Cast-iron skillet pizza

If Friday night is pizza night at your house, you're going to want to try this easy recipe for making perfect pizza crust in a cast-iron skillet.

Photo by Brent Harrewyn,
courtesy of Edible Green Mountains

In case you didn't realize, being The Ninj doesn't exactly pay the bills around here.

Sure, it's fun to get cheese in the mail, but we've got a mortgage, too.

So I do quite a bit of freelance writing and consulting as well.

One of my favorite gigs is writing for Edible Green Mountains magazine. For the current spring 2015 issue, I tackled cast iron.

Well, cast-iron skillets anyway: what they are, why they're classic, how to use them and how to care for them.

Plus, I shared a recipe for a cast-iron skillet pizza, given to me by my cousin and all-around amazing home cook Susan.

If, like me, every Friday night is homemade pizza night in your house, you're going to want to give this recipe a try.

It has become Mr. Ninj's favorite. So much so that he was visibly disappointed when I cheated and used a store-bought pizza shell because I'd already packed and moved my cast-iron skillet to our new home.

Want to know if it's OK to buy rusty cast-iron cookware from an antique store? Need a foolproof way to keep your cast-iron skillet perfectly seasoned? Or just looking for a fun new way to make pizza? The Ninj has got you covered:

Smoked sausage pizza with arugula and caramelized onion and goat cheese sauce

This smoked sausage pizza is topped with fresh arugula and a creamy caramelized onion-goat cheese sauce.

I've got good news and bad news. Well, not bad -- more like disappointing. Let's start with that.

I entered this smoked sausage pizza in a contest recently. I didn't win. Now, I believe it was due in part to some seemingly suspicious last-minute rule-changing, but we won't go there. Because ninjas are gracious non-winners.

Now for the good news: Not winning the contest means I'm free to share all the how-to details of this pizza recipe with you!

So I may not have won but you certainly did.

Every Friday night is pizza night at Casa de Ninj. I know this is not very original but I can say that we have observed this tradition every Friday that we have been home for over 12 years.

Part of the fun of pizza night for me is that I don't plan it in advance, as I do with all our other weeknight meals. I simply make up the topping combination each week, based on what I have on hand. It's an end-of-the-week creative challenge I give to myself. One of my favorite tricks is taking some leftovers from the week and turning them into a pizza. Yep, almost anything you ate earlier in the week can be turned into a pizza (including salad!).

If you're skeptical about my leftovers, don't worry -- they aren't included in this smoked sausage pizza with caramelized onion sauce (although there is practically a salad sitting on top, with all the arugula that I add).