Vegetable Pizza with Eggplant, Peppers and Mozzarella

Step-by-step recipe

1. Make the tomato sauce. You don't need much of it, but don't reach for a jar of tomato paste or a sachet of ketchup. Fresh tomatoes are what the sauce needs. The recipe for salsa di pomodoro tomato sauce is very simple. You can vary it by adding other ingredients, but the essence stays the same. Set aside 1-2 tomatoes for the topping; pour boiling water over the rest, peel them and remove the seeds. Blend the tomato flesh into a purée. Add salt, 1 tsp sugar and pepper. Simmer covered until the sauce is thick enough. As a last resort, you can reduce 1 cup of good tomato juice in a frying pan. Although, to be fair, it's most likely made from the same tomato paste anyway.
   
2. Peel the onion and slice it into thin strips. Sweet onion varieties work best, such as the famous Yalta onion from Crimea. Add 1-2 tbsp wine vinegar to the sliced onion and leave it to marinate for an hour.
3. Cut the eggplant into thin rounds, no more than 10 mm thick, and fry them in vegetable oil until lightly golden. Don't overcook them. People often recommend sprinkling eggplant with salt or soaking it in salted water. That's up to you.
   
4. Roast the pepper so that the skin comes away. Remove the seeds and cut the roasted pepper into thin strips lengthwise.
5. Chop the basil, not too fine and not too coarse. Finely chop the spring onions, green parts only.
6. Slice the remaining tomatoes into very thin rounds. No need to remove the seeds.
7. Make the dough using my recipe.

   The recipe is simple and easy, we've adopted it as our go-to and recommend it to everyone. Nobody has complained so far, except perhaps out of sheer contrariness. Read “Pizza dough. Guaranteed result”. It's all very simple there. Roll out the dough and place it in a baking pan lightly greased with vegetable oil. Many people ask how thick the dough ends up. My answer: in the pan the dough is about 7-8 mm thick. After baking it gets a little thicker.

8. Prick the dough with a fork in several places so that steam doesn't make the pizza “puff up” during baking.
   
9. Spread the dough with tomato sauce, taking particular care over the rim, because for some unknown reason the topping usually doesn't make it onto the rim. And dough with tomato is always tasty on its own.
   
10. Scatter the chopped basil over the sauce. Many recipes say that basil, and herbs in general, should go on top of the topping. Unfortunately, during baking the herbs dry out and even char. So it's better to put the herbs down first and cover them with the topping, which keeps their flavour.
    
11. Spread the fried eggplant rounds evenly over the whole pizza. Press the eggplant lightly into the pizza, even pushing it slightly into the dough, but don't overdo it.
    
12. Rinse the pickled onion under cold water to wash off the remaining vinegar. Spread the pickled onion over the entire surface of the pizza. Sprinkle the whole pizza with dried oregano — literally 1-2 pinches.
    
13. Lay out the strips of roasted bell pepper.
    
14. Take the mozzarella out of the brine and grate it on a coarse grater. Strictly speaking, the usual advice is to cut mozzarella into pieces and dot them around. But then the melted cheese ends up in big patches, whereas grated cheese spreads evenly. I like it better that way.
    
15. Lay out the sliced tomato rounds.
    
16. Sprinkle the pizza with finely chopped spring onions. And with capers too.
    
17. The very last layer is hard Parmesan, finely grated. Firstly, it gives the vegetable pizza a slightly sharp flavour, and secondly, it binds the topping and keeps it from spreading.
    
18. Drizzle the pizza with a little olive oil.
19. One more thing: I recommend letting the pizza stand with its topping for 10-15 minutes so the dough rises a little. That said, many people prefer a thin crust, even though it will be drier.
20. Bake the vegetable pizza for 20 minutes at 190-200 °C. This is not a rule, just a suggestion. Every oven has its own quirks. My baking temperature and time will be close to yours, but they are still individual. After 15 minutes of baking, keep an eye on the dough so the vegetable pizza doesn't burn.
    
21. Cut the finished vegetable pizza into 6-8 slices with a pizza wheel.
    
22. Scatter a small handful of fresh basil leaves over the pizza. It improves both the flavour and the look. A vegetable pizza should be a feast for the eyes.
23. And eat the pizza right away. Vegetable pizza is at its best while hot. I've never understood people who reheat pizza