Puff pastry adorned with the ingredients of a pizza Margherita and festooned with additional licorice scented basil is a lazy yet delicious supper on nights when you don’t feel like putting too much thought into ingredient selection or preparation. Puff pastry, found in your freezer aisle by the frozen fruits and pie shells, works especially well as a makeshift pizza crust and there is nothing to do but defrost it and roll it out in a semi-rectangular shape. This always tastes best during actual tomato season but here in Vancouver it is still only 13 degrees so I buy plum tomatoes, which seem to hold their shape better than other varieties. If I can find them I also buy the bocconcini in “mini mini” size so I don’t have to cut them up but if you can only find the standard size tear apart, rather than slice, before it is strewn across the tomatoes and basil. A final note, bocconcini is very bland cheese and I would argue that its inherent value lies in texture rather than taste so make sure you compensate generously with salt and basil.

puff pastry margherita:

1 package of puff pastry, defrosted

5-6 plum tomatoes, diced

1 big bunch of basil cut in a chiffonade

2 tsp. light flavoured oil

“Mini mini” (or larger sized) bocconcini, about a cup total

Kosher salt

1. Combine the tomatoes, about 2/3’s of the basil, salt to taste, and oil in a large bowl – allow to sit while the oven heats up and you roll out the puff pastry.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and roll out the pastry until very thin directly on the paper. Leaving a 1 inch margin around the perimeter of the pastry, prick the dough randomly with a fork so that this part doesn’t rise as much as the border once it’s in the oven.

3. Spread the tomato mixture evenly across the surface of the pastry and top with the bocconcini. Sprinkle with kosher salt to taste.

4. Bake for 15-20 minutes, checking to make sure it isn’t burning. Once out of the oven all to sit for about five minutes before sprinkling with the remaining basil and cutting into individual servings.

I recently went to see the Pixies at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver and ever since then I haven’t been able to stop listening to The Breeders, a band that I listened to with wide-admiration in grade 9. The Deal sisters were just so fucking cool, cooler than Courtney Love for sure (another freshman obsession.) I love how spacey wasted some of their music is and then they’ll switch to catchy jangle pop by the next song (like this one.)

The Breeders – Divine Hammer