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Impromptu pizza begins quest for big enchilada

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published February 19, 2006

Honey, what's for dinner?

It's the unavoidable question at the end of each workday. In the Solomon household in Brooksville, there's no question who will answer.

Ginny and Joe Solomon have been married for 21 years. Joe, a former Hernando High teacher who now works as a financial consultant, knows grilling. Joe can make himself a bowl of cereal. But cooking?

That's totally Ginny's department.

On Wednesday afternoon, she planned to make homemade pizza. I wanted to see if her recipe really worked.

This wasn't the stuff you buy in a box and shove in the oven for 40 minutes. This was Solomon's own original recipe, the one that earned her a trip to Orlando next month to compete in the 42nd Pillsbury Bake-Off, the recipe that could win her $1-million, the one that could make the word work irrelevant after more than 22 years with the Hernando County School District.

But I get ahead of myself.

She usually gets home around 3:45 to 4:15 p.m. from her job as an accounts payable clerk at the school district office. If she doesn't have to pick up her son Tyler, a sophomore at Hernando High, the drive takes less than 10 minutes.

She likes to prepare a meal that's going to last more than one sitting. Any day she comes home and finds leftovers, it's a good afternoon.

So it was one afternoon last April when she got home. All she had was one grilled boneless chicken breast. Obviously, it wasn't enough for a whole meal, so she went scrounging around the pantry. She found black beans. She loves black beans and rice.

In the refrigerator, she found a Pillsbury pizza crust. Why not a pizza with the grilled chicken? While she baked the pizza crust, she marinated the grilled chicken, black beans, red onions and cilantro in her favorite mojo criollo marinade.

After the crust was baked, she added the marinated chicken, black beans, onions and cilantro and topped that off with shredded Monterey Jack cheese and mozzarella cheese.

In less than 30 minutes, she had an original pizza. Her husband loved it; so did the kids, Allison and Tyler.

They weren't too surprised by their mother's new dinner offering. Solomon, 44, likes to try different recipes. She's one of those co-workers we all love. They're always bringing in homecooked food and desserts for colleagues to taste.

Of course, she made the pizza again and again. Then she took some for her colleagues at work. They loved it, too.

Why not enter the recipe in a contest, one friend suggested. Solomon did. She'd never done anything like that before.

She mentioned it to her husband, but neither gave her entry much thought.

What chance did her simple pizza recipe have competing against tens of thousands of others from across the country? Like winning the lottery. Not a chance.

The next thing she knew, last September she answered the phone at work. She broke out in hives. She had indeed won the lottery. At least she felt as if she had.

Her mojo black bean-chicken pizza recipe had real mojo. It was one of the 100 finalists selected to compete for the big payoff in Orlando.

Professional cooks had tried it just the way the recipe said. It had what they were looking for: taste, creative appeal, appearance and consumer appeal - you know the sort of thing you'll want to try at home. And for a bonus it wasn't a burger. It was decent nutritionally - 290 calories per serving.

Her recipe sits on Page 50 in the 42nd Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest book. You can also check it out online at www.pillsbury.com You'll also find two other Tampa Bay finalists. Robin Ross of St. Petersburg submitted a breakfast recipe for granola sweet rolls on a stick. Tampa's Robin Spires submitted a tomato crab bisque recipe, a meal for two.

The three will make the short trip to Orlando on March 19. Two days later, they'll enter a large room with 100 mini kitchens. They'll get enough ingredients to prepare their recipes three times: one for photos, one for sampling, one for the judges. On March 22 one of them could be the $1-million champ.

The public can go online until Feb. 28 and vote for one of the 100 entries as America's favorite recipe. The recipe's creator wins $10,000. If you vote for the winning entry you could be invited to watch the Bake-Off. If that entry wins the contest, you could win $1-million.

Solomon feels like a winner already. She's now a minor celebrity.

People are asking for her autograph. That's more than she bargained for since it all started out with leftover grilled chicken and fixing dinner. But not just any dinner. Her mojo pizza dinner. Try it, you might like it. I did.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 19, 2006, 01:07:06]