Mexican pizza...

Another Friday night has arrived and you bet that we did another pizza! I hope I can keep this up each week as it is sure a treat to try out all these different types. For this week's pizza, we went south of the border and prepared this Mexican Pizza.

The original recipe had you prepare the ingredients in a bit different order, but I changed them around as we thought it would work better for us. After I prepared our favorite whole-wheat pizza dough (which you really should try if you haven't yet!), I turned on the broiler to blister and blacken a poblano chile.

You are doing this to give the chile a charred flavor, but it is also a good way to get rid of the thick skin. Poblanos are usually a mild chile, but I've found it can be hit or miss - sometimes they are darn hot and other times they just provide good flavor (and lucky for us we got a mild one this time!). Once the chile has rested, loosening it's now dark skin, just use your fingers to peel it off - it is fine if some black bits remain. Just don't rinse the chile under water when peeling as you would be washing all that developed flavor right down the drain!

While we were waiting on the chile to cool, I reduced the oven temperature and tossed rings of a red onion onto a baking sheet, drizzled them with oil and lightly seasoned them. We let them roast until they had softened and just started to turn golden. At this point, I stretched out the smooth dough and smeared a lean layer of smoky chipotle pepper that we minced with a little of the adobo sauce it comes canned with. Chipotles are basically just smoked jalapeños stored in a vinegar-y sauce - they can be fairly spicy, but you can erase some of the heat if you scrape out the seeds... but that is pretty messy! Moving the assembly of the pizza along are strips of that blackened pepper, the roasted red onions and then a special ingredient that I never thought to use on pizza - tomatillos! Finally we finished off the top with a duo of cheeses - sharp white cheddar and crumbly queso fresco.

After we pulled the pizza off the burning hot stone, we sprinkled the top with fresh cilantro and a scattering of toasted pepitas (pumpkin seed kernels). Since the layer of minced chipotle was quite thin, it really didn't add an excessive heat - just enough smoky background that had a little kick. The tomatillos brought such a refreshing, citrus-y tang that I thought paired well with the mild poblano chile strips. We also both thought those pepitas were a clever addition and loved the textural crunch they brought. Another unusual, but delicious pizza we've devoured to add to the list!

Recipes
Mexican Pizza