Pizza with pistachio pesto, grilled eggplants, sun-dried tomatoes and Stracciatella cheese

• 1 hour to prepare •  20 minutes to cook  • Serves 4

Love at first bite

A few days ago, I made this combination in pasta form.
Since then, I haven’t been able to get the ingredient combination out of my mind. I knew it was destined to become a really great pizza, so here we have it – a middle Spring pizza with sun-dried tomatoes, grilled eggplants, and a few spoons of pistachio pesto.

Instead of mozzarella, I used the creamy filling of burrata. For me, this pizza hits every note a good well-rounded pizza should – sweet, salty, creamy & crunchy, with a nice peppery bite from the eggplants.

Here are ingredients for a 4-serving recipe (4 pizzas):

1 kg pizza dough divided into 4 balls (you may find here my pizza dough recipe and here my recipe for sourdough pizza)
500 g aubergine
30 sun-dried tomatoes in oil
200 g Stracciatella cheese
150 g pistachio pesto
EVO oil
salt and pepper

1. Prepare eggplants: wash and dry them, then cut off their peduncle. Peel eggplants “half-way”, and slice them longitudinally about half a centimeter thick
2. Place eggplant slices in a colander and sprinkle them with cooking salt. Top with an upturned plate and place a weight above it. Let them sit for 1 hour
3. When you are ready to bake the pizzas, take the dough out of the fridge, leaving at least 1 hour and half for it to warm up and get pliable
4. When eggplants' 1-hour time has passed, carefully rinse them and place them to dry well on a clean cloth
5. Grill eggplants until they are nicely browned and soft, without crowding. Remove to a plate, cut them into pieces and sprinkle with salt
6. Drain sun-dried tomatoes from the oil in which they are preserved and chop them into small pieces
7. Preheat oven to 270°C (or, better, as far as oven temperatures go)
8. Generously dust the counter with semolina flour. Make the pizzas one at a time. Dip your hands in flour and lift a ball of dough. Very gently lay the dough across your fists and carefully stretch it by bouncing the dough in a circular motion on your hands, carefully giving it a little stretch with each bounce. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss. When the dough is stretched out to your satisfaction (about 25 cm in diameter), lay it on the baking tray covered by baking paper
9. Spread 1 tablespoon of pistachio pesto on each pizza and sprinkle some eggplant on top
10. Bake the pizza for about 10 minutes. If the top gets done before the bottom, you will need to move the baking tray to a lower self before the next round
11. When the crust of the pizza is golden - it means that the pizza is almost ready -, add stracciatella cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on top
12. Remove the pizza from the oven and transfer it to a wooden cutting board. Serve and enjoy!

Nutrition Facts are detailed in the table below. Data is provided per serving.