Mexican Pizza

Pizza is one of those foods that always hits the spot. I love making my own pizza because it's easy, cheap and always ends up being much healthier then delivery. Now don't get me wrong, there are definitely times were delivered pizza is in fact the easiest route to go. But, on a night like last night, when I was just staying in and had some pizza dough on hand and random ingredients, it was the perfect night to come up with a new pizza combination.

I'm not sure if I've had Mexican Pizza before. I know I've seen it on countless pizza menus and now I know why. It's really good!! I loved the black bean sauce. I honestly could have just dipped a few chips in it and would have been happy. I used spicy chicken sausage because I had it on hand but using ground turkey or beef, or even forgetting the meat all together, would work. I thought this was another winning pizza combo and a perfect example of thinking outside the box (pizza box that is!)

Mexican Pizza

Serves 4
Prep/Cook Time: 30 minutes

favorite pizza dough
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 lime
1 red pepper, diced or cut into strips
1/2 red onion, diced
1 jalapeno, seeds removed and diced
2 Spicy Chicken Sausage links, diced
bunch of cilantro
Monterrey Jack cheese

Preheat oven according to instructions on the dough. Spray a pizza pan with cooking spray and dust with a little flour.

Using a food processor or immersion blender, blend the black beans until smooth. Stir in the cumin, cayenne pepper, chili powder and the juice of half a lime. Season with salt and pepper and add more cayenne if you would like the black bean sauce more spicy.

Spread the pizza dough on the prepared pan. Cover the dough with the black bean sauce, leaving about a 1 inch crust free of sauce. Top with the red pepper, red onion, jalapeno, chicken sausage, and enough cheese to cover the pizza. Top with some cilantro and bake according to the dough directions. Serve with a slice of lime.

Chicken, Artichoke, and Sun-dried Tomato Pizza

Pizza is one of the easiest things to make on a busy weeknight. You can honestly throw on whatever you have in the fridge or pick up a few cheap ingredients at the store and you are likely to end up with a tasty and satisfying pizza. Plus if you don't absolutely cover it in cheese, pizza can be a pretty healthy dinner.

The other night Brady and I planned to go to Movies in the Park. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. With ominous clouds approaching we nixed our plans and had to come up with a plan b for dinner. After a quick trip to Trader Joe's we came up with the below pizza. You'll notice the measurements for the ingredients are far from scientific but the pizza turned out great. While I was disappointed we had to postpone our picnic in the park I was very pleased that I ended up with yet another great pizza recipe to share!

Chicken, Artichoke, and Sun-dried Tomato Pizza

Serves 4
Prep/Cook Time: 25 minutes

store bought or homemade pizza crust
1 large chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced and seperated
1/2 can artichokes, roughly chopped
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
handful of sun-dried tomatoes
handful of Kalamata olives
handful of mozzarella cheese
handful of feta cheese
handful of fresh basil
2 tsp. olive oil 

Preheat the oven according to the directions for the pizza dough. Spread the dough onto a greased pizza pan or cookie sheet. Bake the dough for 5 minutes with nothing on it.

Meanwhile, heat a saute pan over medium high heat and coat with cooking spray. Add one clove of minced garlic and saute for 1 minute. Add the chicken pieces and saute until cooked, about 5 minutes.

Remove the dough from the oven and brush with 2 tsp of olive oil and sprinkle on the other clove of minced garlic. Place the cooked chicken, artichokes, red onion, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives all over the pizza. Next sprinkle on a handful of mozzarella and feta cheese. Bake for the remaining time that the dough's instructions suggest. Once the pizza has been removed from the oven add the fresh basil on top.

Chicken, Pear and Blue Cheese Pizza

Recently Brady traveled to San Francisco for work and had a chicken and pear pizza at his hotel. I thought this sounded like a great combination and wanted to find a similar recipe to recreate. While the below pizza wasn't exactly like the one Brady had, we thought that it was awesome. I loved the combination of the sweet pear and salty blue cheese. This pizza was incredibly easy to throw together and can be made in the time it takes for you to wait for delivery.

Chicken, Pear and Blue Cheese Pizza
*** adapted from Prevention RD

Serves: 2-3
Prep/Cook Time: 25 minutes

Pizza dough- I recommend Trader Joes Wheat or Pillsbury
1 tsp olive oil
1 cup cooked chicken
1 medium pear, sliced
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup arugula

Preheat oven to recommended temperature for the dough you are using.

Roll out dough on a pizza pan that has been sprayed with PAM. Spoon 1 tsp olive oil on the dough and spread over the dough.  Bake the dough for 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, simmer the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan over medium heat until thickened and reduced by half, about 10 minutes.

