Roasted Garlic, Onion & Goat Cheese Flatbread Pizza

During our trip to Portland, B and I had the opportunity to stop by Stonewall Kitchen.  Like I've mentioned before, there are no Stonewall Kitchen stores in Massachusetts so I was thrilled to find one in Portland.  I adore Stonewall Kitchen because it is an utterly charming place with bright white walls filled with tasty jars and bottles of jams, sauces, and marinades.  In the store, Stonewall Kitchen often offers cooking demonstrations and encourages you to try out their products.  They also offer adorable little recipe cards to give you ideas on how to use their various products.

While at Stonewall Kitchen, we stocked up on a few different items including a bottle of pineapple ginger sauce, roasted garlic mustard and a roasted garlic and onion jam.  I was particularly excited about the roasted garlic and onion jam because I had sampled a bit in the store and it had a nice flavor of roasted garlic, sweet onions and a sweet balsamic vinegar taste in a jam.  The blend of the jam's overall sweetness and the roasted garlic taste was a great flavor combination. 

I also picked up a recipe card for the jam to make a pizza using the jam, goat cheese and pre-made pizza crust.  I thought this sounded really good and decided to make it on Wednesday night for a simple and easy dinner. 

Although the recipe called for a pre-made pizza crust (i.e. Boboli), I didn't see any fun in using that.  Instead, I asked B to pick up some pizza dough from Flour Bakery on his way home from work.  The way that our after-work schedules lined up that night, B went home first while I went to the gym.  He left the pizza dough out to breathe at room temperature before he headed to the gym so that it was resting when I came home.

I took the dough out of its packaging and let the dough rest some more while I floured up the cutting board.  The pizza dough was really soft and easy to work with.  I worked the dough with both a rolling pin and my hands to make a rectangle-shaped crust. 

I placed the crust on a baking tray that I had sprayed cooking spray on and lightly sprinkled with cornmeal.  I still haven't invested in a pizza stone and I really need to bite the bullet and just do it.  I then used a spatula to spread a thin layer of the roasted garlic and onion jam.  I added some crumbled pieces of goat cheese on top of the jam.  I had picked up a great package of local goat cheese from Savenors Market on the way home from the gym. 

I added a generous layer of fresh cracked pepper on top of the pizza.  Since I was using pizza dough instead of a ready-made pizza crust, I altered the cooking temperature and time a little bit.  I put the pizza in the oven at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes.

While the pizza was cooking, I decided to work on a side salad.  Again, I wanted to do something simple so I also picked up a package of Olivia's Organics' Herb Salad.  If you haven't tried Olivia's Organics, I highly recommend it.  This is a local company that not only produces great fresh salad products, but also shows a strong commitment to the environment by not only using greens only from organic farming but also packages it in 100% recyclable and already-recycled plastic.

Since the herb salad contained romaine, chard, spinach, radicchio, frisee, beet greens, arugula and parsley, I knew that the greens would already be flavorful and didn't add any other vegetables to it.  Instead, I decided to focus on making a tasty vinagrette.  Again, while in Portland, I had picked up a bottle of 18 year old champagne white balsamic vinegar from LeRoux Kitchen and I was looking for an excuse to crack it open.

I poured about a third cup of the balsamic vinegar and added fresh cracked pepper, salt, fresh crushed red pepper flakes and dried rosemary.  I stirred it all up but waited to add the vinagrette to the salad until we were ready to eat to prevent the greens from getting to soggy.

The meal ended up being simple and perfect.  The flatbread pizza had a crispy thin crust.  The jam was very sweet but had a nice roasted garlic flavor.  The sweetness of the jam contrasted nicely with the tangy goat cheese and the bite from the cracked pepper. 

Since the pizza was on the sweet side, the salad and the sharpness of the dressing added a nice bite to cut the sweetness.  We actually used only half of the vinagrette because a little went a long way. 

The pizza was a bit tricky to bring into work for lunch the next day but it heated up nicely the following night for dinner.  This time we added a bit of salami to the pizza to added a bit more saltiness to the dish.  This was definitely not a complicated dish since it used a lot of pre-made products but all of the ingredients went well together and the end result was an easy weeknight dinner that we both enjoyed.