Top Tip: As with many pizza sauces, the Courgette & Basil Sauce can also be used as a dip or as a pasta sauce!
- Baker: Rich Payne / Dough & Behold
- IG: @dough_and_behold
- Sauce: Courgette & Basil
- Prep time: 10-15 mins
- Bake Time: 90 seconds (in a pizza oven)
Courgette & Basil Sauce Method:
- Slice your two courgettes roughly into smaller chunks and place into a hot steamer for 4 minutes, then drain and drop them into your kitchen blender along with the garlic, the whole pack of basil leaves, olive oil and Oatily cream.
- Blitz these together for about 20 seconds until it becomes a creamy light green colour.
- Drop a teaspoon into the sauce and have a little taste. I normally add a good pinch of salt and a few cracks of black pepper at this point and then give it one final blitz.
- Empty it into a serving bowl and set it to one side until you are ready to make your pizza. You can also place it into a container and it will keep in the fridge for 3 days.
Making The Dough
The dough recipe and method I use here is my standard Neapolitan pizza dough which can be found HERE on the Cotswolds Website.
Making the Pizza
- Open out your dough ball as usual then grab your courgette and basil cream and drop one large ladle of sauce onto your pizza and spread evenly around the base.
- Grate a little Grana Padano over the top and then place your sliced mini mozzarella balls evenly around your pizza.
- Add a drizzle of oil and some chilli flakes then slide your pizza peel under the pizza, give it a test shimmy to make sure its not sticking to your peel, then reshape and launch into your pizza oven. If you are using an Ooni pizza oven I like to bake this at around 400ºC for about 90 seconds, turning as necessary to give my pizza a nice even bake.
- Once your pizza is ready, remove from the oven and place your pizza on a wire rack to cool.
- Whilst it’s cooling, grab 6 slices of salame and place them evenly around your pizza. You may prefer to slice your pizza into six slices first, and then place a slice of salame on each slice.
- Grate over a little more grana Padano to finish, a little sprinkle of sea salt, a drizzle of truffle honey and serve to friends. Delicious!
- Whilst the ingredients are sadly not Irish, this pizza is almost the same colour as the famous Tricolour Irish flag which works for me!
Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit.
