Shrimp Scampi Pizza

13 Comments

There is a special meal tradition at our house on New Year’s Eve. Our annual celebration of fancy pizzas began in 2018, right around the time that I was working to perfect my sourdough pizza crust. Les had shared his memories of the amazing White Clam Pizza he enjoyed while living near New Haven, Connecticut, and we decided to try one at home for New Year’s Eve. It turned out so good that we repeated it the next two years, and in 2020, we added a second specialty flavor to our repertoire— the Oysters Rockefeller Pizza. Last year, we tweaked tradition yet again, trading in the white clam pie with this creative twist on the classic Italian pasta dish, shrimp scampi. Why wouldn’t the flavors of garlic, shrimp, parsley and lemon be amazing on a blistered sourdough crust? Turns out, they most definitely are.

As with most of my specialty pizzas, this one takes a little time to prepare, but the good news is that you’ll do most of it in advance so that you have plenty of time to relax with a cocktail or mingle with guests (or both). There are three components to this pizza, and I’ll break down the details in photos ahead of the click-to-print recipe card at the end. You’re going to love this pizza!

My method for pizza baking

First things first, we bake all our pizzas in a regular home oven, preheated to 550° F with a baking steel on the rack. This combination of slab steel and maximum temperature helps us replicate the effect of a brick oven. If you don’t have a steel, you can get similar results with a pizza stone, but be sure to follow the manufacturer’s guidelines so that you don’t accidentally crack your stone under this extreme heat. With this method, you also need a pizza peel, which looks like a long-handled paddle. It’s helpful for easy transfer of the pizza into and out of the oven.

Our pizza stone doesn’t get much action since we invested in the baking steel.
Whichever you choose, you’ll need a peel for easy transfer of the pizza.

About the pizza dough

Second, my pizza dough is homemade from sourdough starter, and the shaping method is crucial to the kind of texture you see in my photos. We never use a rolling pin on the dough, as this deflates all the lovely air pockets. If you aren’t on the sourdough train, it’s no problem— you can use a yeasted dough or even a store-bought dough if you have a favorite that you trust. The link for my pizza dough also includes a yeast option, if you want to make your own without sourdough. Bring the dough to room temperature when you’re ready to bake.

Semolina flour works great to prevent dough from sticking while shaping. Fine cornmeal works well, too.

Cheez, Louise

Traditional scampi— the kind that’s piled onto a dome of angel hair— would not have any kind of cheese. But for my pizza, which does not have a base sauce, I’ve opted to scatter a bit of freshly grated mozzarella over the dough so that the shrimp curls have something to rest on. This is the firm variety of mozz, not the soft variety that is common for Caprese salad. Skip the pre-shredded stuff from the grocery store, as it is packed with an anti-caking agent that also prevents even melting.

My recipe also calls for parm-romano blend cheese, which we make in bulk at home because we use so darn much of it. A good Italian-made Parmesan is acceptable here, but again, do not use the pre-grated stuff. A special occasion pizza deserves the freshest cheese, and a few flicks of a microplane grater will bring big results, I promise.

The star of the show— shrimp

Finally, choose the right shrimp and for the love of flavor, don’t use pre-cooked. Choose fresh large shrimp— somewhere in the 20 pieces-per-pound range is just right— and buy them with the shells and tails on, as you’ll use those parts for the scampi sauce. Be sure to remove the “vein” from the curled back of the shrimp, and take note of the steps below for marinating them a few minutes before baking.

Let’s get cooking!

The sauce happens in two stages, beginning with what will seem like a ton of garlic and the parts and pieces that remain after you clean and set aside the shrimp. You’ll sauté the garlic at very low temperature for about 20 minutes, and then you’ll toss in the shrimp shells and tails for a gentle braising in dry vermouth. 

This seems like a ton of garlic, but trust this. If you avoid alcohol, use a seafood stock rather than wine.

Vermouth— one of the primary ingredients in a martini— is what I always have open, but you are welcome to use a dry white wine such as pinot grigio if that’s more your style. Either way, add only enough to cover the bottom of the pot, and be sure that each shell is at least partially submerged. This will go for about 30 minutes at low heat, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Strain out and discard the solids, and you’ll be left with a small amount of deeply flavored, shrimpy-garlicky oil.

