We are on a mission to find the best pizza, and a new challenger has entered the stadium. We like our pizzas thin and crispy. on weekends when I have time I like to make my own bases, but if I am being lazy, we use thin wraps for the base and pizza stones, slowly heated in the oven to attain a crispy base (you can use baking trays too, get them as hot as possible before placing the pizzas on them). When we eventually buy our own place; a wood-fired pizza oven will be the first thing we install.
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to brush and drizzle
1 onion, chopped
350g lamb mince
1 tablespoon ras el hanout*
1/4 cup dried cranberries, soaked in a little boiling water for 15 minutes
4 wraps
1 cup hummus
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
2/3 cup flat leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
2/3 cup crumbled feta
lemon wedges to serve
Place pizza stones in oven and preheat to 230°C. Heat oil in frypan and gently cook the onion, stirring for 10-15 minutes or until it starts to caramelise. Add lamb and cook for 4-5 minutes or until browned. Stir in the Ras el hanout and drained cranberries and season to taste.
Brush the warps with a little olive oil and heat them on the pizza stones for about 5 minutes or until lightly browned.
spread the pizza bases with the hummus, sprinkle with the mince mixture then add pine nuts, parsley and feta. Drizzle with a little olive oil and return to the over for 2 minutes until warmed through.
Serve with lemon wedges to squeeze.
*Ras el hanout or Rass el hanout [Wiki] (Arabic: ??? ???????) is available from good delis. A popular blend of spices that is used across North Africa. The name means “top of the shop” in Arabic, and refers to a mixture of the best spices a seller has to offer.
There is no definitive set combination of spices that makes up Ras el hanout. Each shop, company, person would have their own secret combination containing over a dozen spices. Typically they would include cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ground chili peppers, coriander, cumin, nutmeg, peppercorn, and turmeric.
Some recipes include over one hundred ingredients, some rarely found in Western food, such as ash berries, chufa, Grains of Paradise, orris root, Monk’s pepper, cubebs, dried rosebud, Usually all ingredients are toasted and then ground up together. Individual recipes are often improvised.
Ras el hanout is used in almost every kind of food; sometimes rubbed on meat, and stirred into rice. It is often believed to be an aphrodisiac.
Now I am not a fan of pizza, which I think gives me the unique ability to be able to spot a truly great pizza when I see one.
My favourite flavour is called a CCC&C pizza:
Chicken
Cranberry (instead of tomato base)
Cashew nut
Camembert
Give it a crack, I think it would be a good contender in your hunt for the perfect pizza!!
xx
Oh god that sounds delicious. I once put together a salmon, pear and camembert pizza… (oddly enough I just had all of these things at hand….) and it was amazing.