Tuesday Pizza: 10/11/2011

Pizza Sunday then work a couple days and have some more pizza on Tuesday!  Sounds like an ideal plan.  Thing is, it wasn't really a plan.

Are you a doer?  I'm a wanna-be doer.  Deep down I want to make a three course, from scratch meal every night of the week.  I'll open one of a thousand cookbooks I own and flip through and flip through and next thing I know I'm making refried bean quesadillas.

Enter Emily!  Do have a friend like this?  She's a doer!  She's the person that will name all the things she wants to do on Sunday and actually do them.  Well, most of them.



It is not uncommon to meet her family at our nearby pool to swim for an hour then grab early lunch.  Then on the way out she starts listing aloud, counting on her fingers what she's got on tap for the rest of "day" (which is code for Elliott's 2 hr nap and when he goes to bed).  "I'm going to make and can salsa and chutney and some more pickles and then finish a blouse I'm working on for my sewing class!"  Wah-huh?  You feel me here?  The girl gets stuff done!  I'm like, "WOW I might start a load of laundry."

Remember I wrote here that I am obsessed with this ricotta recipe?  Em emails that she wants to go to the fun and fancy grocery store that carries all the fun and fancy milks to make ricotta!  I knew I had to hop on board if I was ever going to make it.  This email led to a thread of probably 20 emails back and forth all leading to....

Roasted Butternut Squash, Homemade Ricotta, and Homemade Sausage Pizza!


Are you drooling?  The decision was the sausage would be much better on a more traditional pizza but it still worked.  Em pointed out the true inspiration came from Shutterbean's  similar bruschetta recipe post a few days earlier.

Emily made the dough following a Mark Bittman recipe (always a winner).  We made the ricotta.  While it drained in cheesecloth we seeded, peeled, and diced the squash then roasted at 4oo degrees for 30-40 minutes or so until soft.  We crumbled and baked the Italian sweet sausage at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until cooked through.

Em rolled out the dough and spread olive oil all over it and we topped with everything and baked for 10 minutes. Ummm - hello - her oven goes up to 550 degrees! That's so NOT fair!  I looked like Z-man stomping around her house and crying, "I want an oven that goes up to 550!!"

Don't you love that the bottom 1/3 of the pizza is only olive oil and sausage?  That was for C who doesn't like cheese OR squash!  Yet somehow I still married him.

The pizza was fantastic!  However, my favorite conversation from the night was from Pete.  He said, "This would be so good with pizza sauce instead of oil."  We asked, "With the ricotta?" to which he replied, "Well, no with the sausage."  :)  Uh Pete that's a regular old pizza.

A big thanks to Emily!  I probably would have flipped through the recipe for years had it not been for my good friend aptly dubbed The Doer!