Easy Pizza Recipes- Roasted Squash & Tocino Pizza

If you’ve never had Filipino Tocino (sweetly flavored boneless meats), you need to go to your nearest Filipino restaurant and try it. The Tocinos I’ve tried have all been either pork or chicken but as I’ve been told by Filipino friends, they come in all kinds of meats. For one of my easy pizza recipes, I created this pizza using store-bought pizza dough that I rolled out, slathered on a bit of pesto and layered cooked Tocino, mozzarella and roasted squash. The results are mouth-watering- a little sweet, a little savory, and a whole lot of ooey gooey goodness.

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 lb pizza dough (fresh or ready-made)

1 cup garlic cilantro pesto

10 oz pork or chicken tocino** (substitute with your favorite sausage)

8 oz squash diced into small cubes or small wedges

10 to 12 fresh tomato slices

12 oz fresh mozzarella sliced (~10 to 12 slices)

Sea salt for sprinkling

Method

Roll out pizza dough as per instructions if necessary. Place on baking sheet. Spread garlic cilantro pesto evenly over dough. Set aside.

In a wok or skillet, pan-fry the tocino for approximately 5 minutes on each side until golden brown. Place tocino on a plate and allow to cool down for a few minutes before roughly chopping into small bite sized pieces.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Top the pizza evenly with tomato slices, mozzarella slices, tocino slices and squash cubes in this order. Bake for approximately 25 to 35 minutes. Remove pizza from the oven and sprinkle sea salt evenly. Cut into slices and serve immediately.

**Tocino is a Filipino sweet pork or chicken meat that is already marinated in an assortment of spices including garlic, sugar, salt and paprika. Tocino is readily available in most Asian markets. If you can’t find Tocino, you can substitute with your favorite sausage, stir-frying the sausage out of its casing before spreading over the pizza.