Accidental Plum Pizza

A fig tart with Stilton and caramelized onions looked so good on the cover of last Wednesday’s NYT Dining section that I offered to make it for a friend on Saturday night. A snack of pastry sprinkled with figs, blue cheese and pine nuts seemed like the perfect fuel for a night on the town. The only problem?

Everyone else in New York had the same freakin’ idea.

You know the feeling: you get to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods only to find a gaping hole on the shelf where a main ingredient should be. There had been a run on frozen puff pastry at Whole Foods, and the cheese department was sold out of Stilton.

Since I had already bought all the other ingredients and had no more ideas at 7pm on a Saturday, I swapped out frozen pizza dough ($1.69) for puff pastry and, at the cheese counter guy’s suggestion, Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue for Stilton. Problem solved! Or so I thought. The figs I bought at the Greenmarket were not in fact figs, but Empress plums, which are almost the same color as figs but a different shape. And texture. And taste.

Great.

The following recipe is a result of all these mishaps; it’s also surprisingly good and easy. Once you get the hang of handling pizza dough, it’s actually fun to make pizza at home. All you need is a pizza stone (also great for warming up delivery pizza) and a rolling pin. And as it turns out, plums work really well on pizza.

Pineapple, look out.

Recipe: Plum Pizza with Bayley Hazen Blue and Caramelized Onions

1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 large onions, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 sprig rosemary, needles removed and chopped, plus more for garnish
Pinch sugar
Sea salt
1 tbsp. sherry vinegar
1/4 c. milk
1 egg
Flour for dusting
1 lb. frozen pizza dough, thawed
1 pint Empress plums, barely ripe
2 oz. Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue
2 tbsp. pine nuts
Good-quality honey for drizzling

Place the pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees. The hotter the pizza stone, the better your pizza will be.

Put a large saute pan over high heat until it feels hot; add butter and oil and turn down the heat to medium. Add onions, rosemary, and sugar and saute, stirring frequently, until caramelized, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, using a paring knife, carefully slice the plums width-wise around the pits into 1/2-inch thick rounds, discarding any that are excessively juicy and pulpy.

Sprinkle the cooked onions with salt. Beat the egg and milk together in a medium bowl and add the onion mixture to the bowl. Turn the heat up to high and deglaze the saute pan with sherry vinegar. Add the scrapings and the vinegar to the onion mixture.

Take the pizza dough out of the package and place it on a floured board, then flip it over to flour the other side. It should be completely thawed and slightly cooler than room temperature. Roll it out slightly into a larger, floured round and then pick it up and drape it over your fist. Carefully stretch out the dough until you can fit two fists under. Keep rotating it until the dough is as thin and round as you can get it without tearing; you should be able to see light through it. (If you get really good at this, you can try dividing 1 lb. of dough in half and making 2 thinner pizzas. Not recommended on the first try, though.)

Put more flour on the board and lay the pizza down. Using your hands, spread the onion mixture on the pizza up to an inch from the edge, leaving excess liquid in the bowl. Place the cut plums cut-side up around the pizza like pepperoni, then sprinkle cheese and pine nuts on top. Sprinkle the entire pizza with sea salt.

Pull the rack with the pizza stone on it as far out of the oven as it will go. Position the wooden board directly over it and carefully slide the pizza off, stretching it a little over the stone, using a spatula as necessary. Bake until the edges turn brown, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle the pizza with more rosemary and drizzle with a little honey, and serve.

Serves 4

For leftovers: Wrap pizza slices in aluminum foil and freeze. To reheat, bake them in foil in a 375 oven until heated through.