Monday, February 28, 2011

Sausage and Grape Pizza

Typically on a Monday morning, I'd be telling you about our menu for the week but, this weekend we had a little accident with the new car. (We are both fine & the car has barely any body damage but, one of the wheels won't steer anymore.) Since we are a one car family that means we are currently carless so, there was no Sunday trip to the grocery store & menu planning. Until I know when I'll have a car again, it'll be freezer & pantry scavenging to make meals (maybe mot such a bad thing as both could use a little clear out.

Anyway, instead of a menu today you get this amazing pizza that we had for dinner Friday night.
Sausage & Grape Pizza with Balsamic Reduction
This pizza was inspired by one of our favorite appetizers at Broder's Pasta Bar. They grill up some Italian sausage & serve them with grapes & a balsamic reduction. Well, we like sausage on pizza & grapes on pizza so, why not turn the whole dish into a pizza? I stayed pretty close to the inspiration dish just adding some Fontina cheese & onions. The final result was really one great pizza. Spicy from the sausage, sweet from the grapes and a little acid from the balsamic all tied together by the creamy fontina. It made for a great dinner but would also make a wonderful party appetizer.
Sausage & Grape Pizza with Balsamic Reduction
We are experimenting we different pizza dough right now & tried this one on Serious Eat's this time. It was very simple to put together & made for a very crisp, basic crust. It really stood up to the toppings. I didn't have the bread flour so I used all-purpose mixed with a little vital wheat gluten. It is one you have to either make the day before or 3 - 4 hours before baking. We had to press it out very thin to get the two 12" pizzas it said it made.

Sausage & Grape Pizza

Pizza crust dough for for two 12" pizzas
8 oz bulk hot Italian sausage (you can use mild but the spice really plays well here)
1/2 large white or yellow onion, sliced thin
olive oil
grated Fontina cheese
1 c seedless grapes, sliced in half (we used black grapes but any will work)
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1 t brown sugar

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Put the sausage & onions in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté, breaking the sausage apart, until the sausage is cooked & the onion are soft & starting to brown.

Lightly coat a baking sheet with some olive oil. Press the crust out until you get a thin large pizza (our's filled our whole baking sheet almost). Cover with grated cheese, sausage, onions & grapes.

Bake until the crust is golden brown & the cheese is bubbly, about 12 - 13 minutes.

While the pizza is baking bring the balsamic vinegar to a simmer in a small skillet or saucepan. Whisk in the brown sugar. Let simmer, stirring from time to time, until reduce almost in half & thicken slightly.

Remove pizza from the oven & drizzle with reduced balsamic,

2 - 3 main dish servings

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2011 Kathy Lewinski

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry about the car accident and happy to hear all is well. I just started following your blog. We made pizza Friday night too! I copied pizza recipes from Curtis Stone's "Take Home Chef" cooking program (off of Netflix).

One of ours was roasted tomatoes and procuitto. Wow. procuitto is quite expensive. The other was roasted mushrooms and calamata olives with basil. The toppings were delicious.

However, I bought fresh pizza dough from Whole Foods. It was tasteless. I was really disappointed. Next time I'll try making my own crust! Yours looks delicious.

Unknown said...

Glad everybody is ok after the accident (except poor car). However, if the fact that you had to clean out pantry and fridge (due to no car to take to market)and came up with this pizza was the result, then bravo. This recipe looks wonderful. I'm a huge fan of savory sweet and this hits the mark with me.

kat said...

Sarah - I wouldn't say this was the most flavorful crust either. The next one we are going to try sits in the fridge for a couple of days to develop flavor.

Megan said...

I'm glad everything is OK. Well...except the car. :(
But the pizza sounds like one hell of a pizza! I'm ,aking pizza this week and just might have to pull some sausage out of the freezer. I hope the munchkin doesn't eat all my grapes before I can get to the pizza.

Jenn @leftoverqueen said...

I am glad to hear that you guys are OK! So scary!

Manisha said...

We were totally synced with you this weekend. We had pizza friday night, then I was rear-ended on Saturday. I'm glad you both are OK! And the pizza looks delicious!

Meg Luby said...

sausage pizza with grapes! such a win! thanks for sharing :)
love this, love you! .meg
@ http://clutzycooking.blogspot.com/

SMITH BITES said...

pizza - my one other love besides The Professor!! the only bad pizza i've ever had is frozen store-bought or take out. anything we make at home is terrific. great combo Kat!

Elle said...

Sorry about the car damage, but happy you two are fine.

Wow, what a great flavor combo! Wouldn't have thought of it, but happy that I've discovered it!

grace said...

yikes--sorry about the accident!
on a much brighter and more delicious note, roasted grapes are amazing and they're the perfect addition to a pizza!

Lori said...

Oh no! So sorry to hear about the accident. I hope things work out quickly for you. I know it can be such a stress! Glad you are okay.

Love the idea of grapes with spicy sausage. I'm going to have to try this one!

Anonymous said...

hi

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