It may be hot and toasty outside, but after a while, a person gets kind of tired of the usual hot-n-toasty food. You can only eat salad so many days in a row before you just can’t take another bite. Those are the times where I try to take something we would normally eat, and twist it to make it seem lighter and more summery. That was the case with this particular pizza.
I had made up my regular pizza dough and was going through the fridge, trying to see if I had anything fun to throw on a pizza for Andy and I. The kids had their usual toppings on hand- cheese, pineapple, sausage, pepperoni, and that would be okay, but I thought I had some leftovers to use up. I found corn on the cob, diced tomato, leftover grilled chicken that had been dusted with cumin, and some cheddar cheese. Hmm. I went to the pantry and got out a can of refried black beans, grabbed some salsa from the fridge, and I knew I was going to make a really different kind of pizza.
I didn’t use any pizza sauce on this one. Instead, I took my can of refried black beans and mixed in about 1/2 a cup of homemade salsa, then I spread this on my pizza crust as the base for all the toppings. I scattered a bit of mozzarella on as a binder for the toppings really. Next, I took those cold cobs of corn and cut of the kernels and sprinkled those on the pizza, followed by the chicken, tomato, and an onion I’d diced up. I topped all this with a combination of mozzarella and cheddar and popped it in the oven to work it’s magic, and it looked like this when it came out:
I knew this was going to need something, and decided this was the pizza to get topped. As in literal, toppings. I grabbed some romaine lettuce and chopped that up, and grabbed the sour cream and salsa from the fridge. In retrospect, and when I make this again, I am also going to make sure I have an avocado, scallions and cilantro on hand, because if I had mashed those up for a rustic guacamole topping, oh my, this pizza would have been the best pizza I ever ate. As it was, it was very good. I really liked the black beans as a base, and the fresh ingredients on top were a perfect match for the warm gooey cheese underneath. The one comment Andy had was that he thought some crushed tortilla chips would have really added to it as well. Indeed, it would have.
All this to say that pizza doesn’t always have to mean the same thing every time. Oh, we like hitting up the local pizza places often too, but there’s nothing like homemade pizza, and there’s something especially rewarding about going through the fridge and utilizing little scraps of this and that leftover from other meals throughout the week. Waste not, want not, this is one of the best recycled pizzas I think I’ve made to date, and we’ll definitely be playing around with this idea of topping a pizza with a salad. I have something of a Greek influence rolling around in my brain for one of these days…