A week and a half ago I wrote about the basil pesto club pizza that I made when I visited Palermo’s and I promised that I had a couple more pizza ideas I wanted to try out. The first is Monte Cristo pizza, which I made this past weekend.

The Monte Cristo, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of enjoying one, is an amazing sandwich consisting of ham, turkey and cheese. What really sets it apart though is that the entire sandwich is dipped in an egg batter and then fried. I’ve seen plenty of restaurants however that simply serve a ham, turkey and cheese sandwich between two slices of French toast and refer to it as a Monte Cristo, so the sandwich is basically open to interpretation.

Traditionally, the type of cheese used in a Monte Cristo is Gruyère, but almost every place I’ve seen that sells them uses Swiss cheese instead. When I went to the grocery store to buy all the ingredients for my pizza I discovered why. The cheapest Gruyère cheese I could find was $15.99 a pound. If restaurants used Gruyère their Monte Cristo sandwiches would probably cost about $20 each. I wanted to use both Swiss and Gruyère on my pizza however so I picked some up anyway.

When I arrived back at home I got to work making my pizza dough. This was actually the first time I’ve ever made my own dough from scratch and I honestly can’t believe how easy it was. Being the resourceful guy that I am I used a beer bottle to roll out my pizza dough (I don’t own a rolling pin) and then cut it into a perfect circle using an upside down glass bowl.

After cooking my pizza crust in the oven at 350° for twelve minutes I took it out, battered it in egg and fried it like a piece of French toast. So far so good!

Next up was the sauce. I really had no idea which type of sauce to use for my pizza, and it was pretty obvious that a regular tomato sauce wouldn’t work very well, so I decided to try making a white sauce using the Gruyère cheese that I bought. This was also my first attempt at making my own pizza sauce, and it turned out just as amazing as my homemade pizza dough. All I did was combine, flour, butter, milk, some shredded Gruyère cheese and a couple spices in a sauce pan and after about ten minutes on the stovetop I had the perfect sauce for my pizza!

After covering my fried pizza crust with sauce I topped it with shredded Swiss cheese and diced ham and turkey and put it back in the oven. Five minutes later I pulled it out, sliced it into four pieces, drizzled some maple syrup on it and took a bite. It was seriously the best pizza I’ve had in a LONG time. I’m not just saying that because I made it myself either!

I think the Gruyère cheese sauce is really what took this pizza to the next level. Its taste blended perfectly with the fried crust, Swiss cheese and the ham and turkey. I actually had a decent amount of sauce left when I was done making my pizza, which I ended up adding it to a couple different sandwiches the following day with equally delicious results. All in all it was a pretty awesome weekend for me food-wise!

A couple weeks ago Qdoba let me come in to one of their locations, hop behind the counter and make whatever I wanted. The result was a pretty awesome seven layer quesadilla. After I posted the resulting story someone mentioned on Twitter how it was great public relations work on Qdoba’s part to let a blogger like me come in and do something like that.

I sort of jokingly replied to the tweet that I needed to convince other companies to let me do the same thing and then said something like “Hey Palermo’s, I’m looking at you!” Palermo’s, for those of you who are unaware, is a really great pizza company who just happen to be headquartered right here in good ‘ol Milwaukee. A few minutes after I sent my tweet they responded asking me when I wanted to stop down and make some pizza.

Rather than going the traditional DudeFoods route and saying “hey, I’m gonna grab as many toppings as I can and just use them all” I decided to try something a little crazy. I decided to try making a pizza that someone besides me and other people who like 25 cheese pizzas or pizzas with every single topping available might actually enjoy.

Palermo’s already has over 40 different types of frozen pizzas, as well as a new specially pizza that they serve each week in their cafe, so coming up with something they haven’t already done was a little tougher than I expected. In the end I decided to turn to one of my favorite sandwiches — the club — for inspiration.

Now that I finally had an idea of what type of pizza I wanted to make I grabbed a ball of dough and got to work. I started by flattening it out and covering it with a basil pesto sauce. Then I added some cheese, diced ham and turkey and some Nueske’s bacon, because if you want quality bacon you’ve gotta go with Nueske’s.

After sending my pizza through their conveyor pizza oven I finished it off by adding some lettuce and tomato and then sat down to enjoy the fruits of my labor, and enjoy them I did! The basil pesto sauce ended up working perfectly with the rest of the ingredients and in my opinion it’s what really set this pizza apart.

For those of you looking for pizzas that are a little crazier than this one don’t worry, I’ve got a couple pretty ridiculous ideas in my head that I hope to test out within the next few weeks. Until then though I’m pretty pleased with how good my basil pesto club pizza turned out. Thanks Palermo’s!

I love chicken and waffles, so I’m always looking for new and creative ways to combine the two foods. Back in January I created chicken and waffle wings, which are chicken wings that are breaded with actual waffles. The resulting blog post was by far the most popular story I’ve ever written.

Recently I bought a waffle cone maker. The idea behind my purchase wasn’t to make sugary waffle cones to fill with ice cream though. What I really wanted to do with it is make waffle cones out of actual waffle batter so I could fill them with pieces of popcorn chicken. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the chicken and waffle cone!

Now, the popcorn chicken part of this thing is easy. You can get popcorn chicken pretty much anywhere. The tricky part is cooking your waffle perfectly. As you can imagine, waffle cone makers aren’t exactly made to be used with actual waffle batter, so I ran into a couple problems.

The main problem is that if the waffle batter is too thick or if you cook it for too long your waffle will break apart when you try rolling it into a cone. My first couple waffles weren’t quite thin enough because I didn’t press the top of the waffle cone maker down hard enough after adding the batter, so if you want a perfect waffle cone maker sure you apply ample pressure.

In the end I finally got my batter to the perfect consistency by just adding  a little extra milk. I also only cooked my waffles for a minute and 15 seconds (the instructions recommended a minute and a half) because I found that any longer than that and the edges wouldn’t stay together when I rolled them into cones.

Don’t worry if you mess up though because if you do all you’re really left with are some round waffles that are sort of a cross between regular waffles and pancakes. It took me four tries before I got my waffle cone perfect, which in turn means I got to eat four messed up waffles — not a bad problem to have at all….

Once you finally make the perfect waffle cone, fill it with popcorn chicken and drizzle it with syrup it’s quite a treat. This is another one of those foods that I can totally imagine vendors selling at state fairs all over the country this summer. In fact, maybe I should just open up a stand at the Wisconsin State Fair. I could sell chicken and waffle cones, deep friend lasagna, dessert cheese curds and maybe even slices of the mac and cheese pie with a bacon crust that I made.