I confess that when I made this, I failed to plan in advance (i.e., I grabbed a pan and just started) and so ended up using a pan to cook the sauce in and a casserole to assemble and bake the whole shebang in the oven (Present-Day Me is looking at Past Me and rolling her eyes). When you are prepping this, you can use a heavy pan or Dutch oven suitable for both stovetop and oven. It hits all the same convivial, comforting, friendly spots as pizza, but with lovely beans upping the nutrition and fiber. You can multiply it, you can make a half recipe, but why? Because once you’ve tasted it, you will wish you’d made it in much vaster quantities. You can add meat to the sauce or you can keep it vegetarian. You can reheat it in the microwave or the oven or, as we did, the toaster oven. It freezes well, it stores well in the fridge (and tastes even more wonderful the next day, of course). When you’ve made this once, you will want to make it again and again. (We’ll share a link to Deb’s version in the Kitchen Notes.) Since Deb published her recipe, numerous versions of Pizza Beans have appeared all over the place, and here is ours. The foundation is a thick, veggie-rich tomato sauce, mixed with white beans and topped with great lashings of mozzarella and parmesan. I already wanted to be cooking it, without even reading the post.ĭeb’s own formal name for the recipe is Tomato and Gigante Beans Bake. Exclamation points and unicorn sparkles began firing off in my head. So, the other day, I was fumbling around online, not even looking for ideas but just hunting for inspiration for that night’s dinner, and I ran across Deb Perelman’s post on Smitten Kitchen for Pizza Beans. I am sure our facial expressions at that moment were a picture of utter astonishment: you mean bloggers do that? At a food show a few years back, someone asked us to send him our editorial calendar for the year so that we could coordinate (and possibly get some sweet product).
We are as much in the dark about it as you are. Sometimes we have recipes ready and cooked two or three weeks ahead of publication, but more often, it is Saturday and the clock is ticking and we have no idea whatsoever about next Wednesday’s post. The interior theme was like a place out of New York For a few minutes here in Escondido I stepped into the east coast to a legitimate New York pizza parlor. We got a deal with their 5 pizza that fed 2 adults perfectly. Reasonable prices, delicious pizza and a friendly local owner. SOME PEOPLE THINK WE HAVE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR FOR BLUE KITCHEN-that we carefully and thoughtfully plan what we are going to cook and talk about it weeks or even months in advance. This locally owned place is everything a pizza place should be. A rich, thick stovetop-cooked tomato sauce with white beans is topped with two cheeses and then baked.