BahrBeeeCue

October 18, 2010

I really can’t tell you how nice it is to be home. Despite what some of you may think about professional cyclists and our propensity to be an unproductive bunch, my to-do list has reached downright epic proportions. That’s saying a lot because I hate the using the world epic.

However, despite me being downright stupidly busy I managed to concoct something that deserves your attention – BBQ pizza. This took place this evening after mowing the lawn and tackling the rigors of cellular telephone and banking customer support. So once again we’re doing to do a little Tarentino’ing: I’ll tell you the final product and then work backwards to sort out this delicious saga. Final product: grilled BBQ chicken pizza a la Teddy.

So it all started with a homemade crust. Organic, no, but who the heck needs their crust to be organic? Not this guy. I made a batch of this sometime mid afternoon which gave the yeast just enough time to kick into gear and do some rising of ye dough.

Next I took my neighbor’s garden-grown acorn squash, cooked it, and then made it a nice mashed puree. Any sort of root vegetable or squash is deliciously in season now and I had to take advantage of the neighborly vegetation.

We had some organic chicken breast – nothing but the finest – cooked that and gave it a dicing. Mix the chix with diced red onion, some garlic spice, BBQ sauce, pine nuts, and some salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile heat up the grill, toss on the crust for about 3 minutes.* When it’s begun to retain it’s shape, give’r a flip and then be ready to act quickly. In lieu of traditional tomato pizza sauce, I used the squash puree as the “sauce” and spread that around with deft maneuvering of the spoon. Next toss around the chicken/onion mixture, and then sprinkle with cheese. I gave it a nice sprinkling of S+P and just a dash of dried basil. Yes, I said dash. And I meant it.

The result was truly breathtaking. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve eaten in a long time!” candidly proclaimed one ravenous eater (…Mom).

I’m not kidding, this was the bomb. Like bomb dot com. I recommend trying this at home every night for the next month. That way you’ll really hone the recipe and then you can have me over to compare and contrast BBQ pizza notes.

Piece… of pizza.

Oh right, I meant peace.

*My crust ended up being a near disaster thanks to its wildly sticky characteristic. So it ended up hitting the grill and then being pulled into the shape of a butterfly. That was entirely accidental. I was going for a circle and ended up with a butterfly. Crud. Thankfully that doesn’t effect the taste.

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