Caramelized Onion And Cottage Cheese Pizza

I had a day off from work  a few days ago, and decided to spend it cooking and baking. I wanted to clean out my refrigerator and use  up whatever vegetables I had in the vegetable bin before restocking over the weekend.

 After a couple of hours in the kitchen, I felt very pleased with myself as I lined up the finished dishes on my kitchen counter- a mango pulissery ,  a drumstick and radish sambar, plantain thoran , taro root fry and a radish raita. 

After all that cooking, I still had a can of pizza dough purchased many months ago, a half-used tub of cottage cheese and some zucchini in the refrigerator. With the zucchini, I decided to bake a chocolate and zucchini cake using a long bookmarked recipe.

The leftover cottage cheese along with a few onions and pantry staples went into this pizza.

Ingredients:

• 1 can refrigerated thin pizza crust
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 4 medium onions, thinly sliced
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1tsp crushed dried herbs (I used rosemary & thyme)
• 3 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 ¼   cup large curd cottage cheese
• ½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Method:

Heat oil in a pan; add the garlic followed by the sliced onions, dried herbs, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Cook the onions on medium heat stirring frequently till they turn brown. This takes about 20 minutes or so. Add a good splash of balsamic vinegar when the onions are done and mix well.

Meanwhile, grease a cookie sheet. Unroll the pizza dough onto the cookie sheet.  Press the dough to the edges of the sheet forming a rectangle. Prebake at 350 F for 7-10 minutes or so.  Remove the pan from the oven.

Spread the cottage cheese as evenly as possible over the partially baked crust; sprinkle the mozzarella cheese all over the surface. Spread the onion mixture over the cheese layer and bake for 15 minutes or so till the cheese melts. Broil for 3-5 minutes for the surface to brown a bit and then pull the pan out of the oven.

Slice and serve.

Notes: I made this pizza while I already had my cake baking in the oven at 350 F.  So I baked this too at the same temperature and it took me 30-35 minutes, a little longer than usual- I’d normally bake  something like this this at 425 F for about 15 minutes.