Hello from Sunny San Diego.

If you haven’t been able to tell from the last couple of posts it’s flipping hot down here! We live about 5 min from the coast and have multiple ceilings fans which have been running non stop for the past several days. No, we don’t have A/C. You don’t really need it until you get East of I-15 but boy am I starting to reconsider the option. Maybe I can find a nice A/C company who would be willing to barter their services in exchange for food. One can dream. But right now there is no time for cooling off – it’s pizza time!

We love pizza in this house and today we are making a fancy pizza for the middle of the week. This pizza has a buttery garlic crust, homemade white sauce, hearty sausage and sauteed veggies. Yumo!

Alright, enough with the chit chat. It’s pizza time…

The Goods

• 3 links of your fav sausage (I got mine straight from the butcher and today it was mild sausage – no fennel)
• 1 small onion (any color will do), thinly sliced
• 1 yellow bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
• 1 Boboli thin crust premade pizza dough
• 4 tablespoons butter (2 for pizza crust, 2 for white sauce)
• 4 tablespoons garlic (2 for pizza crust, 2 for white sauce)
• 2 tablespoons white flour
• 1 cup milk (we used reduced fat)
• S&P
• Garlic Powder
• Shredded Mozzarella
• Hot Pepper Flakes

Pre heat your oven to 450 degrees F.

First, carefully slice down the middle of each sausage and remove it from the casing.

In a pan add a little bit of olive oil and cook up your sausage. Use a wooden spoon to break up the sausage into medium size chunks. We are going for rustic here. You aren’t on a cooking show trying to win money with your knife skills. You don’t have to impress anyone – we are all friends here. Chunky it is.

Cook until all the pink is gone (and internal temp is 165). Remove from pan and drain on paper towels to remove excess fat.

In the same pan (hello delicious sausage flavored oil) add in sliced onion and bell pepper. Reduce heat to Medium and cook, stirring often, for 20 min. Make sure to add some more olive oil if you see it starting to dry out. Reduce the heat if it’s cooking too fast. (Super cool trick: if it’s REALLY going too fast, add 1/2 cup water and put a lid on it and it’ll help steam the veggies and prevent them from browning further.)

You want the most delicious sauteed veggies. Here is the thing – I really REALLY do not like raw onions. I know, that’s almost crazy since I am not only 1/4 Mexican but also slightly obsessed with all kinds of salsa. But honestly, if they aren’t finely chopped in a salsa I can’t stomach it. I also do not like burned onions. I like perfectly just wilted, just browned veggies. Yum.

Let’s make the white sauce. In a sauce pan add in 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons of garlic over med-hi heat.

Once melted add in the flour and whisk whisk whisk!

You want to “cook out” the flour flavor but do not burn the mixture. If you do, you basically have to start over and if you were like me you juuuuuust had enough flour for this dish so no burning.

Once you let the brown gooey mixture cook for about 60 seconds add in 1 cup milk and stir. Let it come up to a bubble and now hit it with salt. Technically this is a white sauce so if you have white pepper that would be awesome. I omitted pepper this go around.

You’ll see the sauce thicken. At that point remove from the stove and set aside. Now let’s assemble the pizza.

Melt the remaining butter in a small dish and using a brush or spoon spread the butter over the pizza crust. Now sprinkle garlic powder all over.

Next spread the white sauce all over, then sausage and veggies then finally mozzarella and hot pepper flakes (if you want).

Bake for about 10 min until your desired level of cheese brownness.

This makes a great week night treat – or fancy it up with an arugula salad with balsamic/olive oil dressing and have some friends over. However you slice it you’re guaranteed to love it.

Enjoy!

xoxo Shawna