It’s a pizza base, it’s summery, fresh corn on the cob, and it’s cheese. All three in one excellent combination.
The year of the corn
I’m having the year of the sweetcorn. My weekly fruit and vegetable market this season delivered ears and ears of absolutely gorgeous sweetcorn every week. I’m roasting it whole, stripping the kernels and cooking them in cream or just in butter, I’m adding it to salads or just eating it off the cob, biting round and round and round.
This recipe is a different use of the sweetcorn, as a topping for a tart. And it's a good use of the odd frozen pizza dough ball sometimes knocking about the freezer. But of course it doesn't have to be made from scratch: it will be lovely also if shop bought, I won’t judge you.
5 things to do with a spare pizza dough ball
Those (superior and smug) of us who make their own pizza from scratch, dough and all, always end up with a leftover dough ball in the freezer. So what can you do with an odd frozen chunk or two of dough?
The obvious use, you can make pizza. I defrost it beforehand and proceed as with fresh, gutted that there was only one of those.
You can also make a scaccia which is another wonderful Italian food invention: pizza dough rolled out really thin and folded, folded and folded with whatever filling you have at hand. Tomato sauce. Cheese. Leftover broccoli.
Turn your back on Italy and make a pissaladière with your pizza dough. It’s pizza, only French and so it is topped with things like onions and anchovies rather than tomato and cheese. De-li-choux aussi.
Go even deeper into fusion territory and fashion pretzels out of the dough. They will taste really good I promise, as long as you follow the shaping and cooking directions and sprinkle them with plenty of salt crystals.
And finally my favourite: a tart. Savoury not sweet, for dinner not dessert. I never top it with anything heavy or stodgy: usually no meat but plants, something vibrant green like beet leaves or spinach. This time it's with sweetcorn.
How to make corn tart base from pizza dough
You could just roll out the dough and use it like that but it might end up a little dry. I like to zing it up and turn it into something more similar to shortcrust, be it Italian or French.
All it needs is a little oil and cheese kneaded into the dough, or oil and a lot of cheese, depending on your appetite. I roll the dough out roughly, drizzle it with oil then sprinkle cheese and knead it back up hotch-potch style. Roll, drizzle, repeat.
I also like to build my tart in a hot frying pan to crisp the base up and even char it a little. Then I slip it onto a baking tray and finish it off in the oven. Of course if your frying pan is ovenproof, like cast iron, you can start it off on the hob and travel with it into the oven, without relocation the tart.
The topping of the corn tart
It couldn’t be simpler as it’s just cooked corn kernels, stripped off the cob. You might want to conventionally boil the cobs but I swear by roasting them as the flavour is incomparably nicer.
So when the base is sizzling faintly in the pan, scatter the kernels all over. Season with smoked paprika if you like and add plenty of chopped coriander. And then the cheese: a sensible scattering or go all to town, depending how cheesy you like it.
It’s gorgeous warm and really nice cold as well. And yes, you can use cooked frozen sweetcorn out of season.
More sweetcorn recipes
Corn on the cob with tahini butter: steamed to perfection in the microwave in only 2 minutes, slathered with the topping of tahini butter, that’s the easiest and the tastiest ear of sweetcorn you’ll ever have tried!
Mexican street sweetcorn salad, esquites, with sweetcorn off the cob cooked in the frying pan, mixed with a salty, herby, spicy, cheesy dressing, is the second best thing after a holiday to Cancun!
Corn ribs from the oven, with homemade dukkah, just like the ones served at Ottolenghi’s Rovi. It’s totally a snack du moment – and de toujours, I hope.
More savoury tart recipes
Asparagus tart on puff pastry, modestly cheesy but superiorly easy to make. It’s a delightful springtime brunch or lunch dish, making the most of the short British asparagus season while it lasts.
Pissaladière Provençal is a simple savoury tart from Nice, with onion, anchovy and olive topping on pizza dough. In other words, salty fish on pizza!
Tomato tarte tatin with caramelised plum tomatoes and shortcrust pastry. A savoury version of the famous tarte tatin, with garlic, skinned plum tomato halves and balsamic vinegar caramel. Make the shortcrust base with cornmeal and thyme instead of using puff pastry for a much better tomato tarte tatin.