It's a Pizza Success!*

This week I (Jillian) hoped on a plane to Southern California to visit family and attend my sister's college graduation. Liz remained up to her elbows with clients in court, and even though I was on vacation I couldn't shirk my nauseating duties, so I recruited my cousin as a guinea pig. I let her pick the recipes with one condition, every recipe had to have meat. With Liz being a vegetarian we have not ventured outside of our meat-free comfort zone (which, let's face it- has not been much comfort) and I thought perhaps (since everything else has sucked) Aunt Sandy is good with the meat (haha). So, we decided to make pizzas. Because of the horrible reviews and my cousin's shock that Sandra Lee even knew what Chorizo was, we chose the Mexican Pizza, and then balanced it with the decent looking Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza.

The Mexican Pizza is made by browning chorizo then adding jarred salsa and letting it simmer. You then take a Boboli pizza crust and spread on beans then the chorizo mixture. Then you top it with tons of mexican cheese and pop it into an oven (the recipe doesn't mention the temperature setting) until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is crispy. Once out of the oven you top the "pizza" with lettuce, tomato, crunched up tortilla chips and then drizzle ranch dressing all over....and voila- you have "mexican pizza." We could not understand how this recipe had 4 stars, because it was super salty, the chips

quickly turned to mush and all that one could taste was the chorizo. Flabergasted, we checked out the reviews and were surprised to see all of the 4 and 5 star ratings had changed the recipe! They either used ground beef instead of chorizo, withheld using ranch dressing or used their own pizza dough. I cannot stand these people. They are not rating the recipe itself and give Aunt Sandy a false sense of success. As for those who followed the recipe, they said things like: "too greasy and did not like the muddling of flavor with the ranch dressing topping," "so incredibly bad its not even funny...this has to be the lowest I have ever been in my dishes," "the best part of it was the ranch dressing and I can just eat that by itself." You get the point. These reviews shared our sentiment and we were sad we wasted delicious chorizo in such a horrible way.

Then where was the Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza, which is Semi-Edible's first edible dish! Both my cousin, mom and myself enjoyed this pizza. You marinate the chicken in caesar dressing before you grill it. You put a thin layer of caesar dressing on a boboli crust then top th

at with a mozzarella/pecorino blend. After the chicken is grilled you pop it on the pizza and put the whole thing on the grill until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is crispy. To make it easier to serve we sliced the pizza before topping each serving with a handful of caesar salad (romaine, dressing, parmesan and croutons). We all agreed the croutons were unnecessary since the crust was so crispy and it was a little difficult to keep the salad on the slice, but the three of us averaged a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars. We have a success!!! I must admit I am one of those indivi

duals who craves those prepackaged caesar salad mixes at the grocer and dare I say, I will most likely make this again for a quick dinner as it is a good alternative to just eating a bag of salad.

So after our first venture into Meatopolis we are 1-1. Seems like Aunt Sandy knows what to do with meat (I mean, after all that is how she got on Foodnetwork in the first place, right?). And I don't blame her for not knowing what to do with chorizo, that is an ingredient way too ethnic for her midwest, super simple background. I may have to make more of her meat dishes in my spare time to test this meat theory. Up next, as I head down to San Diego I am going to try and get my sister and friends to try a cocktail time. But first, I have to make real food for my family tonight (Tyler Florence's delicious fajitas). Although I must say, Aunt Sandy's beer beef fajita isn't too different than what I usually make as a quick marinade before I grill, but she has to go and ruin it by putting it in a slow-cooker. What is wrong with this woman?

*crazy Giadaesque Italian accent required