This year,
my friends celebrated the Asian New Year and the Big Game on the same
night. My culinary contribution to our
confab, Thai Chicken Pizza, was an idea suggested by a friend. The final creation combined several recipes and adaptations to a stunning result. If you enjoy pizza and Thai food, you'll enjoy this thin-crust dish.
Pizza Dough
Luckily for me, Programming Chef P provided a
pizza dough recipe. I highly recommend
this recipe as the base to your own creative pizza. The recipe calls for at least 24 hours advanced preparation, thus my cooking
adventure began Friday morning with a simple 5 ingredient dough. At first I found the recipe intimidating, but then I realized that I do not have to be as scientific or fancy as the recipe would recommend. For example, I don’t use a
kitchen scale. I measured
flour the old fashioned way, lightly spooning it into the measuring cup,
careful not to mash or sift it down. 
Another deviation from the recipe: I did
not measure the dough’s temperature. I
did follow the suggestion to grease the inside of 4 pint-size ziplock
bags. 
In much the same way that
conscientious dog owners clean up after their pets, I used the greased plastic
bags to grab about a quarter of the sticky dough. The
sealed bags were placed in the refrigerator for 48 hours. Thai Peanut Sauce
On Saturday,
my mom stopped by to help with the pizza sauce which needed to marinate for 24
hours. The starting place for our recipe
was here, but we made several modifications.
My adjusted recipe follows:
Ingredients
¼ c. honey
¾ c. creamy
peanut butter
¼ c. soy
sauce
2 T. rice
vinegar
2 T. fresh
lime juice
zest from 1
lime
2 T. olive
oil
2 T. sesame
oil
1 T. fresh
minced ginger
3 t. minced
garlic
2 t. crushed
red pepper flakes
Instruction
Pour all ingredients into a bowl and blend. My advice is to combine these in a blender. However, an immersion blender would be another great
way to get the right saucy consistency. Put sauce in an airtight bowl and into the refrigerator to let the flavors meld.
Pizza Toppings
16 oz mozzarella cheese balls, freshly grated
5 sprigs green onions, chopped
4 T. cilantro
2 carrots, slivered
1 c. mung
bean sprouts
1 red bell
pepper, chopped
8 oz chicken
breast
salt
pepper
Pizza Assembly
1 cookie
sheet sprinkled with flour
Liberally flour
your hands before gingerly pressing out the first packet of dough into a thin,
roughly 12” diameter circle
Use a
silicone spatula to apply a fair, but not too thick, coating of the Thai peanut
sauce.
Sprinkle
sauce with red peppers and green onions before topping with grated mozzarella cheese
Place pizza
in 425 ºF oven for 20 min
In the
meantime, season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and cook on the trusty
George Foreman grill. Cut cooked chicken
into cubes and coat with Thai peanut sauce.
Slice cooked
pizza and then top with chicken, cilantro, carrots and bean sprouts.
For a
meat-free option, omit the chicken. My
vegetarian friends spoke very highly about that version.
Smoke Alarms
The day of
the game, I carted three of the bags in an insulated cooler to my
friends house, where yet again I deviated from the dough advice. The recipe recommends cooking at 550 ºF. My friend’s oven had a max temperature of 525 ºF. For my first attempt, I set the oven on broiler at 525 ºF. After only 8 minutes, multiple smoke alarms started blaring, alerting me to my burned pizza. I
adjusted the oven to BAKE mode and the temperature down to 425 ºF. The remaining two successful pizzas were
cooked for about 20 minutes. I timed the
first 15 minutes then kept a careful eye on the pies until I saw the cheese
bubbling.
