Summer Farm Fresh: Sausage & Squash Pizza

Always on the lookout for some new meal inspiration (because I feel like it doesn’t take long to get into a rut), Food and Wine magazine elected me lucky enough to start receiving their magazine for free. (Who knows if they actually know this. I have no idea why it started showing up in my mailbox.) But regardless, I look forward to flipping through the pages each month and tearing out a few things that look interesting. I don’t often follow the recipes exactly because sometimes they are a bit too fancy for me, require tools I don’t own, or just take too much time. But I modified this summer squash and sausage pizza and it turned out quite tasty. (As you can see from the photo, I went a little overboard on the cheese and was nervous it would ruin my hard work. I will use less cheese next time, but this first attempt turned out quite tasty despite the mozzarella mania.)

As I have mentioned before, I often visit the local farmers’ markets so our kitchen becomes inundated with whatever produce currently is falling off the trees and vines that week. For a good portion of the summer, the markets overflow with summer squash, so this recipe has been a great way to use that burgeoning harvest in a more creative way than my traditional “slice, season, sauté, and serve” method (one of those ruts to which I referred earlier). Give it a shot for yourself and tell me how it turns out or if you make any tasty modifications that you might be willing to share.

Ingredients

• 2 summer squash, grated on the large holes of a box grater
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 lb ball of pizza dough, thawed
• 1 8 oz ball of fresh mozzarella sliced
• 2 sausages, cooked
• 1/3 cup pizza sauce
• A bit of flour, for dusting dough

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Step 1: Grate the squash, toss with a bit of salt, and set in strainer / colander over a large bowl for 20  minutes or so. This helps dry out the surprising wet squash.

Step 2: Cook the sausages as desired. I sautéed ours until cooked throughout. I used a spicy Italian pork sausage but any non breakfast type of sausage would work. Set aside for dressing the pizza later.

Step 3: Sprinkle flour on a clean counter and roll out dough to desired thickness. I add a bit of flour to my hands too so the dough doesn’t stick to me. We used Whole Foods prepared pizza dough, which tasted great! But any brand, or a homemade version for those overachievers out there, will work just fine.

Step 4: Using the rolling pin as a base, if needed, gently roll the dough around the rolling pin and transfer the dough to the pizza pan.

Step 5: Bake the pizza dough for six minutes.

Step 6: Take the half-baked pizza dough out of the oven and spread pizza sauce on dough, as desired. I used a prepared sauce in a jar but any fresh sauce could work as well. Lots of discretion available with this step. I suppose you could even make it a white pizza and replace the sauce with olive oil and garlic. I might just give that a try next time.

Step 7: After draining as described above in step 1, squeeze out any excess liquid from the squash and spread over the sauce.

Step 8: Layer on the cheese and sausage in amounts as desired.

Step 9: Bake for twelve minutes, or until desired doneness, and you’re all set to scarf down some squash and sausage pizza.  Chow!