This summer my work colleagues and I came up with a brilliant idea one week to do a potluck for lunch. That was probably the second week on the job. Since then we have made it a weekly ritual. Everyone brings food on Thursday for a communal lunch and leftovers are eaten the next day. This past week we celebrated Canada Day (a long weekend), so we didn’t have a potluck. For our last potluck, I wanted to use up some ricotta cheese I had lying around. After consulting with Andrew, I came up with the idea to make pizza with ricotta cheese. After a short web search, I found a workable recipe with the ingredients I had in my fridge at the time.

I liked that there was no tomato sauce with a not-so-typical list of toppings. As soon as I saw the ingredients, I knew it was my kind of recipe. The pizza was a great success with my co-workers. Everyone wouldn’t stop raving about it all through lunch. A sure sign was that there was no pizza leftovers for Friday lunch.

Ricotta and Onion Pizza

Dough

• 1 cup water
• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp yeast
• 1/2 tsp dry basil, garlic powder

1. Put all the ingredients in the order listed into a Bread machine pan
2. Hit Start for the dough cycle
3. When it’s done, rub a baking pan with some olive oil, then roll out the pizza on it. I turned the pizza over in the pan to ensure the side facing up had oil on it.

• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 cups sliced onions
• 1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• pinch of dry red chili flakes (like the kind you can find at Pizza Hut)
• coarse sea salt
• Roasted vegetables mix
• Tomatos
• 1 cup ricotta cheese

1. Pre-heat the oven for 440F
2. Heat 1tbsp of oil over medium high heat. Add onions and sugar. Cook them for 15 minutes or so, until they are dark brown. Don’t forget to stir from time to time.
3. Mix in vinegar and chili pepper. Cook for another couple minutes.

Put it Together

1. Evenly distribute the onion mixture to the dough
2. Sprinkle some sea salt
3. Add some roasted vegetables, tomatos – what ever veggies you have in your fridge that are on the verge of being tossed, cooking does a veggie good. (sometimes)
4. Finally add the ricotta over the veggie layer
5. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes – until the onions caramelize and the dough is crusty

mmm. Amazing pizza. Definitely a make-again kind of pizza. My rating 10/10. The wait for the dough was so worth it! Plus I had enough dough left over for another full pizza, which I happily made and brought in to work the next day for our ‘leftover potluck’. And there was still some leftover for Andrew to try.