Spicy Roasted Pistachio Pizza

Written By Brad English

I was shooting a scene for a commercial recently on a sidewalk in Beverly Hills.  Between set ups, I wandered into a juice bar and found a little jar of spicy Mediterranean pistachios sitting on the counter.  I bought them as a snack, but as soon as I tasted them, I thought “Pizza”!  These would make a great option for a pepperoni-like vegetarian pizza.  Pistachios add a nice crunch that can almost be “meaty” in their nuttiness and with these spicy ones, I was thinking it would be as interesting as using a spicy salty porky product that I love so much!

Let’s get to the pizza.  This one came out great!  I ended up making 2 variations of this pizza.  For the second variation I added some sautéed broccolini, which was a great addition.

 

The Spicy Pistachio Pizza

Peter’s Country Dough

Herb Oil – for the tomatoes and to drizzle on the dough

Halved Garden Cherry Tomatoes

Grated Mozz

Goat Cheese

Spicy Pistachios

Sliced Shallots

Chopped Italian Parsley

*2nd Pizza options:

Sauteed Broccolini with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper

Peter’s Neo-Neopolitan Dough

 

Prep:

The cherry tomatoes will become an ingredient in this pizza, but also function as the sauce.  Slice them in half and cover with Herb Oil to coat and marinade.  You can do this in advance.  For this pizza, I just laid out the tomatoes for this pizza and drizzled some olive oil and sprinkled a little dried basil over the top before baking.

Add the grated mozz and pinches of goat cheese.

Lay some sliced shallots around the pizza and sprinkle on the pistachios.

 

That’s it.  Into the oven.

 

*An interesting thing happened to my pizza on the way to the oven…

I pre-heated the wrong oven!  My pizza stones, steel and pizza grate are all stored in my lower oven. I accidentally pre-heated the top oven.  Uh oh!  I was sitting there with a pizza on the peel ready to go.  By the time I could get one of the stone/steels into the upper oven and got it up to temperature, my pizza would be wet and stuck to the peel.  Besides, I didn’t have all day.

It was then that a lightbulb went off.

I took the cold Baking Steel out of the lower oven and placed it on the stovetop.  I turned the two burners to high and it got really hot in just a few minutes.  With some hot hands, I then placed the hot steel into the hot oven and in went the pizza.

This is one great reason to have a metal pizza surface around like the Pizza – Baking Steel or the new cast aluminum Pizza Grate. i love cooking on my Forno Bravo extra thick pizza stone, but these other products offer some options to play with.

 

In about 7 minutes I pulled the pizza.  Success!  Nicely done.  I sprinkled some chopped Italian Parsley over the top and added some of my favorite Chili Sauce from 800 Degrees Pizzeria. Delicious!  The pistachios were like little toasted pepperoni nuts!  Awesome.

 

*Alternate Version:

For my second version of this I used Peter’s Neo-Neopolitan dough and added some sautéed broccolini.  Again, delicious.

 

Two great vegetarian pizzas with some “chops” to stand up and be counted amongst the saltiest and spicy meaty of meatiest pies!

 

Enjoy!

*There are additional photos of the 2nd pizza in the gallery.  The broccolini added a nice juicy texture and flavor to this pizza.

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