Clambake pizza — a delight for Leos!

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My interest in astrology has always been one of curiosity. I’ve never been fully invested in the idea that my personality was pre-determined by the stars or whatever phase the moon was in when I took my first breath at the exact latitude and longitude where I was born. I mean, for starters, if I were to ask all-knowing AI for a general description of Leo, this is what I get. Honestly, does this sound like me? 

OK, I’m guilty as charged. 😂

I want to say that it’s all a bunch of hooey, but the Leo description is very much on point. Ahead of my milestone birthday recently, I looked up Leo traits and another related prompt came up in my search: “the best foods for Leos.” This oughta be good, I thought, given that I can count on one hand the foods that I don’t like. The first site that popped up was Harry & David— you know, the mail order fruit basket company— and here’s what it suggested:

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Corn, clams, spinach, and mozzarella are some of the foods to which this fire sign is drawn. This is due in part to some — such as tomatoes — being in season during the sunny summer months when Leos are born.

The moment I read that, I knew exactly what to do.

Behold, the clambake pizza!

The clambake connection

Clambakes are not exactly “native” to North Carolina, but we did have a fun one associated with the Crosby pro-am golf tournaments that used to be held around here. This was a charity tournament that Bing Crosby started at Pebble Beach many moons ago, and his widow, Kathryn, moved it in the mid-1980s to Bermuda Run just outside Winston-Salem, where it stayed for 15 years. 

The golf tournament was unsanctioned, so we didn’t always see big-name pros, but there were plenty of stars from the stage and screen and it was always an exciting week in our small city. Anyone could go to the tournament, but tickets to the clambake were highly coveted— I was only able to get in because I dated a guy who worked for Cadillac, one of the sponsors.  It’s where I first fell in love with the music of a barely known country artist named Vince Gill, and everyone who saw him at Groves Stadium knew in an instant that he would become a huge star. Let’s enjoy his breakout song while we talk about this pizza, shall we?

Press play for an enjoyable musical accompaniment!

Ingredients for a clambake pizza

A typical clambake is outdoor cooking at its finest yet most humble. Simple ingredients, cooked over a smoldering fire until the natural flavors of ocean and earth reach their peak. Clams, corn, potatoes, onions, fresh herbs and lemon are the basic ingredients, and my list of “Leo-approved” foods was already overlapped quite a bit. Spinach would be great on this pizza, and baby tomatoes would add a nice pop of color and acidity to balance the richness of the clams. Potatoes may seem like an odd topping for pizza, but it worked really well on my steak and potato pizza a few years ago, so why not? I parboiled cubed Yukon golds and then fried them up in butter with the shallots. 

A pinch of baking soda in the potato water roughs up the texture for crispy frying.

My littleneck clams came from my favorite local seafood shop— fresh from the Atlantic, already cleaned, shucked and chopped. For obvious reasons, they couldn’t go onto the pizza in their shells. After the potatoes were crisped up, I poured the flavorful clam “liquor” into the pan, and swirled in some butter with fresh parsley to dollop on the pizza before baking. I stripped an ear of grilled corn and chopped up the baby spinach, and we were ready to rock and roll.

Roxie has become my new kitchen helper!

Cooking pizza on the grill

My pizzas are usually done in my home oven, outfitted with a 3/8”-thick slab of steel, preheated to 550° F for at least an hour. In other words, hot! For this one, though, my husband and I did the baking outdoors (clambake style!) on our Napoleon gas grill, which gets even hotter than the oven. We purchased a Weber pizza stone that works great for summer baking when we don’t care to heat up the house. Les handled all of that while I prepped inside, beginning with shaping my dough into a 14-inch round and laying it on a flour- and cornmeal-dusted bamboo peel.

Cheese on the bottom, always! Wetter ingredients on top, finishing with the clam liquor-infused herb butter.

The toppings are straightforward, and I’ve put the wettest ingredients— the corn, tomatoes and clams— on top of the drier ingredients. I want them to get the benefit of the heat without creating too much steam underneath, which would wreck my crust. The clam liquor-butter mixture was laid on last in dollops and this was ready for the bake!

OF COURSE, my toppings flew off the peel onto the grill. Such a Leo thing to do!

One minor shortcoming of our grill for pizza is that the top of the pizza doesn’t have a chance to brown as it would in the oven. Solution? Easy— we just slide the finished pie under the high broiler in the oven for 30 to 60 seconds. Voila! Blistered crust and perfectly browned toppings, but without heating up the whole house for hours in the dead heat of summer. 

It even smells like a clambake!

So how was this lovely creation, made of Leo-favored ingredients and served up on this last day of my zodiac sign? Delicious! My husband and I have both come to love clams on pizza, ever since our trip to New Haven and our own adventures with white clam pie, which I’m now Jonesing to do again soon. This fun interpretation brought plenty of other tasty ingredients into play, and we could taste each of them. The tomatoes were a good addition, and the trick of reducing the clam liquor with the buttered onions really added a great finishing note of ocean flavor. Would I make it again? Definitely! And I probably won’t wait until Leo season rolls back around. 

