I love playing with food.
It's just another way that one can be creative.
Holiday-themed foods sure can be fun,
but sometimes the flavor becomes secondary to the design.
Just because a themed food has a childlike spirit,
it doesn't mean it has to appeal only to a child's palette.
Don't you agree?
That's why, for my second year working with
I created another Halloween-themed recipe
that is all at once ghoulishly whimsical
and delicious to eat:
Haunted Fiesta Pizza
This Mexican-inspired pizza starts with a simple sauce made from your favorite salsa. It's topped with Monterey Jack cheese and tortilla chip crumbles. The crunch from the tortilla chips is the perfect compliment to the bubbling cheese and picante salsa. This taco-party-in-the-round is finished off with an avacado sour cream spider web and spiders made from California Ripe Olives.
Ingredients
- Pizza dough
- a large pinch of cornmeal
- Your favorite salsa
- Monterey Jack cheese
- Tortilla chips, crumbled
- 1/2 an avocado
- 3 Tablespoons sour cream
- 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon or lime juice
- a dash of hot sauce
- 1 small clove of garlic
- salt and pepper to taste
- California Ripe Olives (you need 2 per spider)
- Optional: If you want to make a "taco" pizza, you can add chicken or seasoned ground beef.
Preheat oven to 475 ° F.
Step 1: Prepare the sauce by draining the excess liquid from the salsa through a fine strainer or sieve. If salsa is chunky, you may want to smooth it out with a few pulses in the blender or food processor after straining
Step 2: Roll or toss dough to desired thickness. Place on a pizza pan or inverted cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal.
Step 3: Spread dough evenly with salsa sauce. (If adding meat, do so now). Add a layer of cheese. Follow with a sprinkling of tortilla chip crumbles, and then just a bit more cheese.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until crust begins to brown and cheese begins to bubble. Slide pizza off of the pan and bake for another 8-10 minutes, until bottom of crust begins to brown.
Step 4: While pizza is cooking, prepare the avocado cream. Place avocado, sour cream, citrus juice, garlic clove and a dash of hot sauce in a blender and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. It will not taste like guacamole, but more like a flavored sour cream. Place the avocado cream in a zip bag, pastry bag, or squeeze bottle.
Step 5: When pizza is cooked and has cooled for 5-minutes, use avocado cream to draw concentric circles on the pizza. Then, draw diagonal lines to complete the look of a spider web.
Step 6: For the final touch, add the olive spiders. To make an olive spider, cut one olive in half lengthwise. Use one half to form the body. Cut another olive in half. Each half can be used to cut four thin slices for legs. You'll have one half left over. You can eat it (I can never open up a can of olives without eating a few), or use it for the next spider's body.
Hungry for more?
and my California Ripe Olive recipe creation from last year:
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I have not been compensated for this post. I did, however, receive a box of goodies from the California Olive Growers that included olives, a can opener, a pizza board, and pizza cutter to help get my recipe going.
