Pizza de Frango com Catupiry

You hear homemade pizza and the little voice starts: isso não é pra mim. It imagines a stone oven, a nonna, a dough you have to understand with your soul. Nonsense. A gente is making dinner, not applying for citizenship in Naples.

No nonna in Italy made this, and that's part of the joy. This is very São Paulo: chicken cooked properly, onion and garlic doing their work, creamy Catupiry on top, oregano because Brazilian pizza without oregano looks underdressed. It isn't the pê-efe, rice, beans, meat or egg, and something green, but it belongs to the same home kitchen. It uses yesterday's chicken if you have it, stretches the meal, feeds real people, and keeps dinner in your hands instead of handing it to a frozen box.

The method is plain. The dough rests so the flour drinks the water and stops fighting you. The chicken goes through a real refogado so it tastes like food, not like dry leftovers hiding under cheese. The filling cooks until moist but not wet, because a soggy pizza is usually a wet filling wearing an innocent face. Catupiry goes on top in lines or spoonfuls, where it can stay creamy and catch a little color.

Cozinhar não é dom, é um aprendizado. Make this once and you'll understand the dough with your hands, the filling with your nose, and the oven with your eyes. Anota aí. This is one of those receitas que funcionam.