Fig Pizza and White Bean Soup

I've been saving my bottle of The Grade's Sea-Fog Sauvignon Blanc (2009) for a nice occasion, but now that finals have snuck up on us, I decided we could use some pampering. About a month ago, my family enjoyed a lovely weekend in Napa where The Grade Cellars had prepared a wonderful tasting for us. The night before, we had dinner at Tra Vigne, in St. Helena and I had the Wood Oven Baked Fig Pizza without the gorgonzola cheese. I loved it. So, to go along with our Sauvignon Blanc for the evening, Nick and I recreated this pizza (with figs and mixed greens from the Moraga Farmers Market) and made a delicious soup to go along with it (with yellow carrots also from the Farmers Market).

Nick made his dad's delicious pizza/ focaccia dough recipe for our pizza:

2 pkg Dry Active Yeast
2 cups tepid water (about 30 seconds in the microwave)
2 tbsp sugar
¼ c. olive oil
½ c. vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
5-6 c. white flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Microwave your water for 30 seconds. Pour in yeast and sugar. Stir up to wake up the yeast.

Mix together all the liquid ingredients in your mixing bowl. Add 2-3 c. of the flour and stir together with a wooden spoon to begin pulling dough together. Add salt. (According to my dad, salt can kill your yeast. So he adds the salt at this point rather than adding it to the liquids. Dead yeast =flat pizza). Keep adding flour and mixing until the dough begins to hold together and you can begin kneading by hand.

Knead on a flat floured surface. Continue adding flour and kneading until the dough reaches the desired consistency. Tuck your dough into a ball and place it in a clean bowl with a little bit of olive oil. Flip the dough around so that it gets coated with the oil.

Cover the bowl with a clean dish rag and set aside in a warm place. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in size (about 45-60 min). Punch down the dough, recover with the cloth, and let the dough double again. Spread the dough out onto its pan, cover with a towel and let it rest again for about a half hour.

While the dough is resting, this is a good time to prepare the toppings. You'll need:

About 3 figs

1/2 an onion

Garlic

Vegan Blue Cheese

Mixed Greens

Balsamic Vinegar

Olive oil

Agave nectar

Caramelize half of a while onion, along with some chopped garlic in olive oil. Slice figs, crumble vegan blue cheese and mix balsamic, olive oil and agave together.

Put the dough in for a few minutes before topping it to let the dough set up.

Drizzle a small amount of the balsamic glaze over the dough. Then, top with caramelized onions, garlic, figs and vegan blue cheese. Cook for about 16- 18 minutes.

Once the pizza is done, top with mixed greens and drizzle the rest of the balsamic glaze over the pizza.

The soup of the night was the Vegetarian Times' White Bean Soup. We added fresh rosemary to the soup instead of parsley and it ended up being very tasty.

Everything was delightful and paired very nicely with our wine. I'm definitely making both the soup and pizza again sometime soon.