What I Ate: Pesto Flatbread with Arugula Salad

Whilst we were in Genoa back in April, my sister and I stumbled upon a market. Genoa is well known for its pesto, as pesto was born there, so there were several pesto stalls lined up. We sampled a few and the one that made us go wide-eyed and happy was purchased immediately. Unfortunately for us, traveling by air and the fear of going through customs and having our treasures taken away limited our purchase volume so we settled on two small 100 ml jars of green pesto and one small 100 ml jar of red pesto.

It's been a couple of months since we've returned but we finally had a reason to break out some pesto. Seeing as it's been prime grilling weather lately, we fired it up, grilled some pizza dough, and made some awesomely savory flatbreads. I slathered each slab with a generous spoonful of delicious (and genuine) Genovese pesto, piled on some arugula salad, and finished the flatbreads off by dotting them with grilled sausage half-moons and a generous sprinkle of crushed pepper flakes.

I'm quite determined to work on my own pesto recipe to get it closer to the real thing, but in the meantime, if you're not in Italy and you want to make your own, my recipe is a decent substitute. The pizza dough is my old favorite standby, though these days, the grocery sells a pretty good premade version if you want to make your life easier. The arugula salad is the simple one I shared last week. And the sausage is just storebought stuff that was chucked on the grill until plump and charred.

Isn't this the most summery and delicious looking meal? The best part is that it's pretty guilt-free because it's basically just a salad sitting on an edible plate.

xoxo.