Thanksgiving Skillet Pizza

View fullsize

It’s always fun to get creative with leftovers on Thanksgiving, but this pizza stands out as one of my favorite ways to accomplish zero waste after celebrating the holiday. It’s simple to make and is a great way to entertaining friends and family over the holiday weekend.

Using leftover sweet potatoes as the base for the pizza is genius because 1. They’re super delicious and 2. They add an abundance of vitamins and minerals that nutritionally pair well with mozzarella, which is high in protein.

When you top the pizza with a cup or so of leftover vegetables, like roasted Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, and carrots, and you’ve got yourself one nutritional powerhouse. And you’re making sure that no food goes to waste!

As California is a source for quality, sustainable dairy foods, be sure to look for the Real California Milk seal on dairy products this holiday season. For more nutrition information and healthy recipe ideas, visit RealCaliforniaMilk.com.

Thanksgiving Skillet Pizza

Time: 45 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 (8-ounce) ball pizza dough
2 cups mashed sweet potatoes
1/4 cup sliced mushrooms, cooked
1/4 cup spinach, cooked
1/4 cup roasted Brussels sprouts, cooked
1/4 cup carrot spirals, cooked
1 cup roasted turkey, shredded
1/3 cup cranberry chutney, divided
3 tsbsp olive oil
8 oz shredded Real California mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup red onion, sliced
1 banana pepper, sliced
1/4 red onion, sliced
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Place pizza dough in a lightly oiled bowl and let sit for 30 minutes, allowing dough to come to room temperature.

While dough rests, preheat oven to 500 degrees F. Warm up sweet potatoes, mushrooms, spinach, Brussels sprouts, and carrot spirals in the microwave. Drain any excess liquid from vegetables. Combine shredded turkey with 1/4 cup cranberry chutney in a small bowl.

On a lightly floured pizza peel, stretch pizza dough into a 12-inch round.*

Heat a 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Drizzle in 2 tbsp olive oil and quickly transfer the dough to the skillet. With a spatula or a cooking spoon, press the dough up along the edges and brush the top of the pizza with 1 tbsp olive oil. Reduce heat to medium and cook dough, rotating every 30 seconds or so, until golden brown and crispy, about 3 minutes. Flip the dough over and remove from heat.

 Spread sweet potatoes over the dough with a spatula and top with half the mozzarella. Top the pizza with the turkey, cooked vegetables, red onion, and sliced peppers. Sprinkle over remaining mozzarella and red pepper flakes. Season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper if desired. Bake until the cheese melts and the dough is golden brown, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer to a cutting board.

 Spoon remaining chutney over the pizza and slice into wedges.

*Note: You can use a wooden cutting board if you do not have a pizza peel.

---

If you loved this recipe, you will also love my recipes for: Garden Vegetable Pizza Party!, Breakfast Pizza with Real California Milk Mozzarella Cheese, and Pizza Two Ways

Breakfast Pizza with Real California Milk Mozzarella Cheese

View fullsize

What do you do when you want to eat well but you’re dying to make pizza? You make pizza with Real California Milk mozzarella cheese and butternut squash pizza crust, of course! 

But this isn’t just any pizza. It’s pizza FOR BREAKFAST. It not only has the eggs and cheese that many of us crave in the morning, but it’s one seriously nutritious breakfast that will keep you fueled and satisfied throughout the bulk of your day.

While Real California milk mozzarella cheese provides a sustainable source of essential nutrients, such as calcium and protein, I love the substitution of the butternut squash pizza crust for regular pizza crust because the added pop of color (to taste the nutrition rainbow!) and the benefit of fiber makes it a no-brainer.

Are you ready to make your next breakfast epic? Make this and I’m sure you’ll want to make it again and again

Breakfast Pizza with Real California Milk Mozzarella Cheese

Time: 35 Minutes
Serves 4

[Sponsored}

Ingredients
1 (10 oz) frozen butternut squash pizza crust
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
¼ lb sweet Italian sausage
⅓ cup sliced red onion
1 medium fennel bulb, cored, halved, and sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp thyme, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup tomato sauce
4 oz shredded Real California Milk mozzarella cheese
2 eggs, scrambled

Directions
Preheat a baking stone in the oven to 450 F. Add pizza crust on a lined baking sheet. Bake from frozen for 10 minutes. Turn pizza over and cook for an additional 10 minutes, until golden. Remove crust from oven and set aside.

