Turkish Pizza with Feta and cucumber and spinach salad
This is a Turkish take on pizza which is typically served without oozing melted cheese a la American style. However, topped with feta, it's a whole new way to enjoy pizza. Plus, the toppings are mostly done from yesterday, so it'll come together super easily!
Ingredients
- Shallots - 1/2 bulb, diced
- Cucumbers - 1/2 lb, sliced
- Dijon mustard - 1 tsp
- Red wine vinegar - 1 1/2 Tbsp
- Olive oil - 3 Tbsp
- Baby spinach - 4 oz
- Pizza dough - 1 lb, store-bought ((I'm a big fan of Trader Joe's))
- Crushed tomatoes - 2 cups
- Leftover meatballs - ~1 lb
- Parsley - 1/4 bunch, chopped
- Olive oil - 2 Tbsp
- Feta - 4 oz
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Pizza dough - Cover in flour and let rest for at least 30 minutes outside of fridge before rolling out. Resting dough gives gluten time to chill out, which makes the dough much more pliable.
- Heat a saute pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Add crushed tomatoes and then leftover meatballs, breaking up with a wooden spoon. Saute until tomato sauce has been absorbed by meat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Parsley - Chop. (Can be done up to 3 days ahead)
- Shallots (Double for Thursday's vinaigrette too) / Cucumbers - Prep as directed.
Make
- Preheat oven to 425F (218C) degrees. Position top rack so it's at the very top. This ensures for a golden crust since the heat will reflect off the top of the oven.
- Brush a sheet pan with olive oil. Using hands, stretch out pizza dough to cover sheet pan - it should be pretty easy to do if you let the dough rest. Brush the border with a bit of olive oil and then bake on top rack for 3 minutes without toppings. This solo time in the oven gives the dough time to crisp up; if you put toppings on now, your crust may get soggy.
- Spread meat mixture over pizza dough. Sprinkle with feta. Now bake for another 10 minutes on the top rack. Broil pizza for 1 to 2 more minutes before taking out of the oven.
- While pizza is cooking, whisk together shallots, Dijon, vinegar, and olive oil (double if making Thursday's dinner). Season to taste with salt, pepper, and / or a sweetener. Toss vinaigrette (again, use half if you doubled) with cucumber and spinach when pizza is ready to go. Enjoy pizza sprinkled with parsley with salad on the side!
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Reviews
This meal has 22 reviews
Loved this! I only had about a half pound of meatballs left, but it was perfect. Added an extra drizzle of olive oil and sprinkled some more Za'atar on before baking. Used a pre-baked crust and just followed the instructions for cooking time on the package. Yum!
The kids and I both loved this. They requested to have it again. I should have baked my crust a couple minutes longer before adding the meat
Used pre-made crust and added olives. Had already decided to split meat from turkish meatball recipe ½ and ½ instead of ⅓ meatballs to ⅔ pizza, and that worked very nicely. The dressing on the salad was actually the highlight of the night. Very simple, but very tasty. Also pulled out the leftover tzatziki from the turkish meatball meal as a tasty crust dipping sauce.
Liked this a lot. I would say that there was too much meat (still good). If you made the turkish meatball dinner the night before, instead of saving 2/3 for the pizza, I would simply split in half.
Turned out great! We used the TJ whole wheat pizza crust, which was really tasty. I would probably not cook this on the top rack of my oven next time...the bottom of the crust could have used a little more cooking. Overall, a fun way to use leftovers -- my toddler agreed!
Liked it but could have been a bit better more flavor