Thai Chicken Pizza

Baseball season has ended for my kids, and that brings some disappointed not only to my kids, but also to me. Sure, I loved watching my boys get a hit or make a good play, but I also enjoyed the company around me. If there was one topic that was always being discussed, it was food. It was food ideas, or questions about what everyone was making, or had during the week, but there was always something brewing around the topic of food. That is right up my alley, and one of things that brings me to keep creating recipes.

There was one night where our neighbors got really excited when they talked about this Thai pizza they had from a local take and bake pizza joint in town. They boasted how awesome this pizza was. Thai pizza, really? The funny thing is, is that I could not stop thinking about this idea of Thai pizza. After all, I make dough all the time and knock out the ‘call out your own pizza’ night at least once a week, so this idea of how awesome a Thai pizza was, was something I had to make my own.

I feel I have a pretty good sense of Thai food, and probably have made, or tried more Thai food from the average person, so here is what I came up with. I will definitely make this again and will most likely deliver this pizza to the neighbors to see how it compares.

Ingredients:

• Your favorite pizza dough, rolled out to about a 1/4 inch, 12 inch diameter
• 1 cup of cooked chicken, shredded
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 1/2 zucchini, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup of sweet Asian chili sauce, 1 tbsp for drizzle
• 1 tsp red chili flakes
• 2/3 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts
• 2 tbsp fresh cilantro
• Fresh basil (optional)
• Flour
• 1 tbsp fine corn meal

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees with a pizza stone in the oven. If you do not have a pizza stone, get a large baking sheet in the oven, large enough to house your dough.

Begin by adding some flour to your rolling surface. Take your dough that has already risen, and lightly knead it. Roll out the dough, about a 1/4 inch thick, or however your like the thickness of your crust.

Lay the dough down on a pizza wheel with corn meal if you have one, otherwise a surface where you can slide the entire pizza onto the hot cooking surface. The corn meal helps assist with the pizza dough and toppings slide off easily.

Spread the Asian chili sauce on the surface of the dough. Not too thick, not too thin. Add the sliced shallots and zucchini. Top with the red chili flakes and shredded chicken. Top with the cheese.

Place in the oven on your cooking surface and cook for about 15 minutes, keeping an eye on your crust and toppings so they do not burn. Every oven is different.

Once the pizza dough is golden around the edges and the cheese is nice and bubbly, remove from the oven onto a pizza tray.

Drizzle more of the Asian chili sauce over the top, top with the crushed peanuts and fresh cilantro. If you are feeling naughty, top it off with some fresh basil.

Slice and serve.

Every bite was pretty darn awesome. You get the great pizza crust with the sweet heat from the chili sauce, and the shallots, cilantro, and zucchini, along with the great crunch from the peanuts made this one a pizza that is hard to beat. So always remember when you are talking about food with other folks, and you see how excited they get about a particular item, make it your own! Enjoy.