Malaysian Pizza

I want to laugh when I see this recipe on Cookinglight.com. What? Malaysian Pizza? We eat roti canai at mamak stall and not pizza! So this must be a fusion dish. With a few tub of pizza dough on hand, I decided to make one Malaysian Pizza to investigate the authenticity of this dish.

I suddenly remembered the funny incident happened past few weeks when I was helping to main the Chinese booth in Festival of Nation. A few people dropped by and asked if we had chicken. One specifically asked for Orange chicken. When I told them that we didn't have any chicken that day, they were obviously disappointed. And looked pretty bewildered. They must be thinking: " huh? no chicken? and you dare say this is a chinese stall?" OK people, in case you don't know; chinese dish is not equavalent to chicken. In fact, I think chinese eat more pork that chinese. But no, authentic chinese dish doesn't equavalent to pork dish either. So stop looking bewildered when the chinese stall doesn't sell chicken in the next festival!

Coming back to this Malaysian Pizza from a westerner perspective. It was actually pretty good! The filling for the pizza resembled satay! So it's a satay pizza! This is the kind of dish that you can bring to a gathering (proudly) and have people raving at it all night long. Of course the credits goes to the genius who created this pizza. I must write to Cookinglight one day to tell them how well they have represented my country!

Because I was on the caution side and only made half the recipe for the filling, I filled up the other half of the pizza simply with tomato slices and cheese. Both sides were well received by OCT. And I have no doubt that the Malaysian pizza will come back on our menu soon.

Malaysian Pizza
(adapted from Cookinglight)

3/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons chunky peanut butter
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
Cooking spray
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded reduced-fat, reduced-sodium Swiss cheese (such as Alpine Lace)
1/4 cup (1 ounce) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 tub pizza dough (such as Pilsbury)
1/4 cup chopped green onions

Preheat oven to 500°.
Combine first 8 ingredients in a bowl; stir well with a whisk.

Heat a nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat. Add chicken, and sauté 2 minutes. Remove chicken from pan.

Pour rice vinegar mixture into pan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook mixture 6 minutes or until slightly thickened. Return chicken to pan; cook 1 minute or until chicken is done. (Mixture will be consistency of thick syrup.)

Sprinkle cheeses over prepared crust, leaving a 1/2-inch border, and top with chicken mixture. Bake at 500° for 12 minutes on bottom rack in oven. Sprinkle with green onions. Place pizza on a cutting board; let stand 5 minutes.

Yield: 6 servings