Dainty Radish Pizza and Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust (Pizza Night!)

Thinly sliced radishes with feta, goat cheese, and shredded cheeses in a spring radish pizza.

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In the early weeks of Spring, while we're eating out of the tail end of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve and scraping frost off the bags of vegetables in the freezer, I start to moon over the upcoming Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) season.  I dream about trying old favorites, or new recipes with the vegetables I know I'll be getting, and ponder what might be new on the farm this year. One standby that will be in Spring farm share boxes is the radish.

I knew I was going to put radishes on a pizza long before the CSA season began.  Shoot, I throw so much other CSA produce on pizzas, such as kohlrabi greens, kale, broccoli rabe and sweet potatoes--see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index for ideas--why not radishes? Since I'm the primary radish fan in the house, and I don't want to overwhelm the neighbors with radish gifts, I wanted to try to entice my family in a new way.

One way for me to keep things interesting is to change up the way I prepare a vegetable.  If I'm used to roasting something, why not shred it, like this butternut squash-stuffed Chicken Saltimbocca?  I've already enjoyed slicing radishes on sandwiches, and shredding them in sandwich spread--but when I sliced a mess of pretty Easter egg-colored radishes on my Benriner (link to Alanna's post that had me searching one out for my own) I needed share this, and share this in time for Easter.

I knew that radishes with butter and salt make a lovely sandwich, and that's where I was going with this pizza.  What I didn't expect was how delicate the pizza would look and taste.  It's a very dainty pizza, feminine, if you will, just like Crystal the composting guinea pig's delicate, feminine ankles [you're welcome for my not posting a picture of a dainty pig ankle, but know that I really wanted to]. However it is robust enough for my son (who would happily live on meat forever) to eat all the leftovers.  I think the combination of cheeses put it over the top for him--feta, goat, and shredded Italian blend? I'm in!


For more recipes using radishes, please see my Radish Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


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Missing: goat cheese and shredded Italian blend cheese.

Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust, makes 2 crusts 

(yes, I'll post a Fresh Herb pizza too)

Ingredients

• 8 ounces (by weight) whole wheat flour (approximately 2 cups)
• 1½ ounces cornmeal (approximately ¼ cup)
• 11¼ ounces unbleached all purpose flour (approximately 2½ cups)
• ⅜  cup olive oil
• 1⅓ cups water
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 packages pizza crust yeast (2¼ teaspoons per package)
• 1½ teaspoons salt

For general directions on making pizza crust, please refer to my Pizza Primer post.  [If you don't like jumping around the blog to get the recipe to make the crust, please let me know in the comments--this is the first time I've tried this technique with a pizza recipe and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it shortens things if you know how to make pizza dough and want to try this. On the other hand, I'm not really helping if you want to make this dough and need to refer to the primer. Let me know.]

Dainty Radish Pizza

Ingredients

• Tender/Crunchy Pizza crust (above) or the pizza crust of your choice
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 clove roasted garlic (here's how I put up my garlic crop each year)
• 1 cup thinly sliced radishes
• ¼ cup crumbled goat cheese
• ⅓ cup crumbled feta cheese
• ½ cup shredded Italian cheese blend
• a healthy pinch of kosher salt
• several grinds of pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and if you've got a pizza stone let it preheat as well. Here's an Amazon affiliate link to a stone similar to mine.
2. On an oiled piece of parchment paper or a cookie sheet, stretch out dough into a pleasing shape. 
3. In a small bowl combine olive oil and smashed garlic until blended.
4. Spread across prepared dough. Top with radishes, cheeses, and salt and pepper.  
5. Bake for 5-8 minutes, then slide the parchment out and bake directly on the pizza stone another 3-5 minutes until cheeses are browned. 
6. Slice (Amazon affiliate link to my beloved pizza slicer) and serve.  Leftovers reheated well.

Since Friday nights are Pizza Nights around here [even if I don't post a pizza recipe, know that we're eating pizza] and Friday Night Pizza Nights are worthy of Fiestas, I'm glad to share this Dainty Radish Pizza with Fiesta Friday. Another Friday we'll really get our Fiesta on with a Cheater Margarita Smoothie, but I need more taste testing  . . . nah, the recipe is fine--I just want to do more taste testing!

This post is also shared with the From the Farm Blog Hop, the Clever Chicks Blog Hop, Simple Supper Tuesday, Fresh Foods Wednesday, What's Cookin' Wednesday