Remove pizza dough from the oven and sprinkle with 1/2 cup mozzarella, chicken, pear, blue cheese and then top with the remaining 1/2 cup mozzarella. Bake an additional 10-12 minutes. Time may need to be adjusted depending on the brand of dough that you use. Just keep an eye on the pizza. The crust should be slightly brown and the cheese bubbly.

Remove the pizza from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with arugula and drizzle with the reduced balsamic vinegar.

Thai Chicken Pizza

The Classic Cup is one of my families favorite restaurants in Kansas City. My mom and I absolutely love their Thai Chicken Pizza. I like just about anything with Thai flavors but Thai pizza, that's pretty hard to beat! Brady and I made our own Thai Chicken Pizza this past Sunday and it was delicious. I thought it tasted just like the Thai pizza at the Classic Cup.

The ingredient list below might look long, there are a lot of sauce ingredients, but if you cook Asian food occasionally you will most likely already have the majority of the ingredients. The only thing that I didn't have was the Oyster Sauce. The peanut sauce on this pizza is amazing though and worth buying a few extra ingredients if you don't have them on hand already. I honestly could have eaten the sauce with the spoon and it definitely took some restraint for us to not polish off the entire pizza in one sitting!

Thai Chicken Pizza before baking.

Pizza garnished after baking.

Thai Chicken Pizza
** adapted from bakedbree.com
print recipe


Serves 3-4
Prep/Cook Time: 30 minutes

Sauce Ingredients
1/2 cup peanut butter (i used Natural Smooth PB)
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves minced
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sriracha (or hot chili sauce)
1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup boiling water (may not need this if you use Natural PB)

Pizza Toppings
pizza dough- I recommend Pillsbury or Trader Joes 
2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 red pepper, diced
2 carrots, shredded or diced
1/2 c. mung beans
3-4 green onions, sliced
1 c. Monterey Jack or Mozzarella cheese
handful cilantro
1 lime, cut into wedges

Combine all sauce ingredients except the boiling water in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium high heat and stir until smooth. If the sauce is too thick add in boiling water until desired consistency is reached.

Heat a small amount of oil in a large skillet and cook the chicken pieces.  Meanwhile prepare the vegetables, red pepper through green onions.

Spray a large baking sheet or pizza pan with PAM. Spread out the pizza dough. Cover the pizza with sauce (you probably wont need all of the sauce), chicken, vegetables and cheese. Bake the pizza according to your dough directions, about 15 minutes for most pizza dough varieties. Garnish pizza with cilantro and serve with a lime wedge.

Vegetarian Pizza

I love a good vegetarian pizza. However, I haven't had the best of luck making my own in the past. I am not sure if it was the combination of vegetables I used or how I prepared them but my attempts at vegetarian pizza always seem to be a bit disappointing. Until now that is, Brady and I made a vegetarian pizza on Friday night that was awesome. It easily ranks right up there with my favorite pizza recipe for Sausage and Fig Pizza.  I loved the combination of the peppers and fresh basil and I thought the goat cheese was a great addition.

Vegetarian Pizza
** adapted from Food Network Magazine
print recipe

Serves 4
Prep/Cook Time: 30 minutes

1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
1 orange pepper, cut into thin strips
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup sliced fresh basil
3 cloves garlic; 1 minced, 2 sliced
2 T. olive oil
favorite pizza dough

6 ounces mozzarella cheese,shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)
3 ounces provolone cheese, shredded (about 3/4 cups)
2 T. pine nuts, toasted
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 375 (or whatever pizza dough recommends). Toss the peppers, tomatoes, basil and minced garlic with 1 tablespoon olive oil in a bowl; season with salt and pepper. Cook the sliced garlic in the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat until golden, about 1 minute. Cool slightly.

Spray a baking sheet with PAM. Spread or roll out the pizza dough onto the pan. Drizzle with a little of the garlic oil. Top with the mozzarella, provolone and tomato-pepper mixture, then sprinkle with the pine nuts and sliced garlic.

Bake the pizza until the crust is golden and cheese is melted, about 15 minutes depending on what type of crust you use. Top with goat cheese before slicing.

Sausage, Grape and Gorgonzola Flatbread

One of my favorite food blogs is We Are Not Martha.  It's a blog written by two twenty-something women who have been friends since 2nd grade and live in Boston.  Their recipes always sound so good and they are always throwing fun theme parties and well frankly, I really want to be their friend.  I kept a eye out for them when Brady and I recently visited Boston, we even went to one of their favorite restaurants.  I am pretty sure that had I run into Sues and Chels we would have hit it off and been instant friends :)

I have been wanting to make the Sausage, Grape and Gorgonzola Flatbread featured on their blog for awhile now and finally had the opportunity to make it this weekend.  It was delicious!!  Brady and I both loved it and the great thing is it was easy to make.  The recipe required minimal ingredients and was ready in 20 minutes.

