Homemade Pizza Loaded with Italian Sausage, Mushrooms, Fresh Tomatoes, and Extra Cheese
Okay, it's time to stop bombarding you with
baby donkey photos(at least for today), and start getting late summer recipe serious. Otherwise
tomatoand
basilseason will be over, and this mouthwatering photo will end up sitting in my files for another year. And that would be a shame, because homemade Italian sausage is really good, and homemade Italian sausage pizza smothered with big slices of vine-ripened tomatoes is even better.
You'll find my easy pizza dough recipe
here, and if you still have garden tomatoes galore (lucky you!), you can whip up some
fresh tomato pizza saucein minutes.Got atomato glut?You'llfind all my favorite tomato recipes, along with links to my tomato growing posts, at the bottom of this post.
I'm hoping to sharemy simplePasta with Creamless Pesto Cream Sauce recipesoon, which is extra nice when tossed with a little cooked Italian sausage.If this sounds good, then find yourself some fresh basil, make some pesto pronto, and freeze it in little containers. Here's my favorite pesto recipe, which calls for roasted salted almonds, fresh tomatoes, and a lot less olive oil than most (though the more oilyou add, the even better it tastes).
Homemade Italian Sausage
Makes 1 pound
This recipe is simple: you just mix the herbs and spices into the ground meat. You can adjust the seasonings to suit your taste (more garlic, less fennel, double theoregano,etc.), though in order to taste it you'll need to fry up a little sample.
You can use dried basil and oregano (1 teaspoon dried for every 1 Tablespoon fresh) but it won't taste the same. My friend Kalyn, who is a lot more organized in the kitchen than I am, likes to
freeze her fresh basilto enjoy all winter long. Basil,
parsley, and
Greek oregano(which I overwinter in my
homemade greenhouse)all thrive in my kitchen garden. Fresh herbs are easy to grow and such a treat to have on hand. You'll find my basil growing links, as well as my other favorite ways to use fresh basil, below.
Purists will claim this isn't real sausage since the ground meat mixture isn't stuffed into casings to form sausage links, but I don't care. All I know is that every recipe I've ever made using Italian sausage called for squeezing the meat back out of the casings, which isn't fun.
You can cook it up right away, bu this sausage tastes even better if allowed to chill in the refrigerator several hours or overnight before cooking. I haven't tried freezing it—either cooked or uncooked—but I do know that Italian sausage and tomato pizza freezes well. Italian sausage to me means ground pork, but I'm sure you could also make this using ground turkey or ground chicken instead. I would definitely recommend seeking out pastured and/or organically raised chicken.
1 pound ground pork, preferably from a
naturally raised hog1 to 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh garlic (also easy to grow)
2 Tablespoons ground paprika (I like Spanish)
2 teaspoons granulated onion (or onion powder)
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon salt
10 to 12grinds of fresh pepper
2 heaping Tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 heaping Tablespoons chopped fresh Italian flat leaf parsley
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh Greek oregano
A pinch or two of red pepper flakes (optional)
In a medium bowl, use a wooden spoon or your clean hands to mix all the ingredients together until well combined. To taste, heat a few drops of oil in a small skillet and fry up a little bit of sausage. Try not to fry up too many samples.
Chill several hours or overnight if you have time. Use on pizza, tossed with pasta, or in any recipe that calls for Italian sausage. When I put it on pizza, I like to brown the sausage in a frying pan first so some ofthe pieces get nice and crunchy on the edges.
Garden basilis an easy to grow bargain:
6/20/09:
Harvesting the First Green & Purple Basil of the Season and the Best Ways to Store Your Fresh BasilOther Farmgirl Fare recipes that call for basil:
—
Linguine or Farfalle withSunDried Tomato & Artichoke Pesto, Cherry Tomatoes, and Fresh Basil(try the pestomade with fresh tomatoes added in
here)
Recipes using Italian sausage (no casings!) on other food blogs:
from my pal Finny (with step-by-step photos)
from For the Love of Cooking
from Former Chef
from Kalyn's Kitchen
from Food Blogga
So what's your favorite way to eat Italian sausage?
©
FarmgirlFare.com, the hot and sunny foodie farm blog where the calendar says it's almost fall, but the thermometer says it's a sweltering 90 degrees, which means the sheep and I may not be thrilled, but at least the basil is happy—and my eight varieties of
recently planted Asian greensare sprouting up like crazy.
