Spanish pizza: Coca with soft blue cheese and cured sausage recipe
This Spanish pizza, known as a 'coca', is topped with specialist cheese and slices of cured and spiced pork sausage. Valdeón cheese comes from the Valdeón Valley in the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain. It's a mix of goats' and cows' milk, and is semi-soft, creamy and spicy. Fuet is a Catalan pork sausage not dissimilar to salami or chorizo - it's salted and seasoned with paprika. If you can't get hold of either, make appropriate substitutions for a blue cheese and cured sausage of your choice.
Ingredients
For the base- 300 g strong white bread flour
- 50 g cornstarch
- 2 tbsp dried oregano
- 250 ml water (at room temperature)
- 5 g yeast
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large, ripe tomato, sliced
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 90 g fuet, finely sliced
- 100 g valdeón, crumbled
- 100 g rocket
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp paprika
Details
- Cuisine: Spanish
- Recipe Type: Main
- Difficulty: Easy
- Preparation Time: 40 mins
- Cooking Time: 30 mins
- Serves: 4
Step-by-step
- Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.
- In a large mixing jug, mix the water with the yeast and then add the olive oil and a pinch of salt and stir together.
- In a mixing bowl, sift together the flour, cornstarch and oregano. Make a well in the centre and pour in your water, mixing and kneading until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Cover with a tea-towel and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
- In a pestle and mortar, mash together your garlic cloves with 1tsp olive oil and the paprika. Set a frying pan over a medium heat and add the rocket together with the garlic mix and cook until the rocket starts to wilt. Set aside.
- After the 30 minutes, take your dough and working on some floured baking paper, work it into rectangle using a rolling pin. Then place it on a baking tray and put it into your pre-heated oven for 5 minutes.
- Remove the coca from the oven and then cover with the slices of tomatoes and onion. Put it back into the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes or until tomatoes and onion became soft.
- Remove from the oven once again, this time adding the slices of fuet and sprinkling over the valdeón. Bake again for 10 more minutes or until the cheese has completed melted.
- Remove from the oven for the last time and garnish with the garlic rocket. Cut into squares and serve.
This recipe comes courtesy of The Foodies Larder. Image: Alexander Prokopenko/Shutterstock
You might also like: