buffalo chicken pizza

I try and keep this blog as Canadian as possible, but struggle because I sometimes feel like one of the most American-loving Canadians out there. I use fahrenheit to tell temperature instead of celsius. I understand ounces better than grams. I love American Beer and find hard to appreciate beer sold in Ontario (as Molson and Labatt are our only choices and they control which beers get distributed here). I'm not necessarily proud of my unabashed Americana, but I really don't make any attempts to hide it either.

When I think about nostalgic flavours, sure my grandmothers meat pies and butter tarts come to mind. But as far as experience tied to flavour, Pizza and Wings in New York is the epitome of my experience growing up. I think we ate out in Western New York more than in Ontario. My parents did a lot of cross-border shopping when I was a kid and to keep my sister and I into it we'd always go out for pizza and Buffalo wings. Even all my friends and their families went over and we'd all argue over who made the best wings. Bars offered beer, pizza and wing combos with Canadian money at par (which, with the exchange rate at the time, was a huge savings) and always asked us if we wanted bridge tokens for the way home. Now Nuno, Owen and I go over often - but not as often as I'd like. Imagine how exciting it was to see a recipe for Buffalo Chicken Pizza in the October 2012 issue of Everyday Food magazine? Looks like we won't have to sit on the Peace Bridge for an hour to get all the flavour!

Here is our pizza in all its glory! It was delicious and definitely had the flavours of a night out in WNY (save for the overly salty & peppery thin pepperoni and sweet tomato sauce). But I just loved the contrast of the hot sauce and the blue cheese.

Carrots, celery and blue cheese are totally part of the experience and it was really neat to see all these uncommon ingredients made into a pizza. We'd totally make this again.