Yummizza

Since becoming husband and wife, Chris and I (or more so Chris) have become lovers of our kitchen.  We have tried so many new recipes, and I am quite blessed to have a husband who can cook like some sort of gourmet chef (who knew? marriage BONUS).  I have to be honest in saying that he does most of the cooking, but when we can get in the kitchen together, I enjoy it very much.  We have been looking forward to being able to document and share the recipes that we enjoy.  I will do my best to give credit where credit is due because most of the recipes we will share have been found through pinterest and other blogs.  In a world with 6 billion recipes posted daily, we are trying our best to weed through the lame ones and share the yummiest with you.  Here is a recipe we made recently that I wanted to share with you.  Full details can be found here: Alexandra's Kitchen: Butternut Squash and Crispy Sage Pizza 

As Chris (and now all of you) knows, I have a deep culinary love for all things butternut squash.  If all the food in the world were to disappear tomorrow, the only thing I would wish to remain would be hamburgers, chocolate, and butternut squash (a winning combination of foods).  So, I was really excited to try this recipe.

We learned a few things with the first go-round, and I will share our failures with you here.  First things first, use FRESH pizza dough.  Either make it yourself OR buy fresh dough.  Apparently the grocery store we go to only sells one ball of fresh dough a day, and they hide this precious dough next to the bakery cookies in a small fridge that isn't visible to anyone until your husband goes to checkout and you go to look for fresh bread and find the last fresh ball of dough just in time to see your husband paying at the register and realizing it is too late...Because that happened.  Just like that.

Here's what you will need to make the yummizza:

1 small butternut squash, ~1lb will do, but apparently you will have some left over (which happily went into my belly while the pizza was cooling-appetizer if you will)
olive oil
kosher salt
2 cloves garlic
fresh ricotta cheese
Mozzarella cheese (we added this to the recipe-total win with this addition)
a few sprigs thyme, leaves removed
rosemary 
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
10-15 sage leaves
canola oil for frying


Cooking directions come from the Alexandra's Kitchen blog:

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Remove the skin: Slice the top of the squash about 1/2-inch under the stem to create a flat edge. Repeat with the other end. Cut crosswise through the squash just above the bulb — cutting the squash into two pieces makes the peeling process easier. Note: I made only one pizza, so I only peeled the longer portion (the non bulb portion) of the butternut squash. Stand the squash (whichever piece you want to peel first) upright and, being careful not to slice off your fingers, run your knife down the sides of the squash removing the peel along the way. Repeat with bulb portion if desired. After peeling the bulb portion, cut it in half, scoop out seeds and discard. Cut the peeled squash crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices. I used a mandoline, which saves time and creates uniform pieces, but using a knife works just fine, too.

2. Place the slices of squash on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with kosher salt to taste, toss to coat, redistribute onto sheet in one layer and place in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until fork tender.

Squash cooking away

3. Meanwhile, peel and finely chop the garlic and add it to about 1/4 cup of olive oil. After rolling out a pizza round and placing it on a prepared baking sheet (see recipe above), brush dough with the garlic olive oil. (I spooned some of the oil into the center of the dough and then, using the back of my spoon, spread it over the dough to coat evenly.) Spread a thin layer of fresh ricotta over the garlic oil. Sprinkle with fresh thyme to taste. Top with baked squash slices. Top with grated Parmigiano. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

Chopping garlic

4. Meanwhile, fry the sage. The book recipe does not give detailed instructions for this step, and after a few burnt batches of leaves, I turned to the internet for some advice. The sage leaves should take no longer than 5 seconds in hot oil to crisp up. I didn’t use a thermometer or a deep fryer, so it was a trial and error process, but I found that frying the leaves one at a time in a small sauté pan filled with a layer of canola oil worked well ultimately. I had to take the pan off the heat every so often, but once I got the hang of it, it was a simple process and well worth the effort — the crispy sage adds a really nice flavor.

5. Remove the pizza from the oven and top with the crispy sage. 

In order to make this pizza even more delicious, we added a few things here and there.  Whenever I roast butternut squash, I always add a generous amount of thyme, rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper.  You can never add too much to the butternut squash, and those flavor combinations are AMAZING.  I make a crazy good butternut squash soup that basically involves roasting the squash with rosemary, thyme, and garlic, and then you put it in a blender with vegetable stock, and boom-it's like heaven in your mouth.  Since making this soup, I now always add rosemary and thyme to any butternut squash recipe.  With this recipe, we actually roasted the garlic with the squash and added it to the pizza after roasting it-I think it added another layer of awesome to the yummizza. 

Our epic fail in the recipe was buying the not so fresh dough.  We attempted to roll out the dough, but it was not cooperating...at all.  We ended up with quite a mess of dough but managed to salvage it and maintain deliciousness in our final product.  Just learn from our mistake and save yourself the trouble...Before putting the pizza in the oven to bake we added rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper to the oil and spread it over the pizza.  We used ricotta, parmigiano and mozzarella.  We basically just added all of it before baking the pizza.

Anxiously waiting for yummizza

Yummizza getting yummy

Frying the sage was pretty fun.  The sage takes on a delicious spicy, buttery flavor when it's dropped in oil.  This part did not take all that long, but it added a lot to the pizza.  We crumbled up the fried sage and sprinkled it all over the pizza at the end.  

The final product

What ended up happening is that this potentially healthy pizza became pretty unhealthy when we demolished it in one sitting.  Oh well, we will save healthy eating for another day.  I can guarantee if you make this yummizza, you will not be disappointed.

We have quite a few recipes to share with you all.  Thanks to Pioneer Woman for the upcoming recipe.  Here's a little preview:

Deliciousness on a plate...