MEXICAN PIZZA
8 ounces cherry tomatoes, chopped
2 ounces minced onion
2 ounces minced pickled jalapenos
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 can refrigerated pizza crust dough
1 (15oz) can fat-free refried beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, diced
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon taco seasoning
1 teaspoon Harley's seasoning salt
8 ounces shredded Mexican blend cheese
8 ounces shredded sharp cheddar
Combine the tomatoes, onion, jalapenos, and apple cider in a small bowl. Preheat oven to 400º. Unroll pizza dough and stretch it out in a 9x13 pan. Distribute the tomato mixture evenly over the dough. Drop the refried beans by the spoonful all over the dough and tomatoes. Smash the beans down with the back of a spoon to increase the amount of coverage on the dough. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over high heat. Add the garlic and the chicken and the remaining spices and saute until the chicken is barely cooked (still slightly pink in the middle). Distribute the chicken evenly over the beans. Mix the two cheeses together and cover the pizza with it. Bake in a 400º oven for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown in places.
MEAT-CRUST PIZZA
½ pound lean ground beef
1 slice wheat bread
¼ cup half-and-half
1 teaspoon Harley's seasoning salt
¼ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon basil
¼ teaspoon granulated garlic
½ cup pizza sauce (see recipe below)
8 ounces mozzarella cheese
2 ounces portabella mushrooms, sliced
¼ cup diced green pepper
¼ cup chopped green onion
Mash the bread in the half-and-half until it forms a sort of paste. Add the hamburger meat, Harley's, oregano, basil, and garlic and combine thoroughly. Pat the meat mixture into the bottom of a 8-9 inch glass pie plate and up the sides (as much as possible). Cook this in the microwave for three minutes on high, rotating half way through if you do not have a carousel in your microwave. Use a paper towel to blot off any fat that may have melted off the meat. Cover the "crust" with the sauce and cheese and cook for another 2½ minutes. Distribute the peppers, mushrooms, and onions evenly over the cheese. Continue cooking for another 2½ minutes. Let it rest for five minutes before serving.
Jeff and I had a debate at the grocery store this week. I wanted to buy the pizza crust in a tube, because that was what the recipe called for, and I was ready to take a week off of making pizza dough. He argued that I could make my own and put it in the refrigerate, and then it would be "refrigerated pizza dough." He almost won until I realized that it was only $1.49. I guess I could make it more cheaply than that, but my time is worth something, too, even though no one is paying me for it right now... I was about to say I would go ahead and make the wheat bread that the meat pizza called for instead buying a loaf. The words died in my throat when we turned the corner and saw a loaf on sale for a dollar! It wasn't exactly the whole wheat the recipe requested, but it was a dollar, and it was the squishy kind that Jeff likes for sandwiches. The argument was narrowly avoided.
I was a little "weirded out" about the meat-crust pizza. Not only was a meat crust weird, but the recipe is built around only using the microwave oven for the cooking. I was willing to try it, but I wasn't ready to jump in with both feet. The recipe made two pie plates worth, so I cut everything in half. If it didn't work, I wouldn't have wasted as much.
I soaked my squishy wheat bread in half and half (instead of the cream that the recipe called for, because I had that) and combined it with my hamburger. The only eight inch pie plates that I had were metal, so I ditched the size it called for and used my 9½ inch Pyrex pie pan. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to spread the meat mixture all up the sides to mimic a pie crust or not, but I was guessing that I was supposed to. I tried to do it anyway, but since I was using a larger pan than what was called for, I was only able to get the meat half-way up the sides.
I took a deep breath and put it in the microwave for three minutes. I didn't try to do anything else while it was in there, because I was afraid that three minutes would incinerate the meat, and I wanted to be ready to stop it if it started heading that direction. I checked it at two minutes, and the edges were starting to brown, but the center was still pink. I let it go for the full three. Nothing much had changed between two and three minutes. The edges got a little darker, but the part that lined the bottom of the pan was still pink.
