Rescued Recipe: Mexican Pizza in the Style of the White Horse Inn! Or, the Science of Disgustingly Awesome

 Jesse Sutton-  Note!  I take some shots at my first job in this post.  These are strictly my own opinions, often hyperbole, as seen through the lens of decades in professional kitchens, and are meant purely as nostalgic entertainment.  Let it be known that the White Horse Inn was one of my favorite bars on Earth, and still would be today, if it were still in existence.

Welcome back to Rescued Recipes, the (hopefully) ongoing series where we recreate dishes from restaurants that we have frequented or worked at that are closed.  This recipe hails from the White Horse Inn, a little bar and grill in Champaign, Illinois (more like Malt Liquor, Illinois, amiright?), that happens to be the first actual cook job I ever had.  I mean, yeah, the kitchen was squalid and poorly appointed, the servers were apparently hired on the basis of breast size, and the bartenders had a tendency to bring an extra handle of Captain Morgan to their shifts so the owner wouldn't notice how many shots the employees were doing, but it was home, and it's where I, at age 19, fell in love with this sleazy, exhausting industry.

This dish is one I've only ever seen at the Horse.  I mean, yeah, there are other Mexican pizzas, but none that are based on deep frying.  I mean, nearly everything at the Horse was based on deep frying.  We had a game called Fryer Science, where we would attempt to deep fry weirder and weirder things, just to see if it was possible.  The results ranged from good (cinnamon toast, ribeye) and bad (grilled cheese) to downright ugly (frozen mayonnaise).  That's right, we were frying mayonnaise when Wiley Dufresne was a line cook at Jean Georges.  I mean yeah, he actually made it work, but let's be fair, we were hammered, and most likely on at least some kind of drugs.  

To really understand this dish, we need to talk about an important, but rarely discussed, concept in gastronomy.  You know that quality certain dishes have where they are unbelievably delicious, but you feel like you have to take a shower after, and your insides feel like you swallowed a hand grenade?  You know, the way tater tot-choes (Irish nachos made with tots, for the rubes) make you feel, but a BLT does not?  That quality has a name, coined by Nate and I's former co-worker, JD Childress.  Disgustingly Awesome.  It's a great term.  Deep dish sausage pizza, bacon-wrapped corndogs, Monte Cristo sandwiches, the list goes on.  And fine dining has its examples, too.  Go to Husk and try the deep-fried chicken skins with Tabasco honey.  Go to Au Pied de Cochon and try the boudin noir and foie gras pizza.  Or really anything at Au Pied de Cochon.  

So to fully celebrate the concept of disgustingly awesome, we are going to celebrate a dish that I genuinely think might be unique to the Horse.  It has a lot of hallmarks of disgustingly awesome.  For instance, it features an incredibly large amount of cheese, huge quantities of deep-fried starch, sour cream, avocado, and did I mention the vast, obscene quantities of cheese?  It also has the unique distinction of being the single most difficult dish in the White Horse's repertoire.  It was such a pain in the ass that any White Horse employee (known, affectionately, as White Hoes, despite the fact that that really only accurately described about 85% of the waitstaff and the odd bartender) dining at the White Horse had to ask permission to order one.  Why?  Two reasons: first, we had two fryers.  Four baskets in total.  We were a wing place, with chicken sandwiches, fish filets, house-fried tortilla chips, and thousands of french fries.  The fryers were in constant motion.  But the Mexican Pizza took up a whole fryer for like six minutes.  This wasn't a big deal at 3 on a Wednesday, but if it was 2PM on a Saturday, during a Fighting Illini vs. Michigan State game, and there were 25 tickets hanging, it was an absolute nightmare.  Combine that with the fact that cutting it left an unconscionable mess on your board, and it just wasn't worth it.

But damn, was it delicious.  It's like the unholy offspring that resulted from an orgy where an okonomiyaki, a tostada, and a grilled cheese sandwich ran a train on a plate of nachos.  It's greasy, it's messy, it's a massive pain in the ass, and I'm here to tell you how to make one.  It won't be exactly the same as the Horse's version.  Even if I remembered it verbatim, which I do not, I always make some tweaks and adaptations in these Rescued Recipes.

