pica? pitza?

In Lithuania, pizza is written "pica" which I tend to read as "peeka", but it's phonetically correct. There is a big chain in Vilnius called "Cili Pica" (pronounced Chili Pizza) that serves very thin crust pizza with all kinds of interesting toppings. You can get egg on your pizza, you can also get mustard on your pizza.

I saw some funny food things in Lithuania. Lithuanian "cepelinai", or boiled potato zeppelins, traditionally come with sour cream and bacon "gravy", except one restaurant wrote "sour cream and graves". Nobody's perfect, I guess. In Estonia we saw a restaurant menu that had liver with fried "unions"...I think they meant onions, otherwise we know where Jimmy Hoffa was buried.

Speaking of pizza, I couldn't resist another trip to the CPK cookbook for their BBQ Chicken Pizza recipe, because that's my favorite of their pizzas.

I have noticed in other pizza recipes I've read that one key to great pizza is using high gluten flour. If you can't find high-gluten flour (often available by mail order from smaller mills or from King Arthur Flour), you can often find pure wheat gluten in your health food store or in some supermarkets where you find health food or "weird" flours (like rye flour, etc.) Usually a couple of tablespoons mixed in with regular flour will help make your pizza dough more chewy.

Anyway, here's the recipe. See the Thai Chicken Pizza recipe below for how to put it all together.

MAKES 2 BBQ CHICKEN PIZZA
10 oz. boneless skinless chicken breast
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp sweet & spicy BBQ sauce

BBQ Sauce Note: I think Bullseye works well & approximates very well. You might want to try some Bullseye with a bit of hoisin sauce to add some additional sweetness & complexity

1/2 c. sweet & spicy BBQ sauce
2 tbsp shredded smoked Gouda
2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 small red onion, sliced into 1/8-inch slices
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

1. Cook the chicken in the olive oil. Let it cool, mix with 2 tbsp BBQ sauce & refridgerate.
2. Make your pizza dough the night before
3. Roll and/or stretch it out.
4. Cover pizza round with 1/4 cup BBQ sauce
5. Sprinkle 1 tbsp smoked Gouda over sauce
6. Sprinke 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella over the top
7. Put 1/2 of the chicken (approx 18 pieces) evenly over the crust.
8. Put 18 to 20 pcs of red onion on the surface.
9. Sprinkle additional 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella over the top.
10. Bake 8-10 minutes in 500 degree F. oven on a pizza stone.
11. Remove from oven, sprinkle cilantro on top.