Barbeque Artisian Pizza

I am continuing with my quest of artisian pizzas. I have a pizza stone that is now a permanant resident in my oven. And it whispers each week from the closed door, telling me, "Come on. You know you want pizza."

I decided my ultimate quest would be to go to the fridge, and with only the ingredients I had in the fridge, make an "artisian pizza."

I decided to make a Kansas City Artisian Pizza.

Here are the ingredients I started with:

The core of the dish were braised Memphis style pork ribs that I had smoked. Those ribs by themselves are so amazing. And after spending time carmelizing them in the oven once again, I had to admit, questioning, "Why not eat these alone? Do they deserve a pizza?"

I had a handful of small pearl onions. I boiled them, and one by one, popped out the flesh. I added them to butter in a pan, and created delicious carmelized pearl onions.

For the sauce, I started with a homemade tomatoe pizza sauce I created several weeks ago. I added spicey barbeque sauce. But of course, for pizza sauce - it needed sugar and a hint of tartness. I turned to the secret ingredient used, but not oft talked about by chefs. Ketchup! I blended those three ingredients, and it created a smokey, sweet and spicy tomato sauce for my base.

I am a sucker for some sort of cheese on my pizza. I opted for crumbled blue cheese.

And I had to give it a hint of green - just to be able to say I had my vegetables for the day. I used some whole fresh spinach in spirals on the pizza.

After re-roasting the ribs, creating a carmelized effect from the fatty delicious pork, I pulled them from the bones and chopped the pork.

The pork and all included ingredients went onto the whole wheat pizza crust, and looked like this as it went into the oven:

The oven was fired up to 500 degrees. And the hot temperature did its magic.

The final product was great. The sweet yet savory sauce complimented the chunks of nearly crispy pork ribs. The blue cheese added a salty and tangy dimension. The carmelized onions were terrific, albeit time consuming to make.

It was another great pizza that made it worth it to sacrafice the natural eating of the barbeque ribs.