Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Quickie Dinner Pizza

Tonight...Sausage and Roasted Red Pepper Pizza

1 lb sausage ( I had the Bob Evans, it was on sale this weekend)
1/2 medium onion, sliced into 1/2 moons
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 can whole tomatoes, roughly chopped-reserve all liquid
1 tsp fennnel seeds
S/P to taste
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes

A poppin' fresh tube of pizza dough

1 cup roasted red peppers
2 cups shredded mozarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Preheat oven according to poppin' fresh's instructions.

Crumble sausage into a large saucepan and saute until browned and cooked through. Add the onions and allow to sweat for a minute. Add the garlic and allow that to cook for a quick 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, toss to coat everything and allow to simmer.

Then, step aside and roll out poppin' fresh into a "quarter sheet" pan...I don't know the official dimensions, but the dough fits really well in it. Put a little olive oil on top and throw in the oven for 15 minutes.

While that is cooking. Go back to your sausage/tomato mixture.

Check for salt & pepper desirability? How...? Taste it! Then add the fennel, oregano and basil. Make sure to give the fennel a little crunch first, get the seeds opened up a bit. Allow to simmer and reduce until the dough comes out.

When the dough comes out, spoon on the sausage/tomato mixture, sprinkle on the crushed red pepper, parmesan cheese and mozarella. Bake an additional 6 minutes. If you have a stupid stove like mine, the broiler is underneat the oven compartment....I had to take the pizza out and put it in the broiler at this point for a few quick minutes to get it golden brown and delicious!

^^^

This was about 20-30 minutes of cooking and I had all ingredients on hand except the poppin' fresh and mozarella. I cut the pizza into 8 LARGE pieces and this could easily have stuffed four people!

So for less time than delivery and less money than delivery...it was pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

It's not figure friendly that's for sure. However, if you were interested in having this on a diet, what's to say you couldn't use just ground pork and less cheese....maybe add more vegetables? This can be very versatile. What would you do?

.

4 comments:

Stef said...

What would I do? I'd eat the low-fat, less-tasty, portion-controlled Weight Watchers or Healthy Choice microwave version. Not as exciting, I know. But your version sounds really darn tempting!

I had soup with fennel in it today. Which made me realize that I have no idea what the taste of fennel is. Can you describe it?

Dancer in DC said...

Fennel has a licorice-type flavor. Very similar to anise.

Anonymous said...

I'd probably use turkey or pork sausage... or skip the meat completely. Artichoke hearts might be really good on this pizza!

Sometimes I don't really like the canned/refridgerated, or just add water to the stuff in the box, pizza crust... so I'd love to use whole wheat pitas and make cutesy individual pizzas with this recipe!! YUMMM!!

ScottE. said...

Yep, the sausage was pork based, no beef in it!