Crying Onions

I often find myself craving buffalo chicken for no apparent reason. In the heat, it’s the cool and creamy blue cheese dressing that appeals to me, and in the cold, the hot sauce beckons me unrelentingly. Today was one of those days when it was all about the blue cheese dressing. Standing in the grocery store with no idea what to make for dinner, I discovered myself next to the blue cheese when suddenly the craving struck. I wasn’t in the mood to fry up a batch of wings, but the thought of pizza with buffalo chicken, doused in blue cheese dressing had my mouth watering.

I’m sure that pizza dough is quite easy to make, but it’s certainly easier and faster to buy. Store-bought pizza dough is surprisingly good, and because I’d resolved to make my own blue cheese dressing from scratch, I wanted a plain, simple backdrop for the other flavors in my hand–nothing too bold or outrageous.

There are several tricks to make something ordinary into something slightly fancier, but the easiest by far is taking something usually served in a large batch and shrinking it down. This, in addition to the fact that I didn’t feel like making a whole big pizza, inspired me to miniaturize, and my experimentation worked out nicely. The whole thing took about 15 minutes to put together and 12 minutes to bake. That’s less time than it takes to get delivery, and it’s so, so much tastier.

What you need:

Dressing

• 1 a small wedge of blue cheese
• 3 tbsp buttermilk
• 1/4 c mayonnaise
• pinch salt

Pizza

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1/4 c Frank’s original hot sauce, divided
• 1/2 c shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 package raw pizza dough

What to do:

1. Mix all ingredients for dressing and stir to combine. Refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Put about 1 tbsp of the hot sauce onto the chicken pieces and saute in a nonstick skillet with a little butter or olive oil until cooked. through. Remove from pan and toss with rest of hot sauce.
3. Cut pizza dough into eight pieces, and stretch each piece into a rough circle, about 3-4 inches across. Put dough circles onto greased cookie sheets.
4. Put a few pieces of chicken onto each circle, followed by some onion pieces and a large pinch of mozarella. Bake 12-15 minutes, until dough starts to brown and cheese is melted.
5. Drizzle with extra hot sauce if desired, and serve with blue cheese dressing

Tags: cheese, chicken

Posted August 10th, 2009 at 6:04 pm. Categories: appetizers, main courses. Leave a comment or trackback from your own site.