One of our all-time favorite pizzas is California Pizza Kitchen‘s Thai Chicken Pizza. There’s just something about the spicy nut sauce, the crunch of the veggies and the way it all melds together.
Of course we make it at home ourselves, using our spelt pizza dough recipe; not that there’s anything wrong with CPK’s honey wheat dough, but we enjoy our healthier version using sprouted flour (digests like a veggie). Even though I seem to end up with a lot of dishes, it’s a relatively easy recipe, and that’s what a husband… I mean dishwasher is for, right?
We’ve learned a thing or two about this recipe since we’ve made it so many times throughout the years. I’m willing to share my secrets with you….
- You really don’t want to skip the bean sprouts. We’ve made it on the fly without having these in the house, and we desperately missed the crunch.
- Ditto on the fresh cilantro. In fact, I’ve been so annoyed with lots of recipes over the past week that call for fresh herbs I didn’t have in the house, so I bought cilantro, parsley and basil yesterday, just because.
- Use fresh ginger. The dried ground ginger simply doesn’t taste right. Fresh ingredients exist for a reason.
- We grate the carrots in our food processor; it’s so much easier that peeling the separate pieces the way CPK makes it look in the photos.
- You can make this pizza peanut-free and it won’t lose a thing taste-wise. Use roasted almond butter and slivered almonds instead of the peanut butter in the sauce and the peanut topping. I’m sure you could use sunflower seed butter or soy butter with similar results, though we make it regularly with almond butter. Hooray for the peanut-allergic, like my son (who supposedly has outgrown his peanut allergy but I’m not messing with it).
This pizza is big on taste — a unique taste that you wouldn’t normally associate with pizza but that you’ll claim as a favorite just like we did.
Photo Credit: Debra McDuffee