I wasn't sure what the fat content was on the burger I was using, because it was a partially used package that had been in my freezer for a while (okay, it had been in there for a year, but don't tell anyone - I'm sure it's fine). It hardly rendered any fat during that three minutes. I was going to give draining it a try, nonetheless. I tilted the pan over my sink, and of course the meat piled on top of itself in the pan. Why did I think it wouldn't? I had flashbacks to last week's "rustic" pizza and quickly abandoned my quest.
I hadn't gotten away with shortening my preparation time by buying the pizza dough and the bread. I realized after I had "cooked" the meat crust, that I had to make pizza sauce again. I checked the Mexican Pizza recipe to see what kind of sauce that called for. That one called for salsa, which I didn't buy, because I knew I had some, but Pam and I made tacos on Monday, and we ate up most of what I had for salsa (which really wouldn't have been enough any way). I thought about running to the store, but I had tomatoes and onions and a lovely jar of pickled jalapenos that Pam had given me. I bet I would even be able to find enough cilantro out in the green house to make it even better!
First I started with the pizza sauce. I resorted to my secret stash of canned tomatoes. I drained one can and put it in the Vitamix. To that, I added a can of regular tomato paste, half an onion, oregano, and basil and let the machine do its thing for about twenty minutes.
PIZZA SAUCE
1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes, drained
6 ounces tomato paste
2 ounces yellow onion
4 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon basil
3/4 teaspoon oregano
Put all ingredients into the Vitamix. Start on variable speed at its lowest setting. Gradually increase the speed to 10. Flip the switch to high and blend for twenty minutes. Makes two cups.
The salsa wasn't that easy. I had decided to use the cherry tomatoes that Jeff bought last week (because they were buy one get one free). We still had one and a half containers sitting on our counter. Once I started cutting them up, I realized my error. It is really tedious cutting all of those little tomatoes. They smashed under the knife I used for the onions, so I switched to a serrated knife. That made it a little easier, but there really isn't much to cherry tomatoes. They are all gush and no meat.
I also found no viable cilantro in my greenhouse or in the pots on my deck. I could have sworn there were some fronds when I checked a couple of days ago. Maybe Jennifer sneaked over when I wasn't looking and pulled them all. I forged ahead anyway. It ended up being more like a chunky pico de gallo than a salsa. It was so pretty, though, that I was disappointed that it would be covered in beans and cheese, and no one would be able to appreciate its summertime beauty.
My next task at hand was the chicken. There was no real direction in the recipe about how the chicken should be prepared, except that it should be "taco-seasoned". I had thawed in the microwave some chicken thighs I had found in the freezer, and I was sorry that I had thawed them completely. Raw, thawed chicken is sort of gelatinous and difficult to dice. When I tried to get the knife into the flesh, it jiggles and slides away, and the knife didn't seem to want to bite into it. If the chicken is slightly frozen it provides better resistance to the knife and makes it easier to get uniform pieces out of it.
Once I had gotten it all chopped up, I heated a little oil in my saute pan and added garlic to it once the oil was hot. I threw in the chicken and started looking through my cupboard to see what I could add to it to make it "taco seasoned". I had something called "taco seasoning," but I have always found it to be lacking something. I added some cumin (one of my favorite spices) and oregano and cooked up the chicken until it was mostly done. I gave it a taste and realized it needed salt. Instead of just using regular salt, I added Harley's seasoning salt. This is a concoction of salt, chili peppers, and garlic, and it is good on everything. I tasted it again, and it was perfect.
I popped open my can of pizza crust dough and tried to unfurl it onto my 10x15 bar pan. It was a stretch, literally. I think the dough was supposed to be for a smaller pan. At least the recipe I was starting with suggested a 9x12 pan, but I wanted to use my bar pan, so I was going to make it work. I wasn't able to make a ridge to hold in the toppings, but I was willing to accept that. I sprinkled my "salsa" over the pasty white dough.
