Goats cheese sunblushed tomato and caramelised red onion pizza

 Having two days off in a row is great this time of year because I can spend one catching up with friends and family and the other I can have a nice lazy day in front of the TV with some nice home cooked food. Izi and I usually take it in turns with whose going to cook up something but with my brother coming over to stay for a couple of days I thought I would go for one of his favourite foods, pizza.

 

Everybody loves pizza and what’s not to love? You can pretty much have anything you want on a pizza, in fact when a few friends and I did our own come dine with me evenings, I went for a kids theme and for my starter I made a selection of pizzas: one with chilli chorizo and peppers, one with ham pineapple and avocado and also the one which I have decided to make today, my goats cheese, caramelised red onion and sunblushed tomatoes pizza.

 

You can make the sauce up in advance and keep in the fridge to be used not only for a pizza base but can also be used for pasta dishes and works well as a sauce to go with chicken or fish. To save time you can also make up the sunblushed tomatoes and the caramelised onions in advance too.

 

For the sauce:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Olive oil

½ white Onion sliced

2 Garlic cloves pureed

2 tsp. Paprika

5 tsp. Tomato puree

1 tin of Chopped tomatoes

2 tsp. Mixed herbs

1 tsp. Dried oregano

2 tsp. Sugar

Salt and pepper

 Start off by sweating off the onion and garlic in the olive oil in a saucepan on a medium heat, after 5 minutes add the paprika and the tomato puree and stir.

Then add the tomatoes and bring to the boil, then add the rest of the ingredients and turn down to simmer for 30 minutes then take it off the heat blend it with a hand blender and leave to cool. Cover and refrigerate if you are not using it straight away.

For the sunblushed tomatoes:

Cut cherry tomatoes into half then in half again and lay them on a tray with garlic and extra virgin olive oil salt and pepper, cook them on the bottom shelf of an oven on 100c for an hour.

For the caramelised onions:

Slice a red onion and put in a saucepan with 50ml balsamic vinegar, 25ml red wine, 25 ml of red wine vinegar and 1 tbsp of brown sugar. Bring to the boil then turn down to a medium heat for 30 minutes stirring frequently.

For the pizza base:

 

Ingredients:

2 cups of warm water (43-46c)

2 cups of plain flour

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. white sugar

1 pack (7g) fast action dried yeast

 

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and leave for 10 minutes until mix becomes almost creamy looking.

Add the rest of the ingredients and start to mix well with a wooden spoon then once it has started to become dough knead it with your hands, make into a big ball and leave for 5 minutes.

Transfer the dough onto a floury surface and using a rolling pin, roll out and then place on a tray on some greaseproof paper.

When you are ready to top your pizza spread the sauce to cover the base then sprinkle some grated mozzarella, add the caramelised onions, some sliced soft goats cheese and the sunblushed tomatoes and bake at 200c for 15-20 minutes.When cooked top the finished pizza with some wild rocket and enjoy. ☺