Blue Cheese, Prawn and Shimeji Pizza

As you all know, I love Japanese food and books. I often visit the cookbook section (English and Chinese) at Kinokuniya to browse through what is happening. When I first saw Yoshoku by Jane Lawson, I was sorely tempted to get it. However I had just found a copy of the Breakaway Kitchen by Eric Gower so I opted for that first telling myself that I will get it the next round. Sadly when I went back, all copies were sold out! So I ordered a copy and I waited and waited. It took quite a while as it seems this distributor did only one shipment a month to Kinokuniya but I am glad I waited as the book is awesome with it's Japanese food western style.

For my first foray with the book, I decided to try the Japanese style pizza which contained all my favourite stuff like shimeji mushrooms, stinky blue cheese and prawns. I had not made pizza for quite a while so I thought it was high time we had some at home. Sadly the dough is not home made but the pizza bases are bought from the bake shop.

I also made some chilled tofu with roasted tomatoes to accompany the pizza. Extremely easy to make as I had bought some lovely small tomatoes still on the vine that I drizzled some olive oil and sprinkled salt and sugar. This was all roasted in an oven until they became soft and juicy. Get some chilled tofu from the supermarket (I use the ones in a block) and cut them in smaller pieces. Stack them up and serve with your roasted tomatoes. You can drizzle some balsamic vinegar on the tofu.



The pizza was also simple to make especially since I cheated a bit with my ready made pizza bases. The only thing that took a while was caramelising the onions as that meant slow cooking them in a frying pan with mirin. My caramelised onions were well and truly browned as you can see in the picture. The Japanese elements in this recipe was the white miso you smeared on top of the pizza base as opposed to the usual tomato sauce base and the addition of shimeji mushrooms. I had peeled and deveined the prawns and tossed them in some chopped garlic and oil before I had put them on top of the pizza base. Sadly my blue cheese melted away so you can't see it but we could definitely taste it. Wonderful combination of flavours and even though my picture does not look as nice as the one in the cookbook, the taste of the pizza is still with me. It also went well with the cold tofu and juicy tomatoes which made a wonderfully light meal.