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a medium skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook, breaking up with a spoon until browned, about 4-5 minutes. Set sausage aside in a bowl.

To the same skillet, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat. Add red onion and saute for 3-4 minutes until softened, scraping up any browned bits. Add fennel, garlic, thyme, and season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Cook, stirring for about 5 minutes, until fennel begins to soften. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the fennel is tender and golden, about 5 more minutes. Remove from heat.

On a pizza peel, top pizza crust with tomato sauce, Real California Milk mozzarella cheese, fennel mixture and sausage. Pour egg scramble over the toppings and transfer the baking stone. 

Bake pizza for 10-12 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the crust is lightly browned. Remove from heat. Allow pizza to cool slightly and serve warm.

---

If you loved this recipe, you will love my recipes for Garden Vegetable Pizza Party, Pizza Two Ways, and Polenta with Sausage, Peppers, Fennel, and Real California Milk Cheese! 

Everyday Dal Tamarind & Kidney Bean Pizza

View fullsize

[Sponsored]

You probably haven't considered beans on pizza or even Indian flavored pizza for that matter. Let me tell you, both work and they work together deliciously!

I was recently sent Maya Kaimal's Everyday Dal pouches to sample and to experiment with for my own recipe. The Kidney Bean + Carrots + Tamarind pouch caught my attention and making a pizza came to mind.

View fullsize

Having never tried beans on pizza, I realized it would be worth a try! On their own, Maya Kaimal's Everyday Dal pouches are super healthy, organic, vegan, and gluten-free. Each pouch is flavor-packed too, so it just made sense that fusing Everyday Dal with pizza would be a healthful and delicious choice.

To balance the authenticity of making a pizza with these fusion flavors, I still used a little marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. But mixing the tamarind sauce with the marinara and topping the pizza with rounds of paneer, dal, serrano peppers, and tomatoes made for the perfect fusion! Yum, yum.

Want to buy Everyday Dal? Check out Maya Kaimal's Store Locator. The pouches are super convenient and microwave-friendly. Feel free to enjoy them on their own and/or on the pizza below. Your choice!

Everyday Dal Tamarind & Kidney Bean Pizza

Time: 30 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 lb pizza dough
1 (10 oz) pouch Maya Kaimal Everyday Dal Kidney Beans + Carrots + Tamarind
¾ tsp red pepper flakes, divided
½ tsp garlic, minced, divided
1 tsp light brown sugar, divided
4 oz marinara sauce, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
All-purpose flour for dredging
1 cup low-moisture mozzarella cheese
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 serrano peppers, sliced into thin rounds
¼ lb paneer, cut into eight ¼-inch thick rounds
¼ tsp garlic, finely chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
6 sprigs fresh cilantro, to garnish
1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

Directions
Set a pizza stone on a rack about 4-5 inches away from the broiler. Preheat broiler.

Open dal pouch and separate beans from the sauce by dividing them between two medium-sized bowls. 

Add 1 tbsp of the dal to the sauce bowl and mash the dal to the side of a bowl with a spoon to thicken. To each bowl, add ½ tsp red pepper flakes, ¼ tsp minced garlic, ½ tsp light brown sugar, and 2 oz marinara sauce. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Stir to combine.

On a lightly floured surface, lightly dredge one pound of dough in flour. Stretch the dough out a bit at a time, waiting 10-15 seconds between stretches. Then stretch a little more, being gentle, until you’ve stretched the dough into a very thin round. Build a small rim around the edges to form a crust. 

Place the dough on a lightly floured pizza peel and slide it around to make sure it’s not sticking. Spread the sauce over the dough with a spoon but add less to the center so the sauce doesn’t pool. 

