Monday, March 10, 2008

Easy As a Piece of Pizza... or not.


Since it's the start of Spring Break, I thought I'd give my sisters pizza for lunch. Seems easy enough. Make some dough. Let it rise. Roll it out. Add some sauce, cheese, pepperoni. Simple. And it was. In the beginning. Which should have tipped me off about what was to happen later.

My dad found a forty-inch LCD TV on sale recently, so he bought it. And since we have that, we then needed an HD cable box. So he got that as well. We have movie channels. For now. So I've been living it up as long as I can until they are gone. I put on The Babysitter's Club movie (which I found on one of the movie channels) for them and went to work.



I made the pizza dough and placed it on the back of my stove to rise. I usually do this because it's warmer there. Then I set about preparing a marinara sauce for their pizza and an alfredo sauce for mine. Things were going smoothly.

I cut up the chicken, sautéed it. Cut up the asparagus, sautéed it. Still. Things were going well. I got my pizza dough. Turned it out onto my floured counter. Trouble. All the heat from my pans of good stuff cooking away started cooking the dough. But I didn't let it bother me. I salvaged as much unbaked dough as I could and made two crusts from it. Oddly shaped as they were.



I finally baked them off, put on my toppings and popped them back in the oven with the broiler on to make the cheese all bubbly.

They weren't round. Half my dough was baked before I even got around to making the pizzas. And I was full by the time everything was ready. It was a good lunch nevertheless.



Chicken and Asparagus Alfredo Pizza

1 10-inch pizza crust

Sauce: (This makes more than enough for one.. even though I used almost all of it for one anyway.)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons flour
4 garlic cloves, roasted
1 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
pepper

Toppings:
about 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (You can use less. I just.. don't.)
4 chicken tenders
about 10 asparagus spears
enough oil to cover the bottom of a sauté pan

In a small saucepan heat the tablespoon of oil. Stir in the flour and cook for about a minute. Add in the garlic cloves, mashing them into the roux. Slowly whisk in the milk and cook until thickened, whisking often. Whisk in the parmesan and sprinkle in pepper to taste. Set aside.

Chop the asparagus into about one-inch stalks. Set aside. Chop the chicken as small as you would like. I cut each tender length-wise and then chopped it into cubes. Season with salt and pepper. In a sauté pan, add enough oil to coat the bottom. Turn the heat to medium-high to get the oil nice and hot. Add the chicken and turn the heat down to medium. I let it go for about five minutes so that I got a nice golden crust before turning them. When the chicken is done, remove it and set it off to the side, adding the asparagus to the remaining oil. Sauté for a few minutes until it is cooked to your liking. I let them turn a nice golden brown. Yummy.

To assemble, spread some sauce on the pizza crust. (If the sauce is too cool by now, just heat it back up a bit and then spread it on.) Sprinkle about half the cheese on. Lay down your chicken and asparagus and then cover with the remaining cheese. Turn your broiler on high and slip it into the oven, either straight onto the rack or on a sheet pan until the cheese nice and bubbly.

(I'll post pictures later. I'm too lazy right now.)

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