Summer Greek Arugula Pizza

So summer is finally here, along with its 80-90 degree days when most people feel like the idea of turning on the oven is insane.  I, however, feel a strange sense of urgency and excitement when the summer hits, like I have endless reserves of energy, and its the time to do everything I have been talking about doing all winter and spring.  So, along with my endless list of shelves to clear, papers to organize, scrapbooks to start and picture frames to fill, there are recipes I have been dying to create as well.

Since our Cook-Off last week, I have been in full chef-wannabe mode, not settling for canned soup even at 11pm when I haven't eaten all day, and insisting on cooking it from scratch.  Not wanting my efforts at kickboxing to go to waste (and Evan's supposed P90X workouts) we are trying to cook healthy.  When Evan said he wanted pizza this week, I wanted to be more creative than red sauce and a pound of shredded mozzarella cheese, which I won't ever turn down, but am not all that enthused to make...again.  And since I am not yet versed in making breads and playing with yeasts, I had to be creative.

Which led to this latest dinner surprise...Summer Greek-Style Pizza.  I wanted the crunchy crust of a regular thin crust pizza, without having to roll dough.  I decided to use Pilsbury Crescent Rolls as the crust. Good decision! 
I rolled out my crescent rolls into a 9x13 baking pan, made sure to squeeze the seams together, and baked it in the oven at 375 for 11-12 min (or until golden brown).



Crispy Crescent Roll Crust

For the sauce, I wanted to steer clear of chunky red sauce, and decided to go with pesto.   I spread a thin layer on the top of my baked crescent roll crust using a kitchen "paint" brush.  I brushed the edges of my pizza crust with EVOO.  I had some fresh rosemary on hand, so I crushed up a few sprigs and sprinkled them on top of my pesto crust. 

 

Now for the fun part- the toppings!  It's not a greek style pizza (or summer pizza for that matter) without some delicious caramelized onions.  These may on my list of Top 10 Favorite Foods. I prefer my onions soft, buttery, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.  Some people prefer them with more crunch, but thats too much like regular eye-stinging onions to me.

To make my caramelized onions:

1. I sliced 2 small whole onions, from root to stem.  *(If you prefer them crunchier, slice them horizontally instead)
2. Heat a large pan over med/low heat.  Add 1 tbsp EVOO and 1 tbsp butter

3. Once the butter is melted, throw in onions, enough to cover the bottom of the pan and then a few extra (You more or less want a single layer)

4. Throw in a heavy pinch of kosher salt

5. Keep your onions on med/low heat to sweat them out- stirring every couple of min.

6. When they began to look brown and soft, I gound some fresh black pepper and a few small pinches of sugar on top and stirred.

This can take from 10-30min, depending on how low your heat is and how dark you want your onions.  Mine took about 30 min and looked like this when they were ready to eat!



YUM!!!



Buttery, kind of nutty, soft and delicious.  But thats enough about these amazing little gems...back to the pizza.

Roasted Red Peppers, Pesto, Rosemary, Kalamata Olives

 I layered my caramelized onions onto my pesto and rosemary-ied pizza crust.  I sliced up sweet roasted red peppers, and halved kalamata olives. *(The good  imported Greek kalamata olives are a little SUPER salty, so you may want to give them a quick rinse under some water before use)

With Feta!!

 I really wanted a mixture of salty and sweet flavors but the olive juice has wayy too much salt for me.  Perfect after rinsing off some of that sodium. The finishing touch was the feta cheese, which I spread pretty liberally across the top of my pizza.  Back to the oven, for another 8-9 min to crisp up my outside and make my feta soft, and my toppings melt together underneath all that wonderful cheese. 

When the edges were nice and brown and crispy looking, I took out my pizza and placed a few nice handfuls of arugula on top.

And...viola! 

The finished product, all ready to devour.  It was actually pretty healthy; the feta and the olives are the only sodium filled goodies- the sugar helped balance out the onions and the peppers make up for the rest.   And who can deny that arugula is healthy?! So dinner was a success!!  And Evan got clean up duty :)