AUBERGINE PIZZA

As I have mentioned in a couple of previous posts Pascal has a very good but very limited recipe repertoire - he can cook some great pastas such as Pasta Carbonara or Pasta with Tomato and Basil however the other dish in his collection is aubergine pizza. We used to have it loads but Arabella hates aubergines and so it has kind of slipped off our radar.

However Arabella is away with her father this week and so we decided this is the perfect time to cook it again. We are in France so obviously used a French pizza base - it might be sightly different to what you can buy in the supermarket at home so just improvise!

Ingredients for 2-4 people depending on how hungry you are:

4 tbsp of olive oil
1 aubergine, sliced 
3 tomatoes, chopped into small pieces (not 4 as in the picture)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
A pizza base
250g mozzarella cheese
1 tsp oregano
A few black olives
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven according to the pizza base instructions. Ours was at 190 C.

Chop the tomatoes and crush the garlic and heat over a medium heat in a frying pan with 2 tbsp of olive  oil.

Stir regularly, add the garlic and season well after about 10 minutes and then cook for a further 10 minutes.

While the tomatoes are cooking, chop the aubergine and start cooking them until they are soft in another frying pan with 2 tbsp of olive oil over a medium heat.

I didn't realise how powerful Pascal's cooker was and managed to burn quite a few - whoops! It's important to keep your eye on them as they can cook very quickly (it took about 7 minutes in total to cook all of ours).

Put the aubergines on one side when cooked. By this time the tomato sauce should also be just about finished.

If necessary put your pizza base in a baking tray and prick (this will depend on your packet instructions).

Add the tomato sauce. It's ok to have leftovers - we had quite a bit which we will use for a pasta sauce. You don't want to overdo it and have the pizza too soggy.

Add the aubergine.

Then the mozzarella.

Then the oregano and olives - you can be as generous as you like here!

Finally bake in the oven according to the packet instructions - ours took 25 minutes.

Rest on the side for 5 minutes and then tuck in and serve.

We always have it with a nice crisp green salad and find the pizza can feed 4 people although there are other times when we devour the lot between the two of us! The pizza tastes so good and healthy with just the aubergine topping - it makes a change from my usual choice of 4 cheese with pepperoni or salami. A perfect quick and easy meal.