Fennel, Sausage, and Goat Cheese Pizza

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Katherine Swanson

Long time readers know that if there is one go to dinner that I love its homemade pizza. There is almost nothing easier than coming home and slapping some ingredients on dough. Plus it’s also my favorite go to meal after long runs. I pretty much have it down to a science. I love to experiment with different flavor combinations. Seriously, I think there needs to be a running pizza post on LCC, I make it that frequently.

Heather made a reader request last month for healthy pizza. I really love sweet potato kale pizza from the skinny bitch cook book. That recipe is vegan and totally delicious. Here is another healthy recipe. Ok, maybe it’s not as healthy as SB’s recipe but I think it turned out pretty well and let’s face it, it’s healthier than baked potato pizza (which is TOTALLY delicious).

For this pie, I prepped the dough as I usually do…

Then I spread a thin layer of goat cheese on the dough.

I also laid down a layer of chopped fennel. I love the flavor of fennel (like black licorice!). Does that make me weird? I feel like that flavor doesn’t get a lot of love.

Then I added the rest of the toppings I love. Right now I am really into Trader Joe’s applewood sausages. I rarely actually cook meat for myself due to extreme levels of laziness but I’ve been adding this sausage to random dinners. I also added a general sprinkling of spinach which, again, I’ve been adding to everything recently! There are so many ways to include spinach in meals.

Doesn’t that make you just want to eat a ton of spinach? Just me? Just me? Ah well.

Baked at 450, 14 mins later…

I wasn’t totally sure how this pizza would turn out. I used a WEIRD combo of flavor combinations. I mean sausage, fennel, and goat cheese? Perhaps surprisingly, this was pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

OK, time to spill! What is your favorite, but totally weird, flavor combination? Besides fennel, sausage and goat cheese I enjoy pretzels dipped in veganaise. Yes. I am going on record and admitting that. Embarrassing, I know.

all hail kale

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Katherine Swanson

The detox day 2 started with Vans toaster waffles and a wonderful 4 mile run. I felt super speedy! The treadmill running I did last week paid off. There were a lot of branches down and my legs got a little bit scratched up but nothing too bad. It felt great to get back into outside running after nearly two weeks “on the inside”. Outside > treadmill but I can see how the treadmill has its benefits.

I’ve been on vacation for two weeks now and I’m having a strong desire to spend time in my kitchen. Just you wait. I have so so so many cooking plans brewing for the next week. It’s so nice having nothing else to do other than putter around my kitchen cooking. No readings to worry about and no deadlines. Today in the spirit of my post holiday detox I puttered around and made Skinny Bitch Kale and Sweet Potato Pizza!

Because I’m a lazy bitch I used Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat crust. I checked, and it is vegan! Then I gathered and chopped my ingredients and preheated the oven.

I give you a heart of kale. Am I the only one who thinks Kale is glorious? Not to mention it was only $2 a bunch at the FM!

I chopped kale, sweet potato, onion, and garlic. The recipe called for leeks but I didn’t have any so I omitted them.

I cooked down the onion and then added the kale, sweet potato and some seasoning!

A little bit of cumin makes all the difference in taste! Love me some cumin.

I let all the ingredients heat up and cook together. I love how green kale gets.

I added in the garlic and let the kale mixture cool. While it cooled I rolled out the pizza dough.

One thing I really liked about the Skinny Bitch recipe was that she recommends coating the pan in grape seed oil instead of flour. This made the crust extra crispy and I liked it a lot better then simply cooking the pizza on flour. I didn’t have grape seed oil so I just brushed canola oil on the pan.

I have canola that I rarely use because I’m so devoted to EVO. it was nice to use it up a little.

Time to construct the pizza!

And let it bake.

Plus two traditional add ons to top it off…

Ta Da!

This pizza was delicious! The pizza made 8 slices at 210 calories a slice. It was completely vegan. The kale made the pizza hearty but the sweet potato added so much flavor and played well off the kale. This is definitely going to become a staple of my kitchen. If you read this blog while I was training for my half marathon you know that homemade pizza is my favorite recovery meal! This pizza was nourishing and left my system feeling clean. I also had left overs to munch on all week which is good because I have an aversion to making lunch.

I have some kale left and I think I’m going to make kale chips. Before today I hadn’t really done too much on my own with kale but I will be using it more from now on. It’s good and good for you!

Do you cook with Kale? If so, what do you like to do with it?

It rains, I cook up a storm

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Katherine Swanson

So today was an oddly rainy day in LA. I made a good faith attempt to make it to the library. I made it about 10 mins to the coffee bean and tea leaf. At that point I realized that my water proof backpack was leaking. So I got a non fat, decaf vanilla latte which I proceeded to spill all over myself on the walk home. It was a full retreat. However, with my JCrew trench and JCrew hot pink rain boots I was the most chic preppy girl in all of Westwood.

Once I got home I did some work but mostly cooked. I made muffins, lunch for tomorrow and home made pizza for dinner.

Muffins:

1 cup flour
2 tbl. sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2 tbl. melted butter
1 pear, peeled, cored, chopped
1/4 cup of crystallized ginger, pecans

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Take all the dry ingredients except the ginger, pecans, and pear and combine in a large bowl, set aside.

Then take the egg, milk, and melted butter and combine together. Take the wet ingredients and combine with the dry.

Once the dry and wet are adequately combined into a dough add the ginger, pecans and pear. Make sure that you have done a chop on all three. Rough chop is good for the ginger and the pecans. After they are combined place into a muffin tin.

Before...

Put into the oven for 30 mins. Once finished let cool and refrigerate! Recipe courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

Pizza:

Then for dinner I made a pizza. I bought prosciutto this week at Trader Joes and really was just looking for the best vehicle with which to eat it, so I made pizza. I took a plain dough from Trader Joes and used a tomato sauce, salt, pepper, prosciutto, spinach, pine nuts, garlic, and goat cheese.

I cooked it at 450 degrees for 10 mins. It puffed up and smelled so good!