If you saw the recipe I posted on my blog from last night, you’ll remember that it was for Chicken Tortilla Soup. I had mentioned in my blog post that Dennis and I were looking forward to enjoying that same soup again tonight for dinner. In wanting to make sure the dinner was a little different than last night, I wanted to come up with something to serve with it so it would seem like a fresh, new meal for both my husband and me. Instead of serving the soup with tortilla chips, as I had last night, I decided I’d make a light cheese crisp to serve along with our soup.

I had an extra package of fresh pizza dough in the refrigerator, which gave me the idea to use it to make a cheese crisp. Dennis loves pizza, especially on a night or day when football is on t.v. Tonight is Monday night, which means Monday night football, so thought I’d surprise him by making something resembling a pizza to go along with our dinner tonight.

This was about the easiest recipe I’ve ever put together, using only four ingredients … one of those being salt. I used a fleur de sel finishing salt that I bought while away with Dennis a couple of weeks ago at a local butcher we walked past, while we were in Dallas. This store was so cute, we had to stop in and check it out. It’s called Local Yokal. At the checkout they had different seasonings and this flour de sel was one of them. Dennis always asks for finishing salt, in a joking way, so when I saw the fleur de sel, I knew we had to pick it up to have on hand for him. I’m glad we did, he’s been loving it!

I let the pizza dough rise on my bread board for 20 minutes, per the package instructions. Once the 20 minutes had passed, I formed the dough onto my pizza pan. I sprinkled it with 1/4 teaspoon of the fleur de sel and placed it in a preheated 425 degree oven for 10 minutes. Once the crust had baked for 20 minutes, I sprinkled 3/4 cup of part skim, shredded mozzarella onto the crust and spread an 8 ounce can of mild, diced green chiles over the cheese. I placed the cheese crisp back into the oven for 8 minutes, until the cheese had melted. This was very light, which we both were happy about. For 1/4 cup of the shredded mozzarella, there was only 80 calories. This amounted to 240 calories over the entire crisp. For 1/8 of the crisp, that amounted to just 30 calories in cheese.

This was the perfect accompaniment to our Chicken Tortilla Soup and made for a perfectly satisfying dinner.

This cheese crisp would be a wonderful addition to any Mexican meal!

Every December I host a large Holiday Party for all of my book clubs. I usually serve some sort of a pasta dish. However, I’m so happy with how this soup and cheese crisp turned out, that I think I’ll be making this for the ladies this year. There are several vegetarians in our group, so I’ll have the shredded chicken on the side for all to place in the bottom of their bowl, adding the soup to the top. Everyone will be happy!

Ingredients

1 package fresh pizza dough

3/4 cup, part skim, shredded mozzarella cheese

8 ounce can mild, diced green chiles

1/4 teaspoon fleur de sel (or sea salt if you don’t have fleur de sel)

Directions

1. Let dough rise for 20 minutes, on a bread board with a bit of flour on the board so it doesn’t stick.
2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
3. Form dough into a disk on your pizza pan and sprinkle with the salt.
4. Place in oven to bake for 10 minutes.
5. Cover with shredded cheese and green chiles and place back into the oven for 8 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

Enjoy!

Until next time, Kris