Tomorrow is the first day of Virgo. Now, I wonder what they like to eat? 😉

Clambake Pizza

  • Servings: 6 slices
  • Difficulty: Average
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Apparently, my zodiac sign (Leo) loves clams, corn, spinach and mozzarella. What else could I do with this information but make a clambake pizza?


Ingredients

  • 2 Tbsp. salted butter (half for cooking onions, half for clam-herb butter)
  • 1 small shallot, minced
  • 1 medium Yukon gold potato, cubed and boiled to al denté tenderness
  • A pinch of baking soda in the potato cooking water
  • 11 oz. pizza dough ball, at room temperature
  • 1/3 cup favorite pizza sauce
  • 3/4 cup freshly grated firm mozzarella
  • 1 ear of grilled corn, stripped from cob
  • A handful of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved and salted
  • A fat handful (about 2 cups) fresh baby spinach, rough chopped
  • A few shakes of crushed red pepper, if you like heat
  • About 1 cup fresh chopped littleneck clam meats (reserve some of the liquor for the herb butter)

Notes: My pizzas are baked on an oven steel, preheated to 550° F for one hour. Alternatively, bake on a pizza stone designed for a gas grill, following temperature instructions for your stone and adjusting time as needed. Either setup will help you achieve a brick oven-style pizza at home.

Directions

  1. Heat a small sauté pan over medium heat with a tablespoon of butter. Sauté the shallots for a few minutes until slightly softened. Drain the potatoes and add to the pan, tossing to crisp up the sides.
  2. Transfer the cooked potatoes to a small bowl. Pour some of the clam liquor into the sauté pan with the shallots and butter and simmer to reduce the liquid. Remove from heat and swirl in the other tablespoon of butter, along with the fresh parsley. Set this aside as a final topper to the pizza.
  3. Shape pizza dough into a 14-inch round and place it on a flour- and cornmeal-dusted peel. Swirl sauce over the pizza and scatter the mozzarella all over it.
  4. Layer toppings on, beginning with the spinach, pepper flakes and corn, then the tomatoes, potatoes and clams. Finally, arrange dollops of the clam liquor-infused herb butter all over the pizza, emphasizing the clams as much as possible.
  5. Transfer to the pizza to the preheated steel (or stone) and bake for 6 to 7 minutes, using peel to turn pizza at the 4-minute mark. If baking on the grill, transfer finished pizza to a heatproof pan and slide it under the high broiler of your oven for up to 60 seconds, to get the roasted appearance of an oven-baked pie.
  6. Wrap any leftover slices individually in aluminum foil. Reheat on a preheated griddle or skillet, loosely tented with foil. This preserves the crispy texture of the crust while allowing the cheesy topping to melt.

Just for fun…

A few famous Leos: 😎 Looks like I’m in excellent company!

Jennifer Lopez
Barack Obama
Mick Jagger
Helen Mirren
Antonio Banderas
Sandra Bullock

Charlize Theron

Steve Carell
Meghan Markle
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Halle Berry

Madonna
Steve Martin
Tony Bennett
Martha Stewart

Caprese-inspired Pasta Salad

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I’ve been ruminating lately about my grandmother’s ways in the kitchen. How she fed everyone on scraps— not because she had to but because she could— and realizing that I don’t employ her tactics as often as I have opportunity. Pinching pennies doesn’t have to be a necessity; it can be a strategy for ensuring that we always have enough. And in times of financial uncertainty (which lately seems to be always), that strategy can keep us fed, not only physically, but also emotionally. 

My grandmother knew this, and it’s why she used up all the bread heels and stale sweet rolls to make her amazing bread pudding, which we all loved. It’s why 10-year-old me could sit at her dinner table, puzzled at her claim that we were having leftovers, not recognizing the food before me as something we’d already eaten that week. She was terrific at transforming, and I have that spirit in my bones, too— I just don’t always realize when I’m doing it.

We are about to enter an era where many ingredients we take for granted will be less available or more expensive than we’ve come to expect, thanks to climate change, tariffs, supply chain chaos and farm worker shortages. I thought it timely to share one of my favorite ways to stretch expensive ingredients: a pasta salad. My offering is a Caprese-inspired summer side dish that uses half a bag of pasta bowties, a small container of cherry tomatoes, fresh summer basil and mozzarella. None of these items is particularly expensive— especially if you happen to have a little garden at home— but I hope to provide a template that might help you stretch out other ingredients that lean toward the pricey side.

Summer in a bowl! 😎

Classic caprese— sort of

The flavors (and 🇮🇹 colors) of Caprese are all present here, but I’ve taken a few liberties to amplify the key ingredients. For starters, I poached the tomatoes in a bit of extra virgin olive oil to concentrate their sweetness and to reduce some of the moisture, and then I scooped the cooked tomatoes into a bowl to cool, reserving the flavorful oil for later. This is a simple trick for getting the most flavor out of the tomato and, as a bonus, it’s easier to eat them without the juice bursting out everywhere.

