Broccoli and ricotta pizza: iteration and umami

Kale pizza works. I thought it wouldn't when I saw it in Veg Every Day, but it does.So why not broccoli?Broccoli is one of my favourite things, with that rich umami hit that seems to characterise the flavours I really go for. It's like some perverse, savoury, mirror-world, sweet tooth.So yeah, let's try it. Let's see if we can make this work. 

The obligatory note on dough

The world is not overly enriched by the addition of yet another domestic amateur's pizza dough recipe, so I won't give mine. I'm not even sure I have one. If you've done this before, you'll probably have one you like, and if you haven't then you could do worse than start with the one in the complete Delia. Also, you should probably start with a more reliable recipe.

Version one: too sparse, too dry

The first version was cribbed straight from the kale pizza and spring onion galette recipes. It was dead simple -  just arranging the ingredients on a base. The only complexity was how to treat the broccoli. I wasn't sure that after the kind of brief flash in a very hot oven that so favours pizza, it would be quite cooked enough. Sure, it's robust and will take a bit of bite, but there's a few ways to approach that.Part-blanch your broccoli, and you get a firm stalk with florets anywhere on a spectrum from firm to savoury near-mush, to insipid disappointment. Fry it, and you get crisp and crunch.I looked at this recipe for amazing savoury broccoli, and decided to do more or less that. So we'll pre-cook it in the oven for about ten minutes (while the pizza stone heats up, in fact), tossed in oil and Parmesan, so the stalks soften and the edges get a little crispy.The rest was basic: pre-cook the broccoli, scatter it over the dough, top with cheese, and bake. I included thin slices of the stalk, to reduce waste, and a clove of garlic as a more-or-less autonomic movement.The result was underwhelming.I'd used too little broccoli to really cover the dough, which had crisped up overmuch. Likewise, the cheese had over-cooked. The whole thing was just too dry, and somehow not as satisfying as the constituent flavours would suggest. It was clear it needed more broccoli, but also more moisture somehow.

Base sauces?

What to do about the moisture issue, without making everything sloppy? Base sauce seemed obvious, but the right flavour did not. A heavily-reduced tomato sauce would give the right umami hit, but could also trample other flavours.Here's what I considered:

• Rich, simple tomato sauce
• Some kind of red onion marmalade
• Roast garlic Béchamel
• Crème fraîche, maybe with herbs
• Mascarpone

None of them felt quite right except Mascarpone. They're too big and dominating, although I do want to try the onion thing. The problem with Mascarpone on pizza is that I don't like it. It's too sweet and too sloppy. So why not Ricotta, its more dour and solid cousin?At this point, it became a struggle not just to give up and make a spinach, ricotta, and prosciutto pizza. But fuck it, I can do that next week.

Version two: softer, richer, cheesier

So here it is - the latest iteration of the broccoli pizza. It probably wants at least one more cycle of development, and some other base sauces merit a try. But it does work, and it's pretty damn tasty.

Ingredients:

• Pizza dough, whichever version works for you
• Broccoli, probably 2 small-medium heads, or one large one
• Ricotta
• Cheddar (mozzarella would give a far milder flavour)
• An onion
• Parmesan
• Soy sauce

Instructions:

Make pizza dough - you know the drill.Pull, slice, hack, or somehow separate the broccoli into small florets. Slice the big chunks if you have to. Smaller pieces give better coverage. Thin slice the upper, less-woody parts of the broccoli stem. They soften nicely, and there's no sense in wasting them. Slice an onion into slivers. I did mine into eighths, so the layers flake out. Chop a couple of cloves of garlic.Put the onion, garlic, and broccoli in a bowl, grate over some Parmesan, and toss it all together with soy sauce (a teaspoon or two) plenty of oil, and some seasoning. Then scatter this veg mix onto a baking tray in a single layer, and put it into a high-ish oven for about ten minutes.The aim here is for the broccoli stalks and onion to soften enough that they'll be palatable after the rest of the cooking time (5 - 10 minutes). Ideally, the edges of the florets will become crisp and slightly crunchy in the oil coating, but not actually burnt.Roll out the pizza dough, and top it with a thin layer of ricotta. Don't go nuts here, it's a kind of moisturising background note. Also, we'll dollop a bit more on top later.When it's finished pre-cooking, scatter the veg topping over this, ensuring a good spread. Grate plenty of strong cheddar over the top, and add a few little dollops of ricotta as well, for look and balance.Put it back in the oven, hot as balls, until the base looks right. It should probably be rolled thin, and so I'd be amazed if this needs more than about 8 minutes, provided you're using a hot oven and a pizza stone.[gallery exclude="584, 581, 582" link="file" order="DESC" columns="2"]The final result is what you'd hope from the ingredients, but this time they've come together. It's a big, powerful, savoury experience, with the ricotta taking some of the overpowering/bitter edge off. You could probably get away with something less harsh than a mature cheddar - a medium goats' cheese, perhaps. But I'd avoid other additions.

On Umami

If you haven't come across the concept, "umami" is a Japanese word that resists elegant simple translation. It represents that stand-out savouryness -  not exactly salty, though often so - that characterises tastes like soy and Parmesan. Chemically  it comes from some kind of glutamate, and MSG is all up in synthesising its business. But it's present in most meats and all cheeses, and was discovered while mucking about trying to work out why seaweed tastes the way it does. You'll also find it in spades in ripe tomatoes, mushrooms, various fish (particularly anchovies, which are basically a condiment), and quite a lot of vegetables.Notionally it's the 5th basic taste, along with the other primary colours of flavour: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Although in that lineup, it sounds a bit like an extra dwarf, added during localization, to increase Asian market appeal.Dishes that heap up the umami can be a bit overwhelming, and definitely tend to the rich. So something like pasta with broccoli, anchovies, and Parmesan, is basically umami city. But provided it's balanced so as not to be unpalatable, it'll be memorably delicious.