Smoked salmon and feta pizza

We’ve made pizza with tortillas as a crust in the past, with varying degrees of success. We’ve found that because they’re so thin they tend to dry out and become brittle, and too crispy (almost like a cracker). But we’ve discovered a great way to cook pizza where the tortilla base doesn’t dry out, and it remains sturdy.

All we do is cook the pizza for three minutes in a preheated lightly oiled frying pan first. This allows the base of the flat bread to get crisp but not dry, while the pizza toppings also start to cook and the cheese begins to melt as the heat penetrates the thin tortilla. Then it only takes two minutes under the oven broiler to be fully cooked.

Another key to the success of this pizza is the simple pizza sauce. We just mix together a little olive oil and tomato paste and spread it over the tortilla. This gives a lovely tomatoey taste without making the thin base soggy.

For this pizza we’ve used smoked salmon, feta and zucchini as the toppings, but you can put many different toppings on flat bread pizzas (including your own favorite pizza cheese) — but don’t overload them. Choose ingredients that only need quick cooking, lighter toppings that suit the thin base. Apart from zucchini and red onion, other tasty vegetable toppings include mushrooms, finely diced red or green peppers, and baby spinach. Instead of smoked salmon you could use anchovies, baby shrimp, canned tuna, shaved ham, or shredded rotisserie chicken. Other yummy toppings that don’t weigh down the tortilla are sliced olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and quartered marinated artichoke hearts. Apart from dill, you can scatter over fresh basil, parsley or mint. Or if you don’t have any fresh herbs use dried — oregano or rosemary work well.