Salsa Verde Pizza with Roasted Poblanos Peppers and Garlic


 We have have established a tradition every Sunday night where we have fresh pizza. You would think we would have it any other night but somehow it has worked this way and it has stuck. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes we get off our schedule and have pizza on a Friday or Saturday but then we get back on track. :-)

 As get off and on my meal planning track, pizza tends to make it on the permanent menu. We recently visited a pizza joint in Havre de Grace that sells their own fresh dough for $2.00! For a price like that, why not buy it? My kiddos are still small and spending too much time in the kitchen can sometimes be challenging. I rather have dough ready or frozen so I can plan ahead.

What dough do I like using? We've tried Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Wegmans, Rocco's, and a few others but the best prepared dough we have liked is Wegmans' pizza dough. It cooks so evenly and in fact one dough ball makes TWO 8 or 10-inch pizzas. Ryan likes thick crust and I usually prefer thin to hand-tossed so having two crusts makes both parties happy with leftovers.

 Even though we have a standard recipe for toppings I usually like making a specialty pizza ever so often. While I lived in Houston we frequented a pizza joint called Star Pizza. They offered white flour crust and whole flour pizza crust. The crust was not to dense and was flavorful. The ingredients used on the pizza were fresh and delicious and even their specialty pizzas were unique. One certain pizza I would order or get someone to agree to order would be the Salsa Verde Pizza which would consist of spicy tomatillo sauce topped with roasted poblano peppers, pan-fried garlic and feta cheese. Does this not sound delicious? While I have not had it in years, I decided to try my hand at recreating this unique pizza.

Since I had the prepared crust ready for me to use, it was easier working with preparing the rest of the ingredients for the toppings. I oven-roasted the poblanos and garlic and bought our favorite roasted tomatillo salsa from Wegmans. I crumbled some fresh feta and shredded some low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella for the finishing touches. I also grilled one chicken breast to try one pizza out with chicken and one as vegetarian.

All in all the finished product came out really well. We ended up liking the pizza with chicken just because it gave the pizza a different depth of flavor. Don't get me wrong. BOTH pizzas were amazing but we just preferred one over the other. 

 Why not make pizzas for your guests on Super Bowl? Try this one for a change.

Salsa Verde Pizza with Roasted Poblanos Peppers and Garlic


 by Noelle Kelly
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
  • 2 poblanos peppers
  • 1 garlic bulb
  • 1 cup feta cheese, crumbled (divided)
  • 1 chicken breast, grilled and sliced
  • 2 cups low moisture, part-skim mozzarella, shredded - divided
  • 1 cup roasted tomatillo salsa, divided
  • 1 recipe for pizza dough
Instructions

Roasting Poblanos and Garlic
Preheat oven to 450. Line a small cookie sheet with foil. Place 2-3 large poblano peppers on the baking sheet. Wrap garlic bulb in parchment paper then in foil. Before wrapping, drizzle garlic bulb with olive oil.

Cook peppers for 15 mins, rotating after 7 minutes so that the whole pepper will roast. It will look a little charred. Remove peppers from oven and place in a ziplock bag for the peppers to sweat for 10-15 minutes. This will allow for easy removal of the outer pepper layer. Continue roasting garlic for another 10 minutes.

Divide pizza dough in two. Hand toss each pizza and place on a greased pizza pan.

Remove peppers from ziplock and slip off outer pepper layer. Carefully deseed the pepper and discard. Slice pepper into medium slices.

Pizza assembly
Lower oven heat to 425 degrees.

Dough makes two pizzas.

Place 1/2 cup roasted tomatillo salsa on the dough. Divide poblano pepper slices over both pizzas. Remove garlic cloves from garlic bulb and divide cloves between both pizzas. Place sliced grilled chicken over one pizza. Sprinkle feta cheese and then mozzarella cheese and bake in oven for 15 minutes.

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