The hallowed Motorino doesn’t have a monopoly on brussels sprout pizza. With a current crop of brussels sprouts dotting farmers’ market stalls, a sprout-studded pie is the pizza-of-the-moment in our kitchen. Motorino chef, Mathieu Palombino makes a white pie with the petite cabbages, garlic, buffalo mozzarella and pancetta. (You can learn how to make Motorino’s sprout pizza at slice.seriouseats.com.) It’s certainly a worthy list of ingredients. But since I haven’t quite mastered Neapolitan-style pizza dough in my humble oven, my sauceless pies tend to come out dry and unappealing.
To compensate for my good but far-from-ethereal dough, I made a sauce of sorts by caramelizing four spanish onions with plenty of butter and rosemary—much like French pissaladerie. After cooking for at least an hour, the onions yielded about a cup of moisture-supplying goodness, along with intense caramel flavor and a richness seldom found in vegetarian pies. To pack even more flavor into the dish, I used fontina cheese. It melts just as well as mozzarella but has a bit more funk.
As for the green crown jewels of the pie, I sliced the sprouts into lengthwise quarters and tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper before sprinkling them over the pizza. But after 15ish minutes in a 500° oven, some of the brussels sprouts still had too much raw crunch for my taste. In retrospect, I should have sliced the sprouts thinner or cooked the pizza another five minutes. An easy fix for next time.
Pancetta or bacon would obviously work well on this pie. If you have either on hand, add some meat. But you can have pig any time of year. Farm-fresh sprouts are as fleeting as fall. And this former Miami girl is celebrating all this season has to offer before things get ugly.
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Yeh… good idea. This sprout pizza can be my perfect diet meal!
I know sprouts are healthy option, but don’t like the raw taste; anyway i can make this at home!
Sounds like steaming the sprouts is the way to go. I prefer big sprout chunks, and steaming will ensure that they’re tender after a short blast in the oven. Thanks for the tip.
For ’sprouts, I love to slice them lengthwise and steam them for 10-15 minutes. They need to be soft enough to pierce easily with a fork into the base. Then toss w/ EVOO, S&P and place on the pizza cut side up…should carmelize nicely in a hot oven.
This is extremely similar to a side dish I make, where I carmelize the sprouts after steaming them either in a cast iron skillet w/ EVOO at medium heat, or instead you can broil them for 8 mins.
Nice!
Lovin’ the home pizza making spirit. Yes, catch the last of natures bounty before the dark and cold months limit what is able to be produced locally
–K