Quick Tomato Basil Garlic Blue Cheese Pizza

I bought a packet of fresh pizza dough from Fresh & Easy the other week and had not gotten around to using it, so I popped it in the freezer until I knew I was going to use it. Yesterday, I decided was the day, but I did not want to make a pizza that was overly heavy and I am not the keenest on the marinara sauce bottoms, so what to do with it?

I looked in the fridge to see what I had, and of course there was no mozzarella cheese, but in the freezer, I had a block of blue cheese and decided to break it out.

I popped into the garden and picked some fresh basil, sliced some garlic and slow cooked them in a bit of butter and vegetable oil to produce a well flavoured garlic butter.

So after defrosting the dough, I had taken it out earlier in the day and left it on the counter to slow defrost, I spread it out and popped it on a lightly greased baking sheet. I spread the garlic butter out over the entire pizza, its melted so easy to spread, just make sure that the garlic pieces are evenly distributed across the entire dough.

On top of this, I added the (washed and drained) basil leaves, sliced tomatoes, and crumbled blue cheese.

Then into a preheated 450* oven for 10-15 minutes (or until crust is well cooked and golden brown) - oh SO good. Perfect for a Friday night movie date night to eat while snuggled up on the sofa with your love and so fast and easy to make also.

Here are the ingredients:

1 pre-made pizza dough
6 cloves garlic, sliced
1/4 cup butter
2 TBSP vegetable oil (or Olive Oil)
12-15 fresh basil leaves
2 tomatoes, sliced thickly
1 small block of (good quality) blue cheese, approx 1/2 cup

Onion Garlic Herb Focaccia Bread

This is seriously the easiest thing to made... its semi homemade and SO good.

We've had a ton of these new supermarket chain stores called "Fresh and Easy" pop up on almost every block in the Phoenix Valley here, and one has just gone in down the road from us. So the other night, my husband and I decided to venture in and check it out.

It's a lot smaller than many of the large supermarket chain stores, and the check outs are all self-serve, with a "bagger" who bags your items for you as you scan them in. But this keeps the prices low but the quality is high, it seems to have a large portion of organic foods and a generally more "healthier" selection of items.

What they have a good amount of is fresh pre-made foods that one can easily heat in the oven or microwave... but not the "crud" that one normally finds that is mass-produced and found in the freezer section. This stuff is fresh made, and looks like something you'd get on your plate at a restaurant.

It is in this section that I picked up a packet of the Focaccia and Herb dough and also a pizza dough.

This is really so easy to do. I simply sliced very finely half a small onion and then cut it in half side ways, and then one garlic and minced it.

Then I put two tablespoons of butter in a microwave safe measuring cup, added the onions and garlic, some salt, and a dash of pepper and microwaved it for about 45 seconds (until the butter was melted). The onion and garlic par-cooks and their flavours go into the butter.

On a cookie sheet, I put the bread and kind of "patted" it out so that it was flat, but not too thin, leaving the edges a bit more crusty. And I made slight "dents" with my finger tips all across the dough.

I then poured the garlic and onion butter mix over and using a spoon smoothed it out so that the whole "square" was covered.

Cooked in a 400*F oven for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown; then leave it to "rest" for about 20 minutes before slicing it.

It is great as an accompaniment to a fresh salad.