Prosciutto, Fig Jam and Goat Cheese Pizza

Howdy! My name is pronounced keer (like beer)-sten and I’m a seasonal eater. Since 2006 I’ve been eating with the seasons via Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares.

At home I cook for my kids and my frequently-vegetarian sometimes-deployed spouse, as well as baking for my book group and donating to the PTO-sponsored teacher luncheons. I work as a prep cook in the scratch kitchen of a local Italian restaurant.

I write the website Farm Fresh Feasts where I share how I feed my family year round using fresh (and preserved) produce from the farm share. Typically my recipes involve some sort of locally-sourced ingredient—but not always! Sometimes it’s just a great deal at the store. To help other folks like me, wondering what the heck to do with kohlrabi or beets or a case of oranges from the marching band Fruit Fundraiser, I created a Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This alphabetically-structured resource helps folks use the fruits of their farmers’ labors, not waste them, because I hate to throw out food. I even compost the vegetable waste from work!

Eating local, seasonal produce means that my cooking changes over the course of the year depending on what’s grown nearby. We eat salads and grilled items in the summer, soups and baked items in the winter, and on warm Fall or cool spring days anything goes.

One entree I cook year round is pizza. In the summer, when my 1920’s era house cannot cope with a blazingly hot oven, I grill my family’s Friday night pizzas. This photo shows my first ever grilled pizza—I was so proud!

I started making pizza when I was trying to economize after I became a stay at home mom. It all began with an excellent book—The Best Pizza is Made at Home by Donna Rathmell German. Trying several of the doughs and suggested toppings gave me the courage to branch out on my own. Now my oldest is in college, at work I make 4 gallons of pizza sauce at a time, and I still make pizzas at home nearly every week. It seemed fitting to share a pizza recipe with ya’ll.

Prosciutto, Fig Jam and Goat Cheese Pizza

by Kirsten Madaus of Farm Fresh Feasts

This recipe is based off a panini recipe in the pamphlet accompanying a George Foreman grill a dozen years ago or so, and makes a 12-inch pizza

1/4 cup fig jam

1 pound pizza dough 

Parchment paper

3 Tablespoons mascarpone cheese

1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

3 slices prosciutto, torn into small pieces

1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese

A couple of grinds of fresh pepper

Preheat oven to 450°F. If you’ve got a pizza stone, make sure to preheat it as well. If you don’t have a pizza stone a cookie sheet will work.

Warm the fig jam briefly (I microwaved mine for 40 seconds), stir, and set aside. Crumple a sheet of parchment paper then flatten it back out—this keeps it from curling up.

Stretch the pizza dough and lay it on the parchment paper. I just use my fingertips for this, and have a pretty good photo tutorial on my Pizza Primer post.  You may need to dust the paper with flour, semolina, or a splash of olive oil depending on the stickiness of your dough.

Spread mascarpone cheese across the dough in a thin layer. Top with mozzarella cheese and prosciutto. Dot goat cheese crumbles in the open areas. Drizzle the warmed fig jam over top.

Add a few grinds of fresh pepper.

Bake the pizza, parchment paper and all, on the stone for 5 minutes. Shimmy the paper out from under the pizza and bake the pizza directly on the stone for another 3 to 5 minutes, until the cheese is browned and bubbly and the prosciutto is crispy. Cool on a rack a few minutes, then slice and serve.