Gently press to extract all the juices and flavor from the shells.

Next, transfer the strained base back to the pan over medium heat and add more minced garlic to it. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and simmer this until the garlic is softened (don’t let it burn!), and then turn off the heat. Add finely chopped parsley and swirl in a tablespoon of butter. Transfer to a straight-sided jar and use an immersion blender to whiz this mixture up into a smooth, garlicky butter sauce that you’ll drizzle onto the pizza when it’s hot from the oven. If you’re working ahead, this can be refrigerated and then brought to room temperature just before pizza baking.

Blending the sauce isn’t crucial, but it makes for a fully emulsified sauce that is super silky.

Marinate the shrimp

Now, do you remember the temperature this pizza will bake? Five hundred, fifty degrees! Under such extremes, the delicate shrimp needs a little protection, and I’m treating it with the mayonnaise trick I learned from rock star chef Kenji Lopéz-Alt. There is yet another clove of minced garlic in here, plus the zest of a small lemon and a shake of red pepper flakes. And then, the magic ingredient— baking soda! You can read all about my discovery of this technique here, if you wish, but suffice to say that it transforms the marinade to flavor the shrimp and protect it from the high heat. Twenty minutes will do it, but wait until just before pizza time for this step.

The baking soda changes the pH of the mayonnaise and accelerates the flavor into the protein.

Time to build the pizza!

Prep a pizza peel by rubbing in flour and then medium grind cornmeal, and hand-shape the pizza dough into a 14-inch round. Drizzle it with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Next, scatter a sparse amount of the freshly grated mozzarella onto the dough as a base for the shrimp, and a quick shake of red pepper flakes. Arrange the shrimp (including that mayo marinade) onto the pizza. Give the whole thing a dusting of parm-romano cheese and slide it into the oven. Set a timer for 6 minutes (or longer, if using a pizza stone).

Have all your toppings lined up and ready, because this part goes quickly!

The preheated baking steel retains a great deal of heat, and the high temp of the oven ensures that the crust as well as the toppings will be perfectly browned in this time. Drizzle on the garlic-shrimp butter sauce, toss on more fresh parsley and one more dose of parm-romano blend cheese.

YUM!

The cheese and garlic butter will melt into the pizza, creating a perfect bite of tender shrimp, intensely flavored butter and garlicky goodness! This will be one of the two pizzas on our table this year as we count down to 2024. 

Now, care to guess what other pizza I’ll be trying this New Year’s Eve? Hint: it’s more seafood. Stay tuned! 😉

Shrimp Scampi Pizza

  • Servings: 14-inch pizza
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Print

Don't let the number of steps scare you away from making this insanely delicious pizza. None of them are difficult, and you'll be greatly rewarded for your effort!


Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 5 to 6 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and sliced thin
  • Kosher salt
  • A few shakes red pepper flakes
  • Shells and tails of 3/4 pound uncooked shrimp
  • 1/4 cup dry white wine (or vermouth, as I prefer)
  • 2 additional cloves garlic, minced
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 Tbsp. fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped
  • 1 Tbsp. butter

Notes: Don’t skimp on the garlic in this component! It plays a prominent role in scampi, and though it may seem like too much, you’ll end up straining most of it out of the sauce base, so use enough to give it plenty of flavor.

Directions

  1. Add olive oil to a heavy-bottomed pot placed over very low heat. Add first amount of garlic, salt and red pepper flakes and steep for about 20 minutes. Watch this carefully to be sure the garlic doesn’t burn; it should just barely simmer around the edges of the garlic.
  2. Add shrimp shells and tails to the pot and toss until shells begin to turn pink. Raise heat slightly to medium-low. Add dry vermouth and simmer until liquid is mostly evaporated. Cool to room temperature and then strain out solids through a mesh strainer.
  3. Wipe out the pot and add strained shrimp stock, minced garlic and lemon juice. Cook over low heat until garlic softens. Turn off heat, stir in parsley and whisk in butter.
  4. Transfer sauce to a straight-sided jar and use an immersion blender to puree until smooth. Set aside or refrigerate and bring to room temperature before baking pizza.

