A word about “pizza”. You know those things that your mom made you eat as a child that were just short of a scar­ring expe­ri­ence? In our house it was Mon­tana Stew which was com­prised of ground beef, kid­ney beans, canned toma­toes and spaghetti. You’d think the fla­vors might meld together to cre­ate a mag­i­cal child­hood mem­ory, but hon­estly, it just made me want to scrape my tongue. I tend to think it was my mom’s answer to cheaply feed­ing 9 kids crammed into a cabin for two weeks of fly-fishing every sum­mer. To this day, we give her a hard time about it.

But now the shoe’s on the other foot and I’m quite cer­tain that my son’s “Mon­tana Stew” will be the most bas­tardized form of “pizza” known to man. Before I found these rice tor­tillas (and Conte’s frozen pizza, let’s be hon­est), he suf­fered through a slice of toasted rice bread, slathered with a squirt of cat­sup, topped with grated cheese. I got away with it for years, too, shov­ing it in the toaster oven, soft­en­ing the bread so he wouldn’t chip a tooth. Hon­estly, you could play hockey with some of that stuff.

So like all moth­ers, I’m hop­ing his child­hood mem­ory is selec­tive and that he’ll love me for the thin crust piz­zas I make him now because pizza is one of those quin­tes­sen­tial com­fort foods. If you rearrange your thoughts and expec­ta­tions a bit and try this “pizza”, I think you’ll be sur­prised at how deli­cious a thin, crisp crust can be (sorry Chicago).

Throw a pizza party and ask each friend to bring a top­ping. There’s not a chance my boy will eat this, but what about thin slices of brie and pear with arugula on top, driz­zled with olive oil, for exam­ple? Or a tra­di­tional Margherita with fresh toma­toes and basil? And if you want some­thing more sub­stan­tial, throw another tor­tilla on top and you’ve got a que­sadilla. Be cre­ative, have fun and fall in love with pizza, all over again.

Watch here for my BBQ Chicken Pizza demo and make it along with me.

Total time: 15 min­utes
Yield: 4 piz­zas or 24 appetizers

2 tsp. olive or grape­seed oil
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
pinch salt
4 gluten-free brown rice tor­tillas (I buy at Trader Joe’s)
8 T gluten-free BBQ sauce (the Kansas City BBQ sauce at Trader Joe’s is GFCF)
1 1/2 c. shred­ded ched­dar cheese (or Daiya vegan cheese for casein-free)
6–7 oz. smoked deli turkey, roughly chopped
4 scal­lions, finely sliced
1/4 c. roughly chopped cilantro

1. Heat 1 tsp. oil in skil­let (cast iron works great) over medium high heat and saute red onion until caramelized, about 5 min­utes. Sprin­kle with pinch of salt and remove to a bowl.
2. To assem­ble one pizza, spread 2 T BBQ sauce on tor­tilla with the back of a spoon, to the edge.
3. Sprin­kle a quar­ter of the cheese and turkey atop the sauce. Spoon a quar­ter of the caramelized onions over the turkey and sprin­kle with scallions.
4. To a hot skil­let, add 1 tsp. oil. When hot, slide pizza into skil­let and cover, fry­ing for 2–3 min­utes on medium-high heat, until cheese is melted and tor­tilla is crispy.
5. Care­fully slide pizza onto paper tow­els to absorb any extra oil. Remove to a cut­ting board, sprin­kle with cilantro and slice into 6 wedges for a snack, din­ner or appetizers.