arugula

Two things you would probably never think to put together: strawberries and pizza. It sounds a bit strange, but trust me, it works!

Actually, there are a lot of fruit and pizza combinations that go well together. Fig and prosciutto, for instance. But this strawberry arugula pizza is my new favorite!

I start all my pizzas by pre-baking the pizza crust. Since I don’t own a pizza oven (if you do, can we be best friends and make pizza all the time?) I find that I get a crispier crust that way.

For this pizza, instead of sauce, I liberally coated the par-baked crust with a balsamic glaze. You can make your own balsamic glaze by simply bringing balsamic vinegar to a simmer and reducing by half or more until it’s nice and thick.

Or you can do what I did and buy it at the store. You don’t always have to be a hero and make everything from scratch.

Next comes the mozzarella. Most of the time I like to use the fresh balls of mozzarella versus the preshredded variety, but thats a personal preference. You do you, boo.

On top of the pieces of mozz, I scattered the sliced strawberries.

The last thing I added before putting this bad boy back in the oven was goat cheese. I felt like this pizza needed just a little something to balance out the acidity from the balsamic and the sweetness of the strawberries. This tangy and salty goat cheese did the trick!

Once the pizza came out of the oven I topped it with a generous helping of arugula that had been tossed in balsamic and olive oil. Which pretty much turns this pizza into a salad as far as I’m concerned.

I can think of no better way to eat a salad than on a crispy and pizza crust.

But in all seriousness, this was one of my favorite pizzas we’ve made in a long time. The whole thing just worked. It was the perfect Summer pizza because it was just so light and fresh. It didn’t feel as heavy as some super cheesy meat-covered pizza.

I guess that’s why the two of us devoured this whole thing. Like I said its pretty much a salad so we have nothing to feel guilty about. Right?

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Have you met anyone that loves beets? Like, are beets anyone’s favorite root vegetable? I would bet dollars to donuts that they are not. I am not sure anyone goes around craving the earthy taste of beets. While I am not a huge fan of these red roots, I have grown to appreciate them because they are just so darn good for you! I mean, they better be or else why would we eat something that tastes like dirt (in my opinion).

While Michelle was in town (we did a lot of cooking while she was here which is why you’ve seen her mentioned in the last two recipes), I wanted to try making a tasty beet salad. We researched some various recipes to get some inspiration, but we knew we wanted to roast the beets in some way to temper that earthy flavor and we also knew we wanted to use goat cheese, because we love goat cheese!

In the end we essentially adapted this Giada beet salad recipe into our roasted beet and arugula salad. She had an easy recipe for roasted the beets which we liked, and a lot of the ingredients she used we already had in the fridge. What we didn’t have, we improvised.

The first step in all of this is to roast the beets. Well, actually it was to boil the beets because the beets must be boiled first before you can do anything with them. If I had know that before, I would have bought the already boiled beets from Trader Joes. But I did learn a lot about boiling them:

Bring water to a boil
Add lemon juice or vinegar (keeps the beets from “bleeding” too much)
Boil for 30-45 minutes, depending on size.
If you have various sized beets, you may need to boil some longer than others

Finally, when the beets were good and boiled, I could peel and slice them.

We tossed the sliced beets in the shallot vinaigrette then roasted them in the oven for about 15 minutes. We followed the Giada recipe to a tee on this one.

While all of that was going on, we assembled the rest of the salad. And by we, I mean Michelle. I just took pictures (it was so nice to have a helper in the kitchen so I could get some action shots)!

The base of the salad is a mix of arugula and spinach and we tossed in roasted pistachios, pomegranate seeds, and goat cheese. Just before serving we added in the avocado and beets, then tossed everything in the same vinaigrette that we roasted the beets in.

Despite my previous words on beets, I actually enjoyed the beets once they were roasted. Roasting them in the vinaigrette cuts some of their earthiness and makes them a tad sweet. It really balances out the creaminess of the goat cheese and tartness of the pomegranate seeds. I absolutely enjoyed this salad and have even bought more beets (already boiled) to make a version of this again for my weekday lunches.

Plus this salad has so many healthy benefits going on in it with the spinach and arugula, beets, pomegranate, avocado, and pistachios. It is packed with so many vitamins and nutrients. And the beets are actually tasty! Who knew that could happen?

If you make this, let me know what you think! Especially if you’re not typically a beet fan. I promise these beets aren’t going to taste like the canned version you might have been forced to eat when you were a kid. They are actually good!

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Strawberry Arugula Pizza

Roasted Beet and Arugula Salad