Next, marinate the shrimp. If you make the marinade ahead, wait until last minute to add the baking soda.

Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup mayonnaise
  • 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
  • 1 or 2 shakes red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 tsp. baking soda
  • Zest of 1 small lemon
  • 3/4 pound wild-caught shrimp, peeled and deveined

Directions

  1. Combine mayo, garlic, red pepper and baking soda in a bowl large enough to hold the shrimp.
  2. Stir in lemon zest and toss shrimp in the mixture. Set aside for 20 minutes before assembling the pizza.

Time to bake: The oven should be preheated to 550° F for one hour with pizza steel placed about 8 inches from the top heating element of the oven. Dust pizza peel with flour and medium grind corn meal for easy transfer of the pizza to and from the oven. If you don’t have a peel, use the back of a cookie sheet to slide the pizza in, and grab the crust with tongs to pull it out when it’s finished.

Ingredients

  • 11 oz. pizza dough ball, at room temperature
  • Drizzle of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1/3 cup freshly shredded hard mozzarella
  • A few shakes red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp. parm-romano blend cheese
  • Additional parm-romano and chopped Italian parsley (for final garnish)

Directions

  1. Shape dough by hand into a 14-inch round and place it on prepared peel. Drizzle oil all over dough and give it a quick seasoning of salt and pepper.
  2. Scatter mozzarella over pizza and shake on red pepper flakes. Arrange shrimp over mozzarella. Sprinkle parm-romano cheese all over pizza.
  3. Slide pizza onto hot steel and bake for 6 minutes. Remove from oven and spoon over the garlic sauce, concentrating on the shrimp (don’t worry, it will melt and ooze everywhere). Sprinkle with parsley and additional parm-romano cheese. Serve immediately.

Lemony Lobster Risotto

5 Comments

Special occasions call for special foods. Whether you are preparing to celebrate an anniversary, a loved one’s birthday or some other kind of milestone, it makes sense that you would want to enjoy a meal that is a bit more extravagant than the usual. When I turned 10, my father and stepmother took me to a “fancy” restaurant for my first taste of lobster, and I still remember how lusciously sweet and rich it tasted, especially when dipped in the warm drawn butter. During pandemic times, of course, enjoying a special meal has more likely meant digging deeper into your own recipe vault and perhaps brushing the dust off some of your lesser-used cooking skills. You may have even been nudged into fresh culinary territory, taking the plunge on new equipment for your kitchen or learning new techniques or cuisines to make your favorite special foods. All of the above have been true for me over the past year, in addition to starting this blog, which has been a lifesaver for my mental health.

When Valentine’s Day came around this year, I had already decided that lobster tails would be the highlight of our romantic dinner-for-two. I made them last summer when my husband, Les, celebrated his birthday and we both commented how much we enjoyed the lobster and should make it more often. Lobster feels decadent, and though I’ve never been brave enough to prepare a whole, live lobster (mainly out of fear that I’d have to become vegan afterward), I find lobster tails to be one of the simplest seafood preparations out there. Splitting the tail and broiling with nothing more than clarified butter, a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of fresh herbs is the way to go. For me, it’s the sides that require a little more thought—you want something elegant enough to pair nicely with such a luxurious main, but nothing too rich or fancy that would compete for attention or overwhelm the palate. Les requested easy roasted asparagus and a Caesar salad, which I glammed up with homemade green goddess dressing. And I wanted a starchy side, but not potatoes and definitely not pasta.

Enter risotto, stage left.

As I mentioned in my January post for the scallops with spinach on bacon risotto, there is no advanced skill required for making this Italian-born side, only patience and attention. I consider risotto a “blank canvas” food, in that you can easily switch directions with it to suit the rest of your menu. For our understated Valentine’s meal, I wanted light, lemony freshness, something that would match the simplicity of the lobster tails. I found a bottled lobster juice in one of our specialty markets, and it has all the luscious sweet aroma of lobster, with exactly the right amount of salt for flavor. Lemon zest gave echo to the fresh lemon we’d be squeezing over the lobster, and did I mention how much parsley we have these days thanks to our indoor hydro garden? I finished it off with a gentle splash of light cream, and the meal was perfectly lovely.

