Friday, October 24, 2008

Butternut Squash Pizza


This is the pizza I ended up making for Matt and me. I thought that the flavors of butternut squash ravioli with browned butter and sage would translate well to pizza.

The kids, of course, had pizza spread with some of my homemade tomato sauce that I canned earlier in the week and sprinkled with mozzarella cheese. That tasted pretty darn good too.

Butternut Squash Pizza

1/2 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced thinly
1 large shallot, sliced into rings
1 1/2 T butter
1/4 C olive oil
sage leaves (5-7)
1/4 C shredded asiago cheese
1/4 C shredded mozzarella
6 T ricotta cheese

1 recipe basic pizza dough

In a jellyroll pan, toss the butternut squash and shallot slices in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for 20 minutes at 425 degrees. Turn once during roasting. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a small pan and when hot, fry sage leaves. They will splatter a bit, so take care. When leaves are still green, but crisp, remove and drain on paper towels. This takes mere seconds. Drain oil into small bowl and reserve. Wipe out pan with paper towel and heat butter over medium low heat until browned then remove from heat. Take butternut squash and shallot from the oven and toss gently with browned butter, leaving behind any dark solids.

Lightly drizzle prepared and stretched pizza dough with reserved olive oil and sprinkle over the mozzarella and asiago cheeses. Carefully spoon slices of butternut squash and shallots evenly over pizza. Dollop on the ricotta cheese and place into oven onto a pizza stone that has been preheated at 500 degrees for one hour. I usually put my stretched pizza dough onto heavily floured parchment paper so that it slides off the pizza peel easily (slide pizza on paper into oven). Halfway through baking, gently lift the pizza and remove the paper. Sometimes my oven is so hot that the paper ignites and burns down to the crust. You can eliminate this by cutting the paper as close to the edge of the pizza as possible. And if it does light on fire, don't worry, it burns itself out quickly!

Bake Pizza for about 20 minutes or until crust has desired crispness. Sprinkle on the fried sage leaves and drizzle with a bit more olive oil, cut and eat.

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