A few weeks ago, I blogged about my fig and goat cheese pizza and the broccoli rabe one as well.  I ended up buying more broccoli rabe at the farmers market today – one of the first stalls I walk by always has the most unique vegetables, and the broccoli rabe is always so fresh.

Another ingredient I picked up today was portobello mushrooms.  I really need to start writing down the names of the farms I like – the folks at this stand always have the best variety of mushrooms and they are always so fresh and tasty.

Here are the stars of tonight’s pizza.

To make the pizza

1. Fry 2 shallots, 1/2 white onion and 2 cloves of garlic in some olive oil.
2. Add in two finely chopped thai chilis (I could have also just used crushed red pepper or omitted the heat entirely).
3. To the mixture, I add about 1/4 cup whole milk and allow the flavours to mix together – once the milk had an opportunity to heat up, I added 2 tbsp of quark (I had this cheese in the refrigerator – any cream cheese would give you a thicker consistency. Better yet, if you had some cream, you could use it instead of milk and just omit the cheese).
4. Once the cheese melts, add about 3 tbsp of chopped sun dried tomatoes and about 2 cups of roughly chopped broccoli rabe.
5. Turn the heat off in the pan, and allowed the greens to soften from the residual heat.
6. Add about 7 or 8 chopped basil leaves to the mix.
7. Slice the portobello mushrooms and grill them with a bit of olive oil.

Today’s pizza was made on a sprouted wheat crust I found at Whole Foods today, made by Alvarado Street Bakery.  I should work on mastering my own pizza crust, but sometimes it is so much easier to pick up a ready made crust. To layer the pizza, I started with the creamed broccoli rabe mixture and covered the full crust.  I then sprinkled in a bit of shredded mozzarella (about one handful – just enough to keep the toppings intact).  The crust already has some cheese in it, so I didn’t want to overdo it – with a regular crust, I would have doubled the cheese. I then layered on the grilled mushrooms and topped off the pizza with some feta.  Ten minutes in the oven at 450F completed the pizza.