Zucchini!!!

As I sat pondering one day what I was going to do with the rest of the zucchini and summer squash I still had, I started to wonder how it would be on pizza. If you read my blog regularly you probably already know that my Grandma's pizza dough is my go to dough. It is perfect every single time. Truly. And it's delicious too. Since I've posted how to make it twice, I'll just say that you can find the recipe on the Stromboli blog.

As previously mentioned, zucchini and summer squash contain lots of water so you can't just cut it up and toss it on a pizza all willy nilly or you'll get a blob of mush on top soggy dough. So, slice it up into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices and then line them up on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.


Some of them look like half moons because I scraped out some of the seeds that were large and annoying to me. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and then put in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes. Check them, they should look a little drier and they should be browning on the bottom.




At the same time, I decided to roast a Vidalia onion to put on the pizza as well. Just cut off the top, leaving the root end in tact, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and wrap in two sheets of aluminum foil. I use two sheets when roasting onions, shallots or garlic because with just one, sometimes the oil seeps out and burns on the bottom of my stove. Not pleasant.




When the dough is ready, (the recipe is enough for two pizzas... please remember that because I didn't the first time I made it and when my pizza went in the oven, it grew to the size of Texas!), stretch it out over your pizza pan. Since I only made one pizza, I took the second ball of dough and stuck it in the freezer for another day.




From here, brush the dough with some extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with a fresh herb. I chose thyme because I have it in my garden and it sounded like a good match to the squash. I also have chives from my garden here, but I ended up using them in the salad instead. You can also sprinkle with salt and pepper at this point if you like. Also on the board here, the onions after roasting and chopped.




Then I put my baked squash on top of the dough. Yes, I could have lined them up all nice and neat and made it look perfect, but that's not the kind of cook I am. I like it rustic and messy.



I used two whole (medium sized) summer squash and half of one very large zucchini. It's a lot, but it shrinks in the oven quite a bit. When you have it all on top the dough spread the onions on top of the squash and place in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Check it... is the dough starting to brown on the bottom? If not, let it go for another 5 minutes. After that time, top with cheese. I used provolone, but mozzarella is great too. Bake another 5 minutes until the cheese is nicely melted. And then... oh yum! Seriously. YUM!!!!!

And Still Another Foccacia Bread

I've written about foccacia bread before. Several times. And now, I have another. A real crowd pleaser I might add. I always said that nothing could top the Rosemary Garlic Foccacia, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. Shallot Thyme Foccacia is pretty darn yummy. I start out by roasting the shallots. It's really the same process as roasting garlic. I cut off the tops and the bottoms of the each shallot (I use about 6-8 shallots for this recipe), place them on two sheets of foil and then drizzle with olive oil. Wrap the shallots up and place in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. When they come out, they look like this and smell insanely divine!


I'm not going to go through the whole bread recipe again, since it's already on here twice. You can get the ins and outs of making the bread down at here or here. We'll just fast forward to the dough being ready to be baked.

Take your shallots and chop them up rather fine. Then take a good bunch of fresh thyme and add it to the shallots. You'll need to take the leaves off the stems. It's a little tedious, but I find herb aroma rather soothing so it doesn't bother me to strip these stems of their lovely little leaves.



To the shallots and thyme, add about a teaspoon of salt and about a quarter cup of olive oil. Mix well and then spread the mixture over the top of the bread. Then bake at 400 for about 20 minutes. The edges should be just starting to brown a little and the top will be golden.




YUM!