Blue Cheese, Pear and Caramelized Onion Pizza

27Jan08

My inner culinary goddess got it stuck in her head that, because there were both blue cheese and pears in the fridge (a match made in heaven) there must be some way to take those flavors and stretch them out to dinner-sized portions.

Turns out, this pizza was so good that between two of us we ate the whole thing before it had time to get cold. Goes great with beer and movies on the couch during yet another windy and rainy winter evening.

You will need:

1 recipe pizza dough – I cheat and use Trader Joe’s pizza-dough, and for this recipe I used whole wheat – makes a medium pizza

1 pear, sliced into thin wedges – I can’t imagine any variety of pear that wouldn’t work, I had an asian pear which, sliced into smaller wedges, baked up sweet but still firm and juicy.

as much mozarella as you like, shredded – I ended up using one of those individually packaged balls

at least 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or crushed

1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled – I had a delicious Danish Blue on hand, and as this is the first time I have cooked/baked with blue cheese, I wanted to be sure the flavor would not overwhelm the sweetness of the onions and pear. The general consenseus was that the pizza needed a little more blue cheese, but not by much!

1 medium onion, caramelized – slice, cook in 1 tbls butter and 2 tbls olive oil over very-low-heat for about an hour (stirring/flipping occasionally), then cook over medium-high heat (stirring often) until golden brown

***optional*** about 1/2 cup broccoli, chopped small – I wanted a little extra filler but not too much flavor

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

If dough is refrigerated, leave out at room temperature for 1/2 an hour.

Mix in a bowl about two-thirds of the shredded mozarella with the chopped broccoli, add half of crushed/chopped garlic, mix, set aside.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface – as often as I try for a nice circular shape, I usually end up with a rustic rectangle, which fits better on my lightly oiled cookie-sheet anyhow. Once desired geometry is achieved, transfer dough to cookie-sheet, rub surface lightly with olive oil.

Spread all of the mozarella-broccoli mixture first. Then pears, onions, blue cheese. Top with the last of the mozarella and garlic.

Bake for about 10 minutes

Filed under: for the love of food   |  2 Comments
Tags: blue cheese, cooking, divine, food, pears, pizza