pizza with zucchini, bacon and mozzarella in cream

A pizza with zucchini (my favourite vegetable), bacon (my favourite topping) and mozzarella soaked in cream immediately piqued my interest.  I ate this delectable combination on a pizza at the Cnr Cafe in Johannesburg recently.  Their version used prosciutto instead of bacon, which was even better.

What struck me whilst eating it was the creaminess of the mozzarella.  It was truly out of this world. My  interrogation, I mean my chat with the chef about it yielded some interesting information.  He was inspired to soak the mozzarella in cream after seeing it done on ‘Iron Chef America’, one of my favourite cooking shows. 

On my recent sojourn into the world of Pugliacheese and hunting down the wondrous Stracciatella cheese, I came across the perfect mozzarella which they also make. Stracciatella as I discovered, is essentially shredded mozzarella soaked in double cream. So the technique of soaking the mozzarella ball in cream made perfect sense.

So me being inspired by what I ate, what I learned and the ingredients I had acquired, I made this pizza at home.

This is what you need to make it: (extrapolate according to how many pizzas you are making)

• pizza bases either ready made or you could try the Jamie Oliver pizza dough recipeI have on this blog. I used Woolies ready made bases because they are perfect
•  tomato puree (enough to cover each base) – I use tin or jarred
• 250gm mozzarella ball (either buffalo mozzarella or the Puglia cows milk mozzarella)
• cream to cover the ball and soak (about 125ml) – soak before for a min of an hour or overnight
• zucchini, shaved and then shredded (about 2 small or one large per pizza)
• bacon or prosciutto (about 2 – 3 slices chopped or broken up per pizza)
• olive oil
• fresh basil to scatter

How to make this:

• pre heat your oven to 200 degrees (for the ready made bases)
• spread a thin layer of the tomato puree over the base
• shave the zucchini with a potato peeler and then cut into thin strips. Place in a bowl and toss with a bit of olive oil and season
• break up the pre soaked mozzarella into chunks and arrange over the pizza with the zucchini ribbons and the bacon
• bake for 8 – 10 minutes until the crust turns golden and the mozzarella has melted

Scatter over some fresh basil and serve immediately whilst the cheese is essentially meltingly soft. 

Other recipes with Puglia mozzarella you may like:

zucchini and basil fritters with stracciatella cheese.