Friday Night Pizza: Sausage & Rapini with Caramelized Onions, Ricotta and Fontina

For the second in my recently begun series of Friday Night Pizzas, how about some sausage, rapini (aka broccoli rabe), caramelized onions, fontina and ricotta? You get sweet sausage and onions paired against the pleasantly bitter rapini, plus all that meltingly good fontina and dollops of creamy ricotta. I happen to really love ricotta on pizza, and it goes great with these ingredients! This idea came from the wonderful Evan Kleiman of KCRW’s Good Food radio show. I listen to the show’s weekly podcast and couldn’t resist making this after Evan described a similar pizza they were serving at her cafe.

TGIF!

________________________________________________________________________

Pizza with Sausage, Rapini, Caramelized Onions, Fontina and Ricotta

Ingredients
1 ball of pizza dough
2 sweet Italian sausages, browned in a pan and sliced
about 1 cup rapini (broccoli rabe) stems, leaves and florets, briefly steamed or sauteed with some garlic
about 1/2 cup caramelized onions
1 cup grated fontina cheese
1/2 – 1 cup ricotta cheese (use as little or as much as you like)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees, preferably with a baking stone inside. Stretch out your ball of pizza dough and lay it out on a pizza peel or baking sheet that’s been generously dusted with cornmeal.

Layer the toppings as follows: caramelized onions (you can kind of spread these around so they coat the dough), fontina cheese, sausage and rapini. Dollop the ricotta cheese over the top of the pizza and drizzle with a little olive oil, if you like.

Bake until the cheese has melted and the crust is golden brown, about 8-10 minutes.