I would typically just buy my pizza crust from Trader Joes but the We Are Not Martha girls provided a link on their blog to a homemade pizza dough recipe and I figured why not give it a try. The recipe came from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day which is apparently a favorite amongst many home cooks.  I now see why, this was the easiest pizza dough recipe.  You can either mix up the dough, let it sit for 2 hours and then it's ready for use or you can mix the dough, cover it and let it sit in the fridge overnight.  I did the overnight version and it turned out perfectly.  The other great thing is that the recipe makes 4 pizzas!  I used a grapefruit size ball to make our pizza and then formed three other dough balls and froze them for later use. You really can't beat that!

No Kneed Pizza Dough
** from Steamy Kitchen and found in the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Makes: 4 pizza's
Prep: 5 minutes to mix, two hours or overnight to rise

2 3/4 cup lukewarm water
1 1/2 T granulated yeast (I used rapid rise)
1 1/2 T salt
1 T sugar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (plan to look into a whole wheat version of the recipe next time)

Mix the yeast, salt, sugar, and olive oil with the water in a large bowl. Mix in the flour without kneading, with a large spoon.  Then cover the bowl and let it rest at room temperature for 2 hours or you can refrigerate and use over the next 12 days. The dough can also be frozen for later use.

 Sausage, Grape, and Gorgonzola Flatbread
** from We Are Not Martha
print recipe

Serves 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 10 minutes

1 1/2 T olive oil
3 links sausage (whatever kind you like, I used sweet Italian turkey)
1/2 cup grapes, halved
3/4 cup gorgonzola cheese
1/2 onion, sliced
pizza dough, grapefruit size amount

Before you start, preheat your oven to 500, or however high it goes and put the baking sheet you’ll use in the oven. Then roll out your dough on a lightly floured surface. You can do it by hand or with a rolling pin. Roll the dough into what shape pan you will be using, I used a round pizza pan so my dough was round.

Remove casings from sausage and cook in a skillet over medium-high heat until thoroughly cooked through.  Set aside. 

Caramelize half an onion in another skillet and set aside.  Cut grapes in half and set aside.

Remove baking sheet from the oven and work quickly to to put the rolled dough on the pan.  Drizzle the olive oil over the dough and use a spoon or pastry brush to spread it out.  Next top the dough with the grapes, the sausage, sprinkle with gorgonzola and then put the onions on top.

Put the flatbread in the oven for about 7-10 minutes but keep an eye to make sure it is browning nicely but not burning.  Mine took longer because I didn't turn my oven up as high out of fear of it burning.  My oven has a tendency to burn things though.  I would suggest following the recipe and just watching the pizza closely.

Sausage and Fig Pizza

I came across this recipe for Sausage Fig Pizza on lbroukscooks a few weeks ago and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to try it out. Last night Brady and I decided to make dinner but didn't want to make anything too labor intensive so we thought we would give this a try. Neither of us were to sure whether or not we even liked figs but it's pretty hard to go wrong when sausage and cheese are involved. I was a bit concerned whether or not we would be able to find figs but apparently they are in season and as luck would have it we found them on sale. This pizza ended up being amazing! The combination of the slight sweetness of the figs and the pomegranate-cumin dressing, the spicy chicken sausage and the creamy fontina cheese was absolutely perfect.

  











Sausage and Fig Pizza
 ** adapted from lbroukscooks
Serves 4

for the pizza:
1 pound freshly prepared or packaged pizza dough- I recommend Trader Joe's Whole Wheat or Pillsbury
pomegranate-cumin dressing (see below)
3/4 cup fontina cheese, cut into pieces
3 links chicken sausage, cut crosswise (any variety)
6 fresh figs, quartered
1/2 cup grated parmesan
2 cups arugula

for the pomegranate-cumin dressing:
4 T. olive oil
4 1/2 T. white balsamic or champagne vinegar
3 T. chopped fresh mint leaves
1 1/2 T. pomegranate molasses*
1 T. ground cumin

* If you are unable to find pomegranate molasses (which we were not able to find), you can boil 1 cup pomegranate juice until it reduces to about 3 T. This will take about 15-20 minutes.  Be careful not to reduce it too far or it will become too thick.

Whisk all of the dressing ingredients in a bowl, season with salt and pepper and set aside.  This recipe will make about 1 cup which is more than you need for the pizza.  Leftovers can be stored in the fridge or disgarded.

Preheat oven to 450. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray.  Press the dough evenly into the pan, about 1/2 inch thick.  Brush evenly with the dressing.  Top dough with fontina, sausage, and figs so that the crust is evenly covered.  Drizzle with more of the dressing.  Bake until the crust is golden and the cheese is bubbly, about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, and sprinkle evenly with the arugula and parmesan.  Return the pizza to the oven for 2-3 minutes, until the arugula wilts and the parmesan is melted and golden.