These authentic pizzas are incredibly easy to make, you can buy ready made pizza dough or use your favorite pizza dough recipe. It also makes a great topping for open faced sandwiches, using think slices of sour dough, French baguette or ciabatta loaves as a base.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients:
- 1 lb pizza dough
- 1 tbsp semolina or cornmeal (for baking)
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 red onion, very thinly sliced
- olive oil, for cooking
- 1 lb sirloin steak
- 3 cups butternut squash, cut into ½ inch cubes
- 1 ½ cups crumbled blue cheese (Cashel Blue if available)
- 2 cups arugula
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method:
- To prepare the toppings, put the sugar and vinegar in a small pan and bring to simmer until the sugar has dissolved.
- Remove from the heat and add the red onion slices.
- Season to taste and set aside to allow the flavours to combine.
- Heat some olive oil in a heavy-based grill pan (cast iron is best) and cook the steak over a high heat for 5 minutes on each side until just rare. 5.
- Remove from the heat and leave to rest.
- Add a little more olive oil to a sauté pan and sauté the pumpkin for 8-10 minutes on a medium heat until the pumpkin is cooked through but still holding its shape, set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 440°F.
- Cut the dough in half and roll each half out on a lightly floured surface to a very thin large rectangle.
- Sprinkle the semolina on to two large, flat cookie sheets and transfer the pizza dough on top.
- Drizzle with olive oil and arrange the sautéed pumpkin and blue cheese on the pizzas.
- Bake for 8-12 minutes until the base is crisp and blue cheese has melted.
- Cut the rested beef into thin slices.
- Remove the pizza from the oven and scatter the sweet pickled red onions and arugula on top, top with slices of rare sliced steak.
- Serve on a large wooden chopping board and slice with a pizza cutter or large knife, serve immediately
