Recipe of the Day - Chicken, Red Grape & Pesto Pizza

Homemade pizza is a favorite in my household, especially since we discovered the variety of pre-made pizza dough available at Trader Joe’s (seriously…for $1.59, you can choose from regular, wheat or garlic herb. You can’t beat the price or the sanity I save by not attempting to make the dough on my own). That said, we’re pretty traditional when it comes to the type of pizza we make. Margarita and Italian Sausage are our normal fallbacks.
I recently bought my first issue of Cooking Light, which I’m pretty sure has changed my life forever. Not just because of the amazing pizza recipe that I am about to tell you about, but because it is full of practical inspiration. There are some many meals that sound just amazing and the best part is they all are made from things I most likely already have in the house (or can easily pick up on my next trip to the store). None of this buying yet another bottle of spice just to use a teaspoon and never look at it again. So they won and I bought a two-year subscription. Good job, Cooking Light. Back to the reason I’m writing this post…I love pesto in the most recent issue, they had a whole section on what you can make with pesto. I though “perfect!” because I typically buy a bottle of pesto, use it in one recipe, then by the time I go to use it again, it’s gone bad. Since Jon was looking over my shoulder as I flipped through the pages, we decided to give the Chicken, Red Grape & Pesto Pizza a try first.

One word. AMAZING. Who knew grapes and pesto would even taste good together. It was the right amount of spicy and sweet, while being really filling. I’ve included the recipe below for your reference – courtesy of Cooking Light –and encourage you to try it out:
Ingredients

1 (11-ounce) can refrigerated thin-crust pizza dough
Cooking spray
1/3 cup refrigerated pesto
1 1/2 cups seedless red grapes, halved
8 ounces shredded skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken breast
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons grated Romano cheese
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup sliced green onions
Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425°.

2. On a lightly floured surface, pat dough into a 12-inch circle; gently place dough on a pizza pan coated with cooking spray. Spread pesto evenly over dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border around edges. Arrange grapes evenly over dough; top evenly with chicken. Top with garlic and mozzarella; sprinkle with Romano and pepper. Bake at 425° for 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Sprinkle with onions. Cut into 12 wedges.

Yum! Like I said, I love recipes that use things I have in the house, so we modified this a bit at our home. 

We chose a wheat dough from Trader Joe’s, replaced the rotisserie chicken breast with sundried tomato chicken sausage (Jon bought like a thousand of these things at Costco, so I’m trying to get rid of them in an efficient manner), and substituted grated Parmesan cheese for the Romano cheese. And yes, it was still amazing.