Recipes

Squash Goat-cheese Pizza

This pizza is inspired from a dish at the Veggie Planet restaurant in Cambridge. For those of you who may hesitate about the presence of squash I say, just try it. You will not regret it.

Ingredients

• Pizza Dough
• 1 Medium-sized butternut squash
• 6 medium white onions
• 1/4 cup of fresh chopped sage
• Olive oil
• 4 oz soft goat cheese (chevre)
• 6 oz Asiago, grated
• Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Directions

1. Bake the squash in an oven set at 350 degrees for approx 25 minutes or until cooked.
2. While squash is cooking, slice onions and put them all in a large frying pan with about 2 Tbsp of oil on medium heat. Stir them every 5 minutes so they don't burn onto the pan. We'll be caramelizing them, so cook them for about 30 minutes or until they're a nice brown color and very soft. I've found it's nice to add a bit of balsamic vinegar to them towards the end of the caramelization.
3. Peel the cooked squash. Cut lengthwise and remove the seeds. Then cut the squash into cross-sections about 1/4 inch thick.
4. Heat-up a frying pan on medium heat and add about 1 Tbsp of oil. Toss in the sliced squash and the chopped sage. Cook for just a few minutes, so we can get the squash coated in the sage leaves.
5. Roll out the pizza dough nice and thin, then transfer to heated pizza stone or baking sheet. Poke some holes in the dough with a fork, then bake in a 450-degree oven for about 4 minutes.
6. Take out the pizza crust and lightly cover with oil. Spread out all the caramelized onions, then cover with grated Asiago. Distribute squash pieces on top of that, then scoop out little clumps of goat cheese. Bake pizza in 450-degree oven for about 15 minutes or until the goat cheese begins to brown.