I’m not Cuban

Or Italian… or French… or Mexican… but I sure do like those kinds of food. This is a great grilled pizza recipe for a weekend grill-fest. You can feed a few, or feed a lot with it. And it’s easy to change and add your own twist to. Oh, and did I mention that you can use leftovers to make it? Awesome.

Toppings for Cuban pizza:

We used sliced grilled chicken that we seasoned with the Chili Lime rub from Williams Sonoma. It’s fantastic on shrimp and pork too, so get some. It’s very tasty.

Mix up 1/2 of a large diced red onion, a can of whole kernel sweet corn, a can of rinsed black beans, the juice and zest of 2 limes, fresh cilantro (that I grew myself, thank you very much), salt, and Tabasco to taste. Mix all of this well and let it sit at room temperature to allow the flavors to blend.

Shredded Monterey Jack cheese… because that’s Momma’s favorite kind of cheese.

Salsa… this is like the tomato paste base for regular pizzas… We made two versions today, one using Salsa Verde (the green kind) and the other using regular red salsa. The vote was split between us all as to which we liked the best, so use what you like… For the record… my pick was the Salsa Verde.

For the crust, we’ve used a prepackaged crust before… it’s ok… and it’s FAST. So I’m going to leave that decision up to you. Today, I felt like making my own crust. I use the Pampered Chef pizza dough mix that you can use to make really fantastic yeast rolls with as well. Like I said… depends on the amount of time you want to put into it. Both work fine.

Directions… sort of…

Heat your grill to 400-425.

If you are working with homemade dough, I think you should use a pizza stone in your grill. We have one from Sur la Table that sits on it’s own cast iron base. If you are using the prebaked crust, you don’t have to use one… We’ve put those directly on the grill before. For the unbaked dough, slide it onto your stone and allow it to bake for about 2 min. and then using your tongs turn it over. This will keep the dough from rising too much so you’ll end up with a nice thin and crispy crust.

Spread the salsa onto the crust, then top with the corn/bean mix and chicken. I always put the cheese on last… don’t ask me why. 

I grill the pizza for roughly 15 minutes with the cover closed. Keep an eye on it and let it cook until your cheese starts to brown just a bit.

To cut the pizza, transfer it to a baking pan or cutting board…

Trust me… it’s DELISH… and then you’ll start getting all of these random pizza combinations churning in your head… fresh tomato, basil, mozzarella is EXCELLENT…