Slow poaching concentrates the tomato flavor. Don’t toss that beautiful oil!

Next, I had a ball of sliced soft mozzarella, as well as a small package of the more expensive mozzarella pearls. I blotted all of it with paper towels and cut the slices into bite-sized pieces. I saved the prettier pearls for the top of the salad. Same flavor, a few pennies cheaper.

My mozzarella was pre-sliced, so this was quick work.

Dark balsamic vinegar, typical for Caprese,  leaves splotchy stains on mozzarella, and that’s not a good look when you’re tossing the salad rather than drizzling it. I opted instead for a white balsamic-based dressing, jazzed up with fresh lemon, olive oil and a spoonful of Italian dressing mix. I had a plan to include a touch of dark balsamic, but not yet.

Keep the remaining dry dressing mix to jazz up other recipes!

Rule #1 – Season every layer!

As always, I recommend plenty of salt in the pasta water. You only get one shot to add flavor, so be generous and remember that most of that sodium goes down the drain— you’re not eating it all. When the pasta was al dente, I scooped out a little bit of the starchy water and whisked it into my dressing to help it cling to the pasta.

Yes, this works for chilled dishes as well as hot ones. ✔️

Finally, remember the tomato-scented oil that was left over after poaching the cherry tomatoes? I whisked that cooled oil into the dressing, too, extending the sweet tomato flavor throughout my salad in the process. I poured the dressing over the pasta while it was hot, ensuring that it would soak into every bow tie. Toss this for a couple of minutes to distribute the dressing evenly.

The pasta bowties should be slightly firm to the tooth, and you want to dress it while it’s HOT.

Bring on the Caprese

A few minutes later, when the pasta was cooled to room temperature, I gently tossed in the poached tomatoes and the pieces of sliced mozzarella, and sent it to the fridge until we were ready to pack up for dinner with some friends.

You can almost taste it, right?

For serving a pasta salad, I love to line the bowl or platter with leafy lettuce greens. It looks pretty, and it also gives excess dressing a place to run so that the salad doesn’t get too drippy. If you are entertaining a larger crowd, a deep platter with extra spoons is nice because it allows more people to self-serve at once. For a small crowd, or if you have limited space on the table, a bowl works great.

Final touches on this Caprese-inspired salad

A good quality bottle of balsamic is a secret weapon in the kitchen!

I scattered the mozzarella pearls on top, and then it was finally time for a touch of classic dark balsamic. Just a few drizzles over the pasta bowties, and I used a reduction that was thick and syrupy, so it stayed in perfect little puddles. Fresh basil is classic on a Caprese, and it’s easy to find this time of year, especially in my patio container garden. If basil isn’t your thing, I think fresh Italian parsley would be a good substitute here.

Caprese-inspired Pasta Salad

  • Servings: 6 to 8
  • Difficulty: Average
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It's summer salad season, and this Caprese-inspired dish is a great way to highlight the classic flavors when serving a crowd.


Ingredients

  • 8 oz. semolina bowtie pasta (see recipe notes)
  • 1 dry pint cherry or grape tomatoes, washed and patted dry
  • 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 to 3 Tbsp. white balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tsp. dry Italian salad dressing mix (see recipe notes)
  • 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 Tbsp. hot pasta cooking water
  • 1 lb. fresh soft mozzarella (cut into cubes or pearls)
  • 2 Tbsp. dark balsamic glaze
  • 1 handful fresh torn basil leaves

Recipe Notes: Whenever possible, seek out pasta that is made with durum (semolina) flour, and labeled as bronze-cut. This method of cutting leaves a slightly rough texture, better for sauce or dressing to cling.

I used Good Seasons brand dressing mix, but you could easily substitute a pinch of garlic powder and some dry Italian herbs.

Directions

  1. Prepare a pot to boil the pasta, and season it generously with kosher salt. Begin cooking pasta when tomatoes are nearly finished cooking.
  2. Heat a medium-size skillet or sauté pan over low heat, and swirl in extra virgin olive oil. Add tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and roll to coat them in the oil. Cook the tomatoes very slowly until the tomatoes are softened and easily smashed with a utensil (about 25 minutes). Press each of them when they reach this softened stage to release the juice inside. Cool slightly, and then spoon out the oil into a measuring glass. Reserve this for the dressing.
  3. In a second measuring glass, combine white balsamic, lemon juice, Italian dressing mix and olive oil. Whisk to combine and set aside.
  4. When pasta reaches al denté stage, spoon out about two tablespoons of the hot pasta water. Whisk it into the dressing mixture, along with the reserved tomato cooking oil.
  5. Drain pasta thoroughly and transfer to a large bowl. Pour dressing over the pasta while it is still hot, and toss gently a few times to coat evenly. Toss again after a minute or two, and then allow the pasta to cool to room temperature.
  6. Gently toss cooled tomatoes and half of the mozzarella into the pasta. Refrigerate until serving time.
  7. Transfer chilled pasta salad to a serving bowl. Top with remaining mozzarella, drizzle dark balsamic over salad, and scatter fresh basil leaves just before serving.