#4 - Ham and Arugula Pizza

Pizza is definitely one of our favorite foods to have when we want something tasty and quick during the busy work week. Who doesn't love dough, cheese, and tomatoes? We have some good pizza places near where we live, but we also sometimes like to make our own pizza instead. This recipe is actually a white pizza, so there's no red tomato sauce involved. It's a super easy recipe and is perfect for a midweek dinner. We added ham and arugula onto the original recipe to make it even better.

Ham and Arugula Pizza

Adapted from 5 Ingredient Fix This recipe comes from Food Network chef, Claire Robinson, who has a show called "5 Ingredient Fix" where she uses, you guessed it, only five ingredients to make each recipe. We added 2 more ingredients onto the original recipe, so it's technically a 7 ingredient fix.The dough is probably the most important part of a pizza. Some like a New York thickness, others go for Chicago-style, and yet others prefer thin crust. We haven't tried making our own dough yet (hopefully one day), but there is a great bakery near Emily's family in New Jersey that sells freshly-made dough. Every time we go up for a visit, we make a stop and buy some dough. When rolled out, this dough makes for a medium thickness. One pound ends up making one pizza - we usually make two so we have leftovers for the week.
The real recipe calls for garlic-flavored olive oil. We didn't really know what that meant the first time we tried the recipe, so we just improvised. And for us, that means throwing some garlic and olive oil in a bowl and covering the top. It ended up working out great, and the garlic definitely started infusing with the oil after about 20 minutes.
Since the white pizza with just mozzarella and ricotta can be kind of plain, we decided to add some ham and arugula on top. We used black forest ham and added it on before putting the pizza in the oven. For the arugula, we didn't add it until the last ten minutes of cook time so it had some time to wilt but still had a little bite to it in the end.
The end result was a perfect pizza. The garlic oil gave great flavor to the dough, and the addition of the ham and arugula really made the pizza a perfect mid-week dinner. Maybe next time we try pizza we'll make an attempt at our own dough.
Here's the recipe for you:

Ingredients

• 3 cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
  
• 1 lb ball of pizza dough, at room temperature
  
• 3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
• 2 tsps oregano, plus more for garnish
• 1/4 lb ham or prosciutto cotto
• 2 handfuls arugula
  

Preparation

1. Crush the garlic and let sit in covered bowl of olive oil for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat over to 375ºF.
3. Lightly brush the bottom of the pizza pan with regular olive oil.
4. Roll out the dough on a work surface using a small amount of flour and your hands. Transfer the rolled dough to the greased pan.
5. Brush the top of the dough with the garlic-flavored olive oil and sprinkle some oregano over the oil.
   
6. Spread the mozzarella over the crust.
7. Use a spoon to dollop the ricotta evenly over the mozzarella, and then sprinkle more oregano on top.
8. Add small pieces of ham over the cheeses.
9. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes.
10. Add the arugula on top of the pizza and then finish cooking for 5 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
    
11. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.