Pizza and a Salad

This is such a fun way to serve pizza and salad.  It is a knife and fork dish and a fun play on the classic pizza and ranch dressing combo.  The warm, crunchy pizza crust, spicy pizza sauce, and thick cheese pair wonderful with the cool, creamy ranch drizzled greens.  You can start with any choice of pizza, the one above is a supreme style but this is also delicious on a cheese or margarita style pizza for a meatless dish, and any favorite salad dressing-obviously ranch is a classic choice but blue cheese and Italian both are very good combos.  If you aren’t up for making your own pizza the idea is the same when served over a hot delivery pie (or be like me and do this at the cafeteria to improve on both the quality of their pizza and the salad bar).

I started this pizza with my favorite dough and homemade sauce (recipe below).  I topped it thickly with mozzarella, green peppers, red onions, mushrooms, and pepperoni.  Bake the pizza until browned and crisp then let cool while you make the salad.  I used Fresh Express’s Artisanal Sierra Crisp Herb Blend because the soft leaves and bright flavor are the perfect contrast to the heaviness of the pizza.  Toss the greens in a little dressing and add any veggies you prefer raw, in this case I added sliced tomatoes to the salad.  Slice the pizza and then cover it with the salad.  Drizzle additional dressing over the top and serve.  You can serve as above when feeding a crowd, but if you are planning for pizza leftovers you may want to place the salad individually on the slices as you serve them so as not to wilt the lettuce too much. 

Pizza Sauce

• 1 (29 oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 (6 oz) can tomato paste
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
• 1 tbsp dried basil
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

1. Combine in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Taste, salt as needed.
2. Pour sauce into the cups of a muffin tin, adding about 1/2 cup of sauce to each muffin cup.
3. Freeze.  Once frozen solid, remove sauce “muffins” from the tin by running hot water over the back of the baking sheet if necessary and then popping muffins out.  Place all sauce muffins in a freezer bag.  Thaw as needed for pizzas.  I use about a 1/2 cup of sauce per pizza.

Fresh Express has provided me with both of their Artisanal Salad blends as well as a collection of baby lettuce seeds and coupons in exchange for spreading the word as an Artisan Ambassador. Stay tuned, I will be posting 3-4 recipes a month for the next two months that use these delicious salad blends.  You can get a $1 off coupon to try their new salads for yourself by visiting their website.