Socca to me!

I have made chickpea flour crust pizza before, very very tasty, pretty easy, totally healthy, veg. and gluten-free too. Basically it involved making a big pancake, frying it in the pan, then topping and baking. Not too hard....but.....

But then a couple days ago, my pal Smartcat post SOCCA... an Italian flatbread pizza made with chickpea flour. She tells us "look up a recipe!" and I DO. (click here)  Whereas the recipe I HAD was pretty easy and tasty, the one I FOUND is a lot more easy and soooo tasty.  Maybe the easiest pizza I have ever made, beyond opening a bag of pitas, English muffins or tortillas, smearing on sauce and toppings and baking.... which reminds me:  I am telling the wife exactly that, as we munch, and she reminds me:
"but there are no crayons!".

When I was a student teacher with kindergartners in college and they got to make their own lunch, they chose what to shop for and what to make.  What they wanted was the same couple of things every day, ALWAYS overly sweet frozen apple juice mixed with not enough water and either tuna fish or personal pizzas made with English muffins.  And play dough.  And crayons.  Imagine a group of 5 year olds  having a great day at school, playing with the crayons, the playdough and such and OH!  Time to make lunch!  The line between playing with playdough and making pizza was not firm and the kids did not mind the extras in their personally prepared food.....

AND, speaking of Socca and Italy and chickpeas, the wife lived and worked in Sicily once upon a time.  YEP.  Sicily has a variety of ways of using chickpeas, as would any part of the Mediterranean Sea and all up and down Italy.  In Palermo a street food vendor would have hot oil in a pan, smear chickpea batter on a wooden paddle and hold it over the oil.  The batter would flop into the oil, and you would have a crispy sandwich.

ANYWAY, the quick, easy, wonderful socca pizza I made involves baked chickpea flour crust, some veggies and cheese, that is IT (I use non-dairy cheese as you know).  I had all the veggies the recipe writer used, olives, peppers, artichokes, etc, except no zucchini and so I used broccoli instead.  TWAS YUMMY! And did I mention EASY easy easy EASY PEASY???  It is the most wonderful 2 person dinner prepared in a half hour.
The fun part, well, it was all fun, was assembling it in the hot fry pan, where you can see the crust baking while you load it up before returning it to the oven.... have a great Monday!