Back into the kitchen

So cooking in our house was put on hold last week while my kitchen was overrun with tools and sawdust. The happy results of all this mess and lack of cooking? A new kitchen floor! Good-bye yucky linoleum, hello beautiful laminate floor!

That said, I do feel the need to makeup for my lack of new recipes, so I have a few in the works for this week. Today's recipe is what I would call a "refined" take on traditional pizza taken from Food & Wine magazine. It included a few ingredients not included in my usual cooking repertoire, but I was very pleased with the results.

White Bean and Pancetta Pizza

4 ounces pancetta (Italian style bacon), cut into 1 by 1/4 inch strips (Trader Joe's sells diced pancetta that also works well!)
extra-virgin olive oil
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon chopped Rosemary
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 can cannellini beans or white kidney beans
salt
4 pocketless pitas, flatbread, or naan
6 ounces thinly sliced Fontina cheese

1. Preheat oven to 450
2. heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and cook pancetta until crisp, then transfer to a plate. Add the garlic, rosemary, and crushed pepper to the skillet and cook for 20 seconds.
3. Mash beans into the mixture in the skillet, stir in the pancetta and season with salt.
4. Brush flat bread with olive oil and then spread with bean mixture. Top with slices of fontina cheese.
5. Bake flat bread pizzas about 7 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.

I love the flavors of the cheese and rosemary in this super simple, summer meal. And if you don't feel like heating the oven on a hot summer day, simply cook pizzas on the grill!