Quickly add toppings for pizza by adding the shredded mozzarella followed by the beans, cherry tomatoes, and serrano rounds. Top with paneer rounds. Finish with chopped garlic and ¼ tsp red pepper flakes. Season with kosher salt and pepper to taste. 

Transfer the pizza to a pizza peel lightly coated with flour. Quickly transfer the pizza to the stone and bake until the crust is golden brown, about 6-8 minutes.

Transfer pizza to a grill rack. Garnish with cilantro and drizzle lightly with extra-virgin olive oil.

---

If you loved this recipe, you will love my recipes for Garden Vegetable Pizza Party, Pizza Two Ways: Anchovies for Adrian + Pepperoni for Anne, and Chicken Tikka Masala Enchiladas

Pizza Two Ways: Anchovies for Adrian + Pepperoni for Anne!

View fullsize

In my opinion, the only problem with pizza is that when you're eating it with others, it's hard to decide on just one! Ordering separate pizzas can get expensive when ordering out, even it does usually mean there's a delicious melange of pizza leftover.

Fortunately, making your own pizza is a creative process that's a lot more affordable and almost as easy as making a single pizza with a few toppings. You can also make your pizza as feel as guilt-free or guilt-y as you want! 

Case in point: Adrian loves anchovies on his pizza. I prefer anchovies in pasta and cooked in other various dishes, but why on pizza when pepperoni is SO much better?

Most other ingredients we like to add tend to be similar, which makes the process even easier. Although we do like to change up the greens on our pizzas to better utilize the diversity of our garden.

Once we've prepped our ingredients, the actual pizza making process is very simple: add a little tomato sauce, top that pie with cheese, and quickly top with the remaining ingredients to get that pizza pie cooking as fast as possible!

Whether or not you prefer anchovies or pepperoni on your pizza, I have two lovely recipes for you below that are consolidated into one recipe for convenience. The pizzas were so good that by the time I took the picture, there wasn't much left. But I think that's a good thing, don't you?

Pizza Two Ways: Anchovies for Adrian, Pepperoni for Anne!

Active Time: 30 Minutes
Total Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Servings: 4-6

Ingredients

Shared Pizza Ingredients
2 pounds pizza dough
6 oz fontina cheese, grated, divided
8 oz mozzarella cheese, grated, divided
2 (32 oz) cans whole peeled tomatoes with basil, divided
½ cup flour, for dredging
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped, divided
20 Kalamata olives, halved, divided
1 tbsp parmesan cheese, divided

Pepperoni Pizza Toppings
3 oz uncured pepperoni slices
1 large jalapeno, thinly sliced
¼ cup red onion, sliced
1 cup kale, stemmed, chopped

Anchovy Pizza Toppings
12 anchovies in oil, drained, chopped
1 cup baby arugula

To Garnish
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste, divided
½ tsp dried oregano, divided
Extra virgin olive oil

Directions
Remove dough from refrigerator 60-80 minutes before stretching to proof.

Place pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven. Preheat oven to 550F or to your oven’s maximum temperature. 

In a medium bowl, combine fontina and mozzarella. Pour canned tomatoes in another medium bowl. Pick tomatoes out one by one and cut off the green stemmed ends with a paring knife. Discard ends. Squeeze out excess liquid and seeds from the tomatoes into the bowl and place the tomato flesh into a separate bowl. Discard tomato juice or save another recipe. Crush tomato flesh in a bowl with an immersion mixer.

On a lightly floured surface, lightly dredge one pound of dough in flour. Stretch the dough out a bit at a time, waiting 10-15 seconds between stretches. Then stretch a little more, being gentle, until you’ve stretched the dough into a very thin round. Build a small rim around the edges to form a crust. 

Place the dough on a lightly floured pizza peel and slide it around to make sure it’s not sticking. Spread half the crushed tomatoes over the dough with a spoon but add less to the center so the sauce doesn’t pool. 

Quickly add toppings for pepperoni pizza by adding half the fontina and mozzarella. Add peppe¬roni, jalapeno, red onion, and kale. Finish with half the garlic, olives, and parmesan cheese from the shared ingredients list. Season with kosher salt to taste.

