The Kel Show: Guns and Ammo

Here are the guns:

Here is when my brain gets me in trouble. I want to say the camera angle is making my muscles look bigger than they are.

Here is the ammo!

Before heading into the oven.

I wish you could smell this!

I was tempted to video tape this so you could see the bubbling when it came out of the oven!

I could tell you this pizza was good because anything tastes good when you are hungry enough.

I could tell you this pizza was good because I earned it from a hard workout.

I could tell you this pizza was good because I had a beer (or two) with it.

But I am not going to do that. Nope.

I am just going to tell you, beg you, command you to make this pizza because it is bleeping good!

There were a lot of steps here, and if you are not used to rolling out dough, this may take some practice. You need to start learning sometime, right?

So so good!

Okay, here is the recipe, again from Clean Eating, March/April 2010

Windy City Pie

Deep Dish Pizza

Ingredients:

1 8-oz fresh, all natural extra lean turkey sausage

2 tbsp olive oil, divided

1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 each small red and green sweet bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 1/2 cups button mushrooms, thinly sliced

1/8 tea sea salt and fresh ground pepper (oops I forgot that!)

2 tsp cornmeal (fine, not coarse)

1 1-lb store bought package whole wheat pizza dough (I used Trader Joe's. The magazine did have a recipe for their own crust. Maybe on a weekend I will do that...)

6 oz low-fat mozzarella cheese, shredded, divided

1 cup simple tomato sauce or your favorite jarred sauce (I went again with Trader Joe's...this time the Italian Starter Sauce. I will try their simple tomato sauce recipe the same day I make my own dough!)

1 tbsp fresh oregano sprigs (I skipped it.)

Equipment:

12 inch deep dish pizza pan or nonstick cake pan

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. In a medium saute pan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute for 2 minutes, until tender. Add bell peppers and mushrooms and cook for an additional 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper (oops forgot) and transfer veggie mixture to a bowl. Set aside.

3. Return pan to burner over medium-high heat. Add sausage meat and cook, breaking up meat with a wooden spoon. (Why a wooden spoon?) Cook until firm, opaque and fully cooked, about 4 minutes. Pour sausage meat into a paper-towel lined bowl to drain excess fat.

4. Brush inside of pizza pan with the remaining 1 tbsp olive oil and sprinkle with cornmeal. Roll out dough to about 14 inches in diameter. (They have online instructions for this if you need at cleaneatingmag.com/whatsfresh) Place rolled dough directly into pan. Press dough into the bottom and sides of pan gently, carefully stretching the dough about 1 1/2 inches up the side of the pan.

5. Sprinkle half the cheese over bottom of crust. Evenly layer sausage meat, then sauteed veggies onto crust. Pour tomato sauce evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

6. Place pan into over and bake for 20-25 minutes or until crust is golden brown, cheese is bubbling and filling is hot throughout. Remove oven and let rest for 5 minutes for filling to set. Cut into twelve wedges. Sprinkle with oregano (if you plan to use it!).

Ben and I LOVE anchovies on our pizza, so we added them before baking. So good and wonderfully fishy and salty.

Here are the stats, without the anchovies: