Around me I see more and more people trying to eat less meat for sustainability reasons. This recipe will give you a super tasty vegetarian pizza, where also your meat-eating guests will not miss the meat. I love the fennel seeds as they add a special anise flavor to the pizza, but they can be left out if you can’t find them.

Ingredients (for two):

• fresh pizza dough from the fridge of your supermarket
• 1 eggplant, cut in thin round slices of 0.5 cm
• 1 carton of tomato passata (strained tomatoes)
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 2 cloves of garlic, squeezed
• some grated Parmesan cheese
• fresh basil
• 1 bulb buffalo mozzarella
  Also: olive oil, pepper and salt
  Duration: 30 minutes

Preparations:

• Preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celcius
• In a cooking pan, roast the fennel seeds for a few minutes until they become fragrant. Put them in a mortar and grind them a little bit
• Heat a grill pan and use a cooking brush to put some olive oil on one side of the eggplant slices. Put them with the oiled side in the grilling pan for 3-4 minutes. Brush some oil on the other side and turn them around to grill for another 3-4 minutes. You might need to grill the eggplant in several batches. When the slices are grilled, season them with some salt and pepper
• Roll out the pizza dough on the oven tray, and put a thin layer of the tomato passata on it, you will most likely not use the whole carton.
• Divide the squeezed garlic, ground fennel seeds, some grated Parmesan cheese, half of the basil leaves and some salt and pepper over the tomato passata
• Place the grilled eggplant slices on the sauce and divide pieces of the mozzarella over the pizza
• Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the dough is crisp and the mozzarella cheese starts to color lightly golden/brown
• Divide the rest of the basil over the pizza, season with some black pepper and add a few drops of good olive oil. Enjoy!

What to drink with this?

Any Italian wine, for example a fruity Sangiovese or Montepulciano, or a more tannin-rich Barbera.