Zucchini, Lime, and Cilantro Pizza

There's a delicious pizza place in Berkeley, CA called Cheese Board Pizza. They only serve one variety each day, all of the components are organic/vegetarian, and more often than not there's a line out the door for lunch. On the day that I visited, the pizza of the day consisted of heirloom tomato, red onions, parmesan cheese, mozzarella, basil, pine nuts, and garlic olive oil. It was amazing.

Although my pizza was wonderful, I didn't have the opportunity to try the best flavor that Cheeseboard offers -- cilantro, lime, corn, feta. I tried to recreate it once and that was disastrous, but the other day I stumbled upon a recipe taken from the official Cheese Board Cookbook. I was ecstatic. I made numerous adjustments/shortcuts from the original recipe, which I feel guilty about...but come on -- who has enough time to make pizza dough from scratch?

CORN ZUCCHINI PIZZA PIZZA WITH LIME AND CILANTRO

Recipe adapted from The Cheese Board Cookbook via A Chow Life

Ingredients

• 1 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup corn kernels (supposed to use fresh, but I did frozen)
• Pinch of black pepper
• 1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
• 1 small zucchini, thinly sliced into rounds
• 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 lime, quartered
• 1 serving of garlic herb pizza dough from TJ's (<3 this stuff!)
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 ounces crumbled feta cheese (I omitted this)
• 1/4 tsp salt or more to taste
• Red pepper flakes

Prepare the mis en place: in a bowl, combine olive oil with minced garlic and set aside.

In a separate bowl, measure out corn kernels and toss with black pepper.

 

Chop up onion, zucchini, and cilantro, and quarter the lime.

Once all the toppings are ready, adjust oven racks to top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 of the oven, then preheat to 450F. Roll out the dough onto a large greased cookie sheet.

Sprinkle 1 cup of mozzarella cheese onto the dough, and layer on the sliced onions.

Add zucchini rounds, corn, and remaining cheese on top. Sprinkle on salt and red pepper flakes. Bake in lower rack for 8 minutes, rotate to top rack for 8 more minutes, then switch back to the lower rack for the final 5 minutes of baking. 

Once the pizza is done baking, remove it from the oven and brush crust with garlic olive oil. Garnish with cilantro and sprinkle lime juice on top. Ta da! I threw together a salad while the pizza was baking, and felt pretty good about myself after this meal. I know I know...it's still pizza, but there's a lot of veggies in it so I don't feel so guilty.