Note: This recipe involves home deep frying, which, if you don't know what you're doing, is both dangerous and stupid.  Keep pets and kids away, wear shoes, make sure the oil doesn't get hotter than 375, and don't start drinking until the frying is done.  The frying can be done up to an hour in advance, in case you want to pre-party a little bit.  If you don't have a good thermometer, don't do this, you will start a fire and disfigure yourself.  In the words of Mike (last name redacted), the perpetually high frat boy White Ho that taught me to deep fry things, and who is probably a senator now, "The fryer is not your friend."

Step one: deep fry a 10" flour tortilla.  (Note, if you don't have fry baskets to weigh it down, the tortilla will puff up, which looks cool, but doesn't work for this recipe.  The solution is to thoroughly dock it with a fork, and then pop bubbles with your probe thermometer.  Don't have a probe thermometer?  Then you shouldn't be frying, Einstein.)

Step two: top the tortilla with Mexican Cheese.  More than you think is necessary, or even really wholesome.  Note, Mexican Cheese is not cheese from Mexico.  There's almost nothing actually Mexican about the Mexican Pizza.  Queso Fresco, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, these are Mexican cheeses.  No, I mean 'Mexican Cheese' that comes in a bag at your local grocery store.

Step three: Place this in the oven for a couple of minutes while you deep fry another (well-docked) tortilla.  Begin contemplating your life choices.

Step four: Pull the molten-cheese-covered first tortilla out of the oven and top it with the second tortilla.  Apply the sauce (see below) like you were topping a regular pizza (a 10" tortilla will take about a half cup).  Add more cheese.  Like, a lot.  Pop it back in the oven.  

Step five:  Turn the heat off your oil, and make a choice.  Either you dispose of it right now, or tomorrow, when it's cool.  What you cannot do is start drinking, and then dispose of it.  Even if it's cool, you'll make a terrible mess, and your wife will ban you from the kitchen, and she's not the best cook, and she never makes anything disgustingly awesome.

Step six: Crack a beer.  Mexican Pizza should never be consumed completely sober.

Step seven: Pull out the pizza when the second layer of cheese is almost melted.  Top with tomatoes (diced tomatoes are standard, but I used sliced rainbow cherry tomatoes, they are just better), sliced black olives, sliced pickled jalapenos, and sliced scallions.  

Step eight: Pop the abominable monstrosity back in the oven for a minute to warm the toppings.

Step nine: Place the pizza on a cutting board and slice it into slices with a large kitchen knife.  Transfer it onto a place with said knife, or a spatula, if you are a wuss.  Look at the greasy shrapnel mess it leaves on your cutting board.  Imagine having to clean that up twenty-five times per football Saturday.

Step ten: Serve with a ramekin of sour cream (bonus points if you have access to a Russian grocery, and can get the good stuff) and a ramekin of rudimentary guacamole.  (To be truly accurate, this should come out of a Sysco carton, but you should probably make fresh.  Method below.)   May God have mercy on your soul.

Oskie Wow Wow!

Recipe Appendix: 

