Tuna Pizza with Tomatoes, Olives and Mozzarella – Step-by-Step Recipe
Tuna pizza is one of the easiest pizzas you can make with canned fish. Canned tuna in its own juice usually comes in handy little cans (150-180 g) – just enough for one pizza. Do check that the tuna in the can is in whole chunks, not flaked and not packed in tomato sauce.
Pizza has spread all over the world, long ago outgrew the limits of the “real Italian” pizza and became the best-loved and most international dish there is. It owes its popularity, above all, to how simple it is to make and to the endless variety of ways to make it. The many kinds of pizza found in the world's cuisines may differ from the Italian ones, but they are no less delicious for it. Regional and local pizzas often reflect the local produce, the tastes of the people and even the local religious customs.
In Israel, pizzeria chains offer kosher pizzas. The Japanese “pizza”, okonomiyaki, is a fried flatbread with seafood and vegetables. In any pizzeria in the world you will be offered the “classics” – pizza Margherita, four-cheese pizza or pizza with sausage. But the pizza is sure to be seasoned with local colour and the cook's own imagination. Any Italian will tell you that real pizza exists only in Italy, and will give you the address of the one true pizzeria, which usually belongs to him or to his friends.
If you are a fish lover, you are bound to enjoy pizza with tuna, tomatoes and olives, and soft mozzarella cheese. I like this pizza very much, and I like it with plenty of tomatoes and tuna. Tuna is not a cheap fish, though, so sometimes we make a similar pizza with sardines.
Tuna (Latin: Thunnus), large as the fish is, belongs to the mackerel family. A tuna's whole life is constant motion. In California, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a big school of tuna circles endlessly in deep blue water. A mesmerising sight.
Tuna is eaten widely, and I think the record holder is Japan, where you can buy tuna practically anywhere. So making tuna pizza with tuna canned in its own juice is never difficult. What matters is fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.
Ingredients
34 cm pizza
- Pizza dough 400 g
- Tuna 1 can
- Mozzarella 100 g
- Tomatoes 2
- Basil, parsley, dill 2-3 sprigs
- Olive oil 2 tbsp
- Tomato sauce 2-3 tbsp
- Parmesan 1 tbsp
- Green olives 10-12
- Oregano to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Make the dough – yeast-free, or a yeast dough following the Pizza Dough recipe, which we adopted as our standard long ago and which always gives us an excellent pizza. Once the dough has risen, knead it briefly and stretch it into a round 5-7 mm thick. Lay the dough on a pizza pan lightly greased with olive oil. Be sure to prick the dough with a fork in several places. If you like a thin, slightly crisp crust, you can add the toppings straight away. If you want a thicker, softer crust, cover the dough on the pan with a cloth and leave it in a warm place for 15-30 mins to rise a little more.
- Prepare all the ingredients for the topping. An important ingredient for tuna pizza is the tomato sauce. Pizzerias often use ketchup from a packet or tomato paste. Don't. If you didn't get round to making homemade tomato sauce in the summer, simply take 2-3 ripe tomatoes (or, as a last resort, half a cup of homemade tomato juice). Remove the seeds, the skin and the core from the tomatoes. Puree the flesh, add a pinch of salt and pepper and nutmeg on the tip of a knife. Pour the mixture into a frying pan with 1 tbsp olive oil and simmer the sauce until it is as thick as you like.
- Open the can of tuna and drain off the liquid. Pull the tuna apart with your fingers into large but thin pieces. The tomatoes for tuna pizza needn't be seeded or peeled. But if you wish, scald the tomatoes with boiling water and slip off the skins. Remove the seeds. Cut the tomatoes into thin slices. Strictly speaking, the amount of tomato is up to you. I, for one, really like the taste of tuna with lots of tomatoes. But you can do without tomatoes altogether and settle for the tomato sauce alone.
- Cut the pitted green olives in half lengthwise. Pick all the leaves off the herbs. Drain the mozzarella and cut it into very thin slices of any size. Grate the Parmesan.
- Spread the tomato sauce over the dough on the pan. Sprinkle with a pinch of dried oregano.
- Arrange the tuna in an even layer over the tomato sauce, spreading it out as evenly as you can.
- Lay the sliced tomatoes over the tuna and sprinkle with very finely chopped herbs.
- Arrange the mozzarella pieces, spacing them evenly. Lay the cheese out so that some of the tomatoes are left uncovered.
- Add the green olive halves. In fact, if the olives aren't very large, you can leave them whole – just remove the pit if there is one. Sprinkle the pizza with another pinch of dried oregano and drizzle with olive oil.
- And finally, sprinkle the tuna pizza with Parmesan, putting most of it along the edge and less in the middle of the pizza.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and put the pizza pan in to bake. Every oven bakes differently, so take 20 mins as a guide. There is nothing in the topping of a fish pizza that needs cooking through, so go by the dough. As soon as the underside of the crust starts to brown, the pizza is ready.
- Take the tuna pizza out of the oven and cut it into 6-8 slices with a pizza cutter.
- Serve the pizza hot, without letting it cool. If you like, scatter a handful of fresh green basil leaves over the finished pizza.
- Pizza with tuna, tomatoes, olives and mozzarella is a wonderful combination of flavours. It gets eaten very quickly, especially with a glass of tomato juice.
| Yield: | 34 cm pizza |
| Calories: | 267 |
| Prep: | 1 h 30 mins |
| Cook: | 30 mins |
| Total: | 2 h |
| Category: | Pizza |
| Cuisine: | Italian cuisine |
| Rating: |
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4.8
(5)
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