that's amore.
I have a confession to make. As a kid, I honestly believed that Dean Martin was crooning about loving pizza in that line from his classic tune. While I later realized that the song was actually about falling in love (Italian style), my childhood-interpretation still makes a certain amount of sense to me...primarily because I've rarely met a pizza I didn't truly love.
As a child of the 70's in small-town Ohio, my earliest experiences with pizzas involved the standard, but delicious, Midwestern variety ordered as a Friday night treat from the local place on the corner...crusts of medium thickness, smothered with Italian-seasoned tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. Because tastebuds tend to grow along with a person, my teenage years found us ordering pizzas with an expanding list of toppings...adding items like sausage, mushrooms, onion and green peppers, and experimenting to find the combination that tasted best.
Once I hit college, pizza transformed from an occasional treat into a staple of life...a dish that could be, and was, eaten multiple times a week for any meal of the day, including breakfast. During those same years, the menus of our local pizzerias also began blossoming with potential toppings beyond the ten or so basics that had traditionally been available. A pizza topped with ham, bacon and pineapple? Yum! "Ever tried sauerkraut on a pizza?" asked an adventuresome friend. Hmmn...sounds gross, but not bad! And, praise be, I discovered anchovies...an ingredient actually long available but theretofore always avoided. Awesome!
My pizza world continued to expand once I finished grad school and gained an income, albeit a modest one, that permitted the luxury of a trip or vacation every so often. Tasting new foods and trying regional specialties is, of course, one of the joys of traveling...and pizza is certainly no exception. The deep-dish pizza for which Chicago is famous, the crispy, thin-crusted New York version, the wood-fired, California-style with an even more eclectic combination of ingredients...I was happy to try them all, and then some. A favorite? Don't have one...although, sadly, the one time in my life that I had a truly awful pizza actually happened to be in Italy.
To this day, I continue to enjoy pizza of any variety at nearly any available opportunity (and I say nearly only in deference to my waistline and heart-health...although I'm unfortunately not a fanatic about either of those). Given my lifelong love of the pie, it struck me as curious about a year ago that I'd never put any effort into trying to develop the skill of making pizza at home. While a big part of the traditional joy of pizza is not having to make it yourself, I nonetheless determined I should at least be able to turn out a decent version chez moi. (Yes, Italian would be much more appropriate there but, alas, only French and German were offered in high school.) I decided I was not interested in making a from-scratch crust (because, again, the beauty of pizza is that it's easy), but figured that surely I could still come up with something delicious on a crust that was premade.
To that end, I grabbed together a few ingredients and got busy in the kitchen. Having no urge to compete with the traditional Italian-style perfection that's delivered from our favorite local place, I opted to create a more unusual pizza. A white-sauced pizza featuring chicken and artichokes that we enjoyed a few years back in Florida gave me something to shoot for, but I decided to substitute the alfredo-style sauce of the Florida pizza with something more manageable that would not require precooking. I pulled out a tried-and-true recipe for hot artichoke dip, made a few adjustments to the quantities, added a couple of ingredients, and - bingo! - ended up with a truly awesome pizza that is easily made at home.
In the time since, I have further tweaked this recipe and come up with a couple of versions that have both become favorites of ours. In fact, we find ourselves truly craving this pizza when I have not made it in a while. Sorry, Dean, but this is amore!
Chicken and Artichoke Pizza
1 prebaked Italian pizza crust (12-inch)
1/3 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise
1/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 can (14 oz.) artichoke hearts (not packed in oil), drained and coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. hot pepper sauce (such as Frank's Hot Sauce or Tabasco)
1 cup shredded or coarsely chopped cooked chicken breast
1 can (4 oz.) mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1 1/2 cups shredded Italian-blend white cheeses
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Stir together mayonnaise, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, chopped artichoke hearts, garlic, and hot pepper sauce. Spread mixture over the pizza crust. Top evenly with the chicken and mushrooms. Sprinkle the shredded Italian-blend cheese over the top. Bake (on a pizza stone or cookie sheet) for 10 to 12 minutes, or until cheese is melted and starting to brown nicely in spots.
Variation: Artichoke and Spinach Pizza
1 prebaked Italian pizza crust (12 inch)
1/3 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise
1/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 can (14 oz.) artichoke hearts (not packed in oil), drained and coarsely chopped
10 oz. package frozen, chopped spinach, thawed and well (squeezed) drained
1/2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. hot pepper sauce (such as Frank's Hot Sauce or Tabasco)
1 can (4 oz.) mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1 1/2 cups shredded Italian-blend white cheeses
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Stir together mayonnaise, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, chopped artichoke hearts, chopped spinach, garlic and hot pepper sauce. Spread mixture over the pizza crust. Top evenly with mushrooms. Sprinkle the shredded Italian-blend cheese over the top. Bake (on a pizza stone or cookie sheet) for 10 to 12 minutes, or until cheese is melted and starting to brown nicely in spots.
A few recipe notes: For the prebaked crust, I use a Boboli-type sold at my grocery that is equally tasty but cheaper, sometimes buying the "regular" and sometimes the "thin", depending upon my mood, so use your own discretion there. (In fact, I recently noticed a wheat-made-with-honey-crust that might just be awesome with this, but haven't tried it yet.) Don't care for mushrooms? Obviously, omit. Wondering why I don't suggest a version that combines the artichoke, chicken and spinach in one pie? It would probably be great, too...I've just never made it that way, always opting for either the artichoke/chicken combo or the all-veggie version. But, if you wish, go for it! As to the chicken, any leftover cooked chicken breast will do. But when I want to make this with no chicken on hand, and in the easiest way possible, a deli rotisserie chicken yields enough breast meat on one side alone to make the pizza, with more than enough chicken left over for another meal or two. Finally, as to the shredded cheese topping...I originally made this with all mozzarella, which tasted just fine. Then I discovered that many brands of preshredded cheese are available in an "Italian-blend", typically mozzarella mixed with some combination of provolone, asiago, romano, fontina and/or parmesan. While mozzarella alone works fine, if that's what you have on hand, I did find that a "blend" was a bit more pungent and, therefore, slightly more tasty. Enjoy!
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