summer meals, part 2: fig, gorgonzola & arugula pizza

I couldn't leave you hanging on just part 1, now, could I?

My mom gave us a bucketload of fresh figs from her tree. During the last two summers, I out-jammed myself and we still have jars sitting in the garage that I'm afraid to eat. With the heat this summer, I can't bear to do any canning in the kitchen anyway. So this year, I decided to take a different approach.

This approach: Enjoy fresh figs in all of their fresh figgy glory. So we made pizza. With fresh figs. How fun!

I've gotten in the habit of making double batches of pizza dough and freezing half. It's once the prep and twice the food—brilliant, if you ask me. Provided, of course, you remember to take the dough out of the freezer. (Call from the grocery store: "Hey, Ryan. Are you home? Yeah? Can you do me a favor? Thanks...") This means whipping up a gourmet pizza on a weeknight becomes, oh, no big deal. Seriously, you should try it.

I was inspired by the umpteen recipes I found for fig, arugula, and prosciutto pizza (like this one from Pioneer Woman), but there were a couple of small problems. Like, we don't eat prosciutto any more. And, to be honest, I'm not a fan of arugula.

This pizza changed half of that. I'll give you a clue: I still don't eat prosciutto.

The only tricky thing about this pizza is that you kind of have to watch it carefully. I didn't want to bake the arugula too long, so I put that on at the end. You can see in the photo that the greens are a little wilted; if you want them to look snappier, just add the arugula after you've totally baked the pizza.

Fig, Gorgonzola, and Arugula Pizza

1 recipe pizza dough of your choice (but I recommend this one, jazzed up with spelt flour)

approximately 15 fresh figs (more if you'd like), de-stemmed and sliced

1/2 cup gorgonzola crumbles

3 cups fresh arugula (you can use an arugula-spinach mix here)

2 tablespoons olive oil

cornmeal for dusting the baking sheet

Preheat the oven to 450. Roll your pizza dough thin; this is one pizza that's best on a thin, crisp crust. Dust a baking sheet or pizza stone with cornmeal and transfer the dough to the sheet.

Slide the crust into the oven for about 4-5 minutes to partially bake it. Remove from oven, and drizzle the half-baked crust with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Top haphazardly with gorgonzola and fig slices, and return the pizza to the oven for about 5 more minutes.

Just before the crust turns golden-brown, bring the pizza back out and top with 3 cups of arugula and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Slide back into the oven to finish baking, until crust is golden and crispy. Enjoy it while it's still nice and hot.