I opened up a can of refried beans. The original recipe called for three cups of refried beans. My 15 ounce can was roughly a little over two cups, but I was going to make that work, too.
I had a hard time "spreading" the beans over the salsa. I think if I had to do it over again, I would just combine the beans and the salsa together and spread the combination over at once. I ended up dropping little tablespoon-sized blobs all over the pizza and smashing the blobs down with the back of the spoon to get better coverage.
I layered on the chicken and cheeses and preheated my oven. While that was going on, I started the clean-up process. I was cleaning my Vitamix, which consists of me running the Vitamix on high for several minutes with soap and water in the bowl. It was very loud, so I didn't hear the door the first time Pam knocked on it. The second time she used enough force to rattle the windows, so I shut off my machine and let her in.
I was ready at this point to continue with the microwave pizza experiment. I had cut a quarter of a green pepper into thin strips. I had decided that half a pepper that the recipe called for would have would have been too much. Also, the recipe called for three mushrooms. It didn't say what kind or how big or anything. I had some gorgeous "baby" portabellas (they were on sale, of course), but some were a good three inches across the cap, where some were only half an inch across. I cut up three random mushrooms I had picked from the carton, but then only ended up using about half of what I had cut.
The original recipe had called for "sliced Italian salad onion." I had never heard of that before. I tried looking it up on Google, but it just came up with different salads that contained onions. I decided that it was going to be green onions.
I layered the sauce and cheese over my partially cooked "meat crust" and was ready to put it in the microwave again. I set the timer for 2½ minutes, and had Pam throw the vegetables on before putting it back in the oven for another 2½ minutes.
We were particularly hungry at this point, and everything was smelling good. The chicken pizza was in the oven, and the meat crust pizza was "resting." We were supposed to give it a good give minutes rest before digging in, but I think we shorted it a bit. I took a spatula and cut it into eight small wedges. When I tried to lift a wedge out, it came out in a pile, not one cohesive piece.
I had been worried about the outside edges of the "crust" getting rubbery with all of that cooking in the microwave. It really didn't, I was surprised. The bottom of the pizza stayed slightly pink, like a medium rare hamburger. It was moist and cheesy, and the vegetables were al dente. The peppers and onions had a nice snap to them still, and the mushrooms were just slightly softened. I think this had decent flavor, but nothing that really wow'd me. It was a little bland. I think if I were to make it again, I might try mixing an egg with the hamburger to add stability to the crust. I would definitely add some spices to the meat itself.
I had decided that tonight I was going to make a tequila drink to go with the Mexican pizza, but the trick was, I wanted to find one that we hadn't had before, and one for which I had all of the ingredients. Since I don't work for the liquor distributor any more, it is a little more difficult to get some of the stranger items some of the drinks in my books require. I chose something called a CC Kazi. I took me quite some time to figure out why it was called that, and I am still not sure if I have it right. The only thing I can think of is it is a carbon copy (sort of) of a cosmopolitan, and the "kazi" is just a shortened cutesy name for cosmopolitan?
CC KAZI
1 measure tequila
1 measure cranberry juice cocktail
½ measure lime
¼ measure simple syrup
Shake all ingredients together in a shaker filled with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass.
The Mexican pizza was fantastic with one complaint. The crust ended up being a bit soggy, and in some places I couldn't detect it at all. I think there were two problems with it. I think I stretched it too far (I should have stuck with the 9x12 size, even on my 10x15 pan), and I think that it may have fared better if I had par-cooked it a little prior to adding the salsa and beans. I think there was just too much moisture in those ingredients to allow the dough to cook properly. The flavors, though, were spectacular. The chicken was moist and succulent. There were a couple of surprise hot spots lurking underneath the beans that woke the palette, and the beans served to cool it back down again. They were creamy and gooey, and it was hard to tell where the beans ended and the cheese began.
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