The seeds of this dish lie in a trip we did once down to the Brest Festival back in 2012. Rolling down the Chanel du Four in sunshine after a 3 day bash to windward our stores were running low and all we had was some left over ciabatta, half a block of cheese and some dried sausage. The combination turned out to be fantastic and since then we have fine tuned it to make the perfect quick lunch or even a tasty party snack.

Serves: As many as necessary, just keep adding ciabatta, cheese and pepperoni! One ciabatta will make 8 decent sized “pizzas” – and 3 or 4 of these is enough lunch for most people.

Time: About 10 minutes depending on how fast your grill is.

Ingredients

Ciabatta: Any will do – no real point going to an artisan bakery given what we’re going to put on it! If you can’t find ciabatta, then almost any bread works, we’ve even done it with sandwich thins, but something about ciabatta makes it work the best.

Cheese: Again, don’t get too fussy. As long as it will melt under the grill then it will probably be fine. A nice mature cheddar is just the ticket though.

Pepperoni Slices: We have tried all sorts of different options for this part and it turns out that pepperoni really is the best. At a push, chorizo isn’t bad and salami works as well but a nice, spicy pepperoni complements the cheese perfectly.

Uhm… that’s it! You can, as an alternative (for folks who don’t like spice or meat), use thin slices of tomato or very finely chopped red onion instead of the sausage.

Making Ciabatta Pizzas

Method:

• Put your grill on to pre-heat.
• Cut the Ciabatta into quarters and then cut these across so that you have a series of fat “fingers”. You can make these smaller if you want but an eighth of the original seems like a good size to us and then a whole ciabatta fits in one of Amelie Rose’s grill pans perfectly so…
• Stack a bunch of the sausage slices on top of each other and cut them into quarters. You could just put the sausage on the bread and the cheese on the sausage, but then what happens is that when you bite in, if you don’t sever the sausage neatly it will drag the hot cheese off the “pizza” and onto your face. The smaller quarters of sausage minimise the damage!
• Lay 3 or 4 quarter sausage slices on each piece of bread and top with a slice of cheese (see pic). Once they are all done chuck the grill pan under the grill.
• Whilst that is toasting/melting make up the next batch.
• When the cheese is bubbling and the edges of the bread toasting, serve on another plate or bowl (leaving your grill pan ready for the next load).
• Rinse and repeat until the crew cry for mercy or you run out of ingredients.

If you do find yourself with a few leftovers that the crew just can’t force down then let them cool down (the pizzas – not the crew) and then cut them into one inch square pieces. Pop these in the fridge and then when the time comes for sundowners whip them out and pop them in a bowl as tasty appetisers.

Let me know how you get on in the comments below.

Until next time… Bon appetite!

The Galley Slave