The Sauce: In its true form, the White Horse Inn's Mexican Pizza used enchilada sauce, which is a condiment produced by our friends at Ortega (a subsidiary of B&G foods, located in the noted Mexican metropolis of Troy-Hills, NJ).  If you've never had it, it's smooth, brick-red, and tastes vaguely like you took a Taco Bell burrito and put it in the Vitaprep.  Now, the Horse was perpetually out of it, so we would sub 'homemade' salsa (made by mixing Pace Picante sauce with diced tomatoes and onions), but it wasn't the same.  You'd never dip chips in Ortega enchilada sauce, so there's no reason to top a Mexican Pizza with chunky salsa.  Here at Hot Dogs and Caviar, our commitment to authenticity is paramount.  However, I couldn't find Ortega enchilada sauce at the grocery store.  Does it still exist?  The internet says so, but the poorly appointed 'Mexican' aisle at my local Harris Teeter didn't have it.  Funnily enough, I couldn't find any at the actual Mexican grocery either.  I'll have to look into that.  Anyway, I found plenty of recipes online, and ultimately went with this one.  It worked fine, I just have a couple of notes.  First, I didn't use real chicken stock.  In homage to the White Horse, I used chicken base.  (Of course I have chicken base.)  It's worth noting that when I was younger, my dividing line between 'good' restaurants and regular restaurants was whether they bothered with stock.  Second, I couldn't bring myself to buy chilli powder.  I'm categorically opposed to chilli powder.  I got powdered guajillo chiles at the Mexican grocery.  I know this entire project is hack, but even hacks have standards.  Third, you'll need more salt, even with chicken base.  Fourth, give it a strain, the chiles are kinda gritty.  The recipe makes about enough for two pizzas.

The Guac: I have a really nice guacamole recipe, with chunks, and ingredients, but it's overkill for this application, where the guacamole is relegated to 'stuff to dip your deep fried nacho pizza in.'  To that end, I just busted a couple of ripe avocados up with a fork, and seasoned them to taste with salt, lime juice, and hot sauce.  (I used Yucateco Habanero Salsa Verde, AKA the Green Machine, for heat, Picamas Salsa Brava, which I'm going to do an entire post on, for complexity.)   It took 2 minutes, and was perfectly adequate.

Bonus Round: The White Horse Quesadilla

The White Horse was a hotbed of inauthentic 'Mexican' food.  We had a dish called 'Super Nachos', which were abbreviated as 'snach.'  A smaller order of Super Nachos weren't referred to as regular nachos.  Oh, no.  That would be too logical for the crew of booze-addled C students that ran that place.  A small order was called a 'half snach.'  A snach without jalapenos was called a 'snach, no japs.'  The University of Illinois has produced 24 Nobel Prize winners, but I don't think any of them worked at the White Horse.  

So another one of our ingeniously-named dishes was the 'El Gran Quesadilla,' which just means 'the big quesadilla.'  The menu stated that it used a 20" tortilla, when, in fact, we just used two 10" tortillas.  The regular quesadilla (as opposed to the 'el gran') just used one, folded over.  This is obviously misleading, but it turns out the diners at the White Horse got just as bad grades on their geometry quizzes as the employees did, so we only ever got called out once.  (The White Horse's menu was home to some truly comical copy.  Along with spelling errors and outright lies, we had some really fun, grammatically challenged hyperbole.  My favorite was the blurb on the brunch menu, which read "With our freshest ingredients being farm-fresh eggs, we bring you breakfast straight from home to make your breakfast special."  Watch out, Lord Byron.)

The tortillas were filled with Mexican Cheese, obviously, plus the traditional Mexican quesadilla fillings of bacon and scallions.  It was then cut into wedges, and topped with a dollop of sour cream.  It was basically a baked potato, hold the potato, sub tortilla.

Okay, so full disclosure, after Mexican Pizza night, I hung out with some buddies (which is code for played Dungeons and Dragons on Zoom, don't you judge me, it's a global pandemic), and then got roaring drunk watching guitar videos on Youtube.  You know, like an adult.  That was when I decided as long as I was recreating White Horse fake Mexican food, I may as well do another, so I knocked one of these guys out, too.  You know how one of the things that separate fine dining from casual dining is that in fine dining, the chef tries really hard to avoid repeating ingredients, whereas in casual dining, the KM (not chef, obvs) tries to cross utilize as much as humanly possible?  Well, that had me having all the ingredients on hand to make one of these guys, just by having everything necessary to make a Mexican Pizza.  The lone ingredient in an El Gran Quesadilla that wasn't in the Mexican Pizza was bacon, but I had a chunk of pancetta kicking around, and here we are.  Now it's the next morning, and I regret nothing.

-JS