Description
Time to kick it up a notch on pizza night with this easy French bread pizza with Romesco sauce and Clark Farm eggplant. It’s simply delicious.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
- 1 medium eggplant
- 1/4 cup olive oil (for cooking eggplant)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 small cloves of garlic, finely diced
- 1/4 of medium onion, sliced thin
- More splashes of olive oil, as needed
- 1/2 loaf of French bread
- 1/2 to 1 cup of romesco sauce
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup parmesan cheese (shaved or shredded)
- Chopped parsley, optional garnish
Instructions
- This French bread pizza is made with Romesco Sauce. You can make the romesco a day before and store in the refrigerator. It’s best to bring it to room temperature to spread on top of the pizza.
- Chop the top and bottom tips off your eggplant. Using a vegetable peeler, remove the skin from the eggplant.
- Cut the eggplant in half length-wise (my video shows this well). Next, cut the eggplant into thick strips and then into cubes that are approximately the same size.
- Transfer the eggplant cubes to a large pan and put the heat on medium-to-high. Let the pan heat for a minute or two before adding the olive oil.
- Add the olive oil to the hot pan with the eggplant and stir to coat very quickly. Eggplant loves olive oil and will absorb it very fast. You want it evenly distributed.
- Once coated, season with salt and pepper and give another stir. Turn the heat to low and put the lid on the pan. It’s will need to steam for 5-8 minutes.
- While the eggplant is cooking, finely dice your garlic and thinly slice your onion. (my video shows this well).
- After eggplant has steamed for 5-8 minutes, remove the lid, turn the heat back up to medium and clear a space to add the onions in the center of the pan. Add a splash of olive oil to the onions and stir the onions in the center of the pan to coat in oil for about a minute. Then mix the onion with the eggplant and let it cook for 3 minutes or so, stirring a few times, until the onions are soft and starting to brown a little and the eggplant is tender all the way through.
- Clear a place in the center of pan again and add the garlic with a splash of olive oil. Cook garlic for about 30 seconds until fragrant, then stir and combine with eggplant and onions. Cook and stir another minute or two and it should be done. The eggplant should be very tender. Remove from heat.
- Cut your French bread in sections of about 5 inches in length. You can make them any size – I found 5 inches worked well. Lay them on a toaster oven sheet pan and bake at 350 degrees (preheated) for about 10 minutes or so. All toaster ovens and ovens are different. We’re cooking bread until it’s toasty and crunchy. You’re smart – you’ll figure it out.
- While the bread is getting toasty, you can shave the parmesan cheese from a block of cheese like I did (see video) or you can grate it with a box grater. Or you can use the bagged stuff. I used a vegetable peeler to shave thin slices from the chunk of cheese, then I stacked the slices and cut them lengthwise down the middle to make little cheese strips. This pizza isn’t about the cheese so you could even skip the cheese entirely and it will still be awesome.
- Once the French bread is baked to your crunch preference, spoon the room temperature romesco sauce onto the bread, covering the top. I used a kitchen tablespoon and used approximately a heaping tablespoon per pizza. Next, using a smaller spoon, I added the sautéed eggplant on top of the Romesco. Lastly, add a little parmesan cheese to the top of the eggplant and you’re ready to serve.
- You can chop optional parsley as a garnish and serve on a platter if you’d like.
