SPRING PIZZA with PESTO, PROSCIUTTO, and PEAS

It’s the first week of Spring, and we don’t know about you, but we are definitely feeling the need for a little Spring cleaning — everything from the weird winter dust that’s gathered under our beds to running a squeegee over all the windows around the house to get ride of all the gray grime from winter rain and snow.

Most importantly, we’re excited to purge our refrigerator of all the bits and baubles leftover from winter’s rich, heavy food and cooking, wipe down the shelves and drawers, and get ready for all the fresh, light spring green things! Of course, we don’t throw perfectly good food away, so we’re turning to our usual ways to “use up” leftovers, clean out the shelves and drawers, and get ready for all the freshness! Hello random delicious vegetable stir fries, overflowing omelets, kitchen sink soups and stews, and of course our favorite, pizza with anything and everything.

We always have at least one, maybe two versions of a pesto in our frig, corners of cheese that are leftover from that cheeseboard we served at some recent get-together, and random little vegetables in the crisper. Throw them all onto prepared dough and we’ve got pizza night, and a cleaner frig, sorted.

SPRING PIZZA with PESTO, PROSCIUTTO, and PEAS

makes 4 personal-size pizzas

Ingredients:

• 1 16-ounce package of prepared pizza dough;
• 2 tablespoons cornmeal or flour for the work surface and pan;
• ½ cup pesto;
• 8 ounces fresh mozzarella, or any other soft, meltable cheese;
• 4 ounces sliced prosciutto;
• ½ cup fresh English peas;
• olive oil;
• optional fresh toppings: sliced sugar snap peas, pea shoots/tendrils;
• to serve: flaky sea salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Sprinkle a flat work surface and a baking sheet with cornmeal or flour.
2. Prepare the Pizza Dough: Remove the dough from the package and divide into four portions. Gently stretch and pull each portion of dough into a thin disc. Place each disc of dough onto the baking sheet. You may need to use two baking sheets.
3. Assemble Pizzas: Spread each disc of pizza dough with about 2 tablespoons of pesto. Add cheese, then prosciutto, then peas. Brush the exposed pizza crust with olive oil. Place baking sheets in oven and bake pizzas until the crust is deep golden brown. Remove pizzas from oven and allow to cool. Drizzle entire pizza with a thin stream of olive oil.

Add any fresh toppings right before slicing and serving.

RECIPE NOTES and SHOPPING RESOURCES

1. Pizza dough: Whole Foods Market has fresh prepared pizza dough in the refrigerator section, where the other prepared and packaged foods are.
2. Pesto: We always have some slight variation of this Green Herb Pesto in our refrigerator.
3. Cheese: We used fresh ovoline mozzarella (the kind shaped like balls, in briny water), sliced into rounds. You can use any kind of “melty” cheese
4. Prosciutto: Because the pizza is baked, don’t worry about super duper high quality prosciutto. Besides, you’re using leftovers anyway, right?