Place the pizza onto the pizza stone with your peel and bake until the crust is golden brown, about 6-8 minutes (a bit longer if your oven temperature is lower than 550°F). 

Transfer pizza to a grill rack. Garnish pizza with half the oregano, red pepper flakes, and drizzle lightly with extra virgin olive oil. 

Prepare anchovy pizza by dredging it in flour, stretching it, and coating topping with crushed tomatoes per the instructions above. Then quickly add your anchovies and arugula. Fwith the remaining garlic, olives, and parmesan cheese from the shared ingredients list. Season with kosher salt. Cook per the pepperoni pizza instructions above. 

Allow anchovy pizza to slightly cool on a grill rack and garnish with remaining oregano and red pepper flakes. Drizzle lightly with extra virgin olive oil. 

Cut both pizzas and serve!

---

If you liked this recipe, you will LOVE my recipes for Garden Vegetable Pizza Party, Fettuccine with Guanciale, and Kale and Green Bell Pepper Pasta!

Garden Vegetable Pizza Party!

View fullsize

I'd say I'm surprised that I haven't made pizza for you yet, but I'm not. And no, it's not because I'm some picky dietitian who thinks pizza is inherently unhealthy!

Pizza can have a lot of healthy attributes, like calcium from the cheese as well as various antioxidants if you add vegetables! Add a little lean protein and you have yourself a pretty balanced meal. Even more so if you make the pizza yourself to control the saltiness of the cheese and the quality of your ingredients. Most RDs I know crave pizza as much as anyone I know!

So yes, I DO crave pizza! A lot. But my reasoning for not sharing my favorite pizza recipe with you is because I'm stubborn. I have wanted to share my pizza dough recipe that I adapted from Jeff Varasano's famous New York Pizza for so long! But I haven't had time/focus to revive my sourdough starter. I think it's still alive anyway. Time will tell!

Until I revitalize my starter, you will have to make due with recipes using store-bought pizza dough! Just find some that's high quality and hits the spot, and you're good to go.

As for this recipe, it's deliciously flexible! I named it Garden Vegetable Pizza Party because you can literally take any edible ingredient growing in your garden (or seasonal produce from your farmers market), throw it on top of some grated fontina, and cook up an incredibly delicious pizza! If you have friends over for dinner who have specific pizza preferences, it's easy to meet them by just throwing whatever you want on their side of the pie. Sounds exciting for a summer dinner party, right?

Surprisingly, we don't have all of this produce growing in our garden right now! Our tomatoes are a little slow this season, but are about to explode (!) and we've only ever grown mushrooms from a Far West Fungi mushroom kit once. Even so, we used our own hot peppers, and hey, at some point, we could use the barley we're growing right now!

Okay, I might be nerding out too much now. So go ahead and enjoy this recipe. It's too much fun!

View fullsize

Garden Vegetable Pizza Party!

Time: 40 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
2 (12 oz) pizza dough balls
12 oz fontina cheese, grated
1 roma tomato, thinly sliced
1 lb cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
3 small jalapeno peppers, sliced
4-6 birdseye chilies, chopped (optional)    

Directions
Preheat oven and pizza stone (if using) to 500F. 

Bring dough to room temperature by allowing to sit out for about 30 minutes, being careful to not let the dough over-rise.

On a floured surface, lightly dredge dough in flour. Gently stretch the dough out a little at a time, waiting about 10-15 seconds between each stretch. Form a crust around the rim of the dough if desired.

Lightly flour a pizza peel and carefully transfer dough. Quickly add the fontina, tomatoes, mushrooms, spring onions, and peppers. Season with salt and pepper to taste and transfer the dough to the pizza stone. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the crust is golden brown in spots.

Transfer the pizza to a grill rack to cool. Drizzle pizza with olive oil, cut into slices, and serve immediately!  

---

If you enjoyed this recipe, you will love my recipes for Pierogies with Fried Sage and Butternut Squash, Fettuccine with Guanciale, and Surf & Turf Spaghetti!