Week #1: Alabama - Southern Sausage & Black-Eyed Pea Pizza

State: Alabama 

Here is the first pizza of the challenge!  Pizza night will never be the same again!!

This is a reoccurring them here, but I have never visited the state of Alabama.  After doing a lot of research, I have found that BBQ and southern cooking is primarily the cooking methods are traditional in Alabama. I am trying to remember what I made on this pizza, so please bare with me.  In the beginning, I was not sure where to take this challenge.  I was not as critical as I am now, so I did not make my own BBQ sauce and used Naan bread for this pizza.  Either way it turned out scrumptious, so I hope you get inspired by this first pizza of the challenge.  

Ingredients Used:

1 cup of black-eyed peas - canned, frozen, or cooked
1/3 cup of frozen okra
1/4 cup of diced peppers
1/4 cup of BBQ sauce - Your own or store bought
1/2 cup of freshly grated Mozzarella cheese
1-2 smoked southern style sausages
1 tbsp of olive oil

Sauce:
This pizza was pretty quick and easy to make.  Being my first pizza, I took the lazy route and used a store bought BBQ sauce.  I was picky about which one, as I try to avoid all of preservatives and harmful ingredients like High Fructose Corn Syrup or other GMO's that go into these sauces.  I bought one from Whole Foods, which was a locally made sauce.  It was pretty good, but now that I know how to make a sauce and how easy it is, I will make my own from now on.  

Meat:
The meat was pretty easy.  You can either grill or bake the sausages in the oven until they reach appropriate temperatures.  I baked them in the oven at 400 for 15 minutes or until they reached 200 degrees.  After cooking, I allowed them to cool and cut the sausages into slices.  

Pizza:
Preheat oven to 415.  Coat the naan bread with a thin layer of olive oil and then covered the pizza crust with the BBQ sauce.  Then I added the pieces of sausage, diced peppers, peas, and okra.  Then, sprinkle the Mozzarella cheese over the top of the pizza.  Put into the oven and cook for 10 minutes, unless using a fresh crust and then cook for 12-15 minutes depending on the size of the crust.  Take out and allow to cool.  

Pairing:
At this time, I did not get into what beer or wine to pair the food with.  For this pizza, I would assume a Merlot or full bodied red wine would be great with this pizza.  When eating a BBQ pizza, a good pale ale or even Belgian would be a good fit with this dish.  I always go with a IPA, which worked as well.  The bitter hops bounce off lovely to the sweet and tangy BBQ sauce.  

Learning Moments:
Being this was my first pizza, I went outside the box a little with the black-eyed peas and okra.  I never thought about putting ingredients on a pizza like this.  It actually worked out pretty well and the pizza turned out pretty good.  After doing this first pizza, I wanted to get more creative and innovative.  This pizza helped set me up for the Alaskan, which also challenged my cooking style and pushing the limits of the pizza challenge!