Kaliflower Kitchen: Pizza Bianco (using spinach or kale)

One of the things I love to make at home for a quick (most of the time) and yes, healthy meal is pizza because it is so versatile and there is no limit to the variety of pizzas you can make. I can probably come up with a pizza for anything you throw at me. Here I am making a pizza bianco, a white sauce base made with either chopped spinach or kale, roasted potato and smoked mozzarella cheese.

With a little planning you can make your own pizza dough and if you have the time and are so inclined, by all means you should. It took a long time to find a good store-bought pizza dough but I finally found an excellent multigrain pizza dough at Plum Market, which is luckily around the corner from me. I can buy it either frozen and take it out the night before or morning of when I want to use it. Or if I want it for immediate use I get the fresh dough from the pizza counter for $4.00.

Another trick to homemade pizza is to cook it at a very high temperature (around 450) on a hot pizza stone if possible. It should take only about 10-12 minutes to cook. I pre-heat my oven to about 425-450 along with my stone and then roll/stretch the dough onto a cornmeal-crusted pizza paddle, assemble the pizza and slide it onto the stone to bake.

So for the pizza bianco, the ingredients are:
Roasted potatoes, grated pecorino romano (or parmesan) cheese, chopped spinach or kale, grated smoked (or regular) mozzarella (shown below); also olive oil/butter, thinly sliced garlic, onion and shallot (optional), one rolled/stretched pizza dough. To roast potatoes, thinly slice a couple potatoes, drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper, toss and roast in 425 degree oven for 35 min, tossing occasionally.

To make sauce, saute onions, garlic and shallot (if using) in olive oil until sweated, add spinach (or kale) and fold until wilted along with salt and pepper. Then add a little heavy cream and the pecorino romano (or parmesan) cheese and stir until melted into a nice creamy but not runny sauce. If you added too much cream, just cook it down until it's thicker.