The other thing that is nice about risotto is that you don’t have to make a huge batch of it. For this meal, I wanted only enough to cradle our lobster tails, so I scaled down a basic recipe and used only 1/3 cup of Arborio rice. We had no leftovers, which was perfect.

Ingredients (two dinner side servings)

1 Tbsp. minced shallot

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1/3 cup Arborio rice

8 oz. bottle Maine lobster juice* (see notes)

2 oz. dry vermouth (or dry white wine)

Filtered water, amount needed to finish risotto

1 Tbsp. finely grated lemon zest

2 Tbsp. light cream (or half and half), warmed

A couple pinches of fresh chopped parsley

*Notes

I found this lobster juice in a specialty supermarket, same aisle as tinned fish. The label suggests a serving is a tablespoon, so I’m not sure what most people use it for. When I tasted it, I knew it would be perfect as a broth for my risotto, and I used the entire bottle. If you cannot find this product, consider a seafood stock from the soup aisle.

If you cannot find the lobster juice, substitute packaged seafood stock.

Instructions

  • Saute the minced shallots in butter until they are soft and slightly translucent.
  • Toss the Arborio rice in the melted butter until coated and lightly toasted.
  • Dry white wine is typically added to the broth for risotto, but I almost always have a bottle of dry vermouth open in the fridge. It works beautifully.
  • The first splash of lobster-vermouth broth will de-glaze the skillet and start the cooking process.
  • When the broth is mostly absorbed into the rice, add another ladle.
  • As the rice cooks, the starches will release and create a cloudy appearance.
  • Use a microplane, or the smallest holes on a box grater, to remove the lemon zest. Stir it into the risotto near the end.
  • A little fresh parsley adds a gentle pop of color and slightly bitter flavor.
  • When the risotto is creamy and cooked to desired texture, finish it with a splash of light cream.
  • Lobster tails are ridiculously easy to make; you just cut them open, pull up the meat, drizzle with butter and broil.
  • Beautiful!
  1. Combine lobster juice and dry vermouth in a saucepan over low heat. Bring this up to a very low simmer, and keep it warm for the duration of recipe. If you have a tea kettle, warm some water as well. You may need it to finish cooking the risotto and it will help to have it on standby.
  2. Place a small, non-stick skillet over medium heat. Melt the butter; add minced shallot and sauté until softened and slightly translucent.
  3. Add Arborio rice to the pan, and toss it around with a wooden spoon until all grains are coated and the rice begins to look lightly toasted in color. Reduce heat to medium low.
  4. Add a small ladle of the warm lobster broth and stir rice around to evenly distribute it. Cook, stirring or shaking pan frequently, until the broth seems mostly absorbed. Repeat with only a small ladle of broth each time. As the recipe proceeds, you will notice that the risotto takes on a cloudy appearance. This is good! The starches are breaking down into different form, and this is what creates the rich, creamy texture. Keep going, but take it slow.
  5. When you have nearly exhausted the broth, do a taste test. Perfect risotto should be tender, but not mushy. If it feels like it will stick to your teeth, it needs more time. Add warm water to the remaining broth and continue cooking. You should expect this process to take about 40 minutes from start to finish.
  6. When the risotto texture seems right, add the lemon zest and fresh parsley. Stir in the light cream or half and half, and serve immediately.

To make clarified butter:

  • Add a stick of unsalted butter to a saucepan over very low heat, and walk away.
  • At the 7-minute mark.
  • After 15 minutes.
  • 21 minutes from the start, the butter is finally melted. Remove from heat and let it rest a minute or two.
  • Slowly drain off the butterfat, leaving the milk solids behind. If you want the butter to be super-clear, you can strain it through a cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer.
  • The yield from one stick of butter is almost 1/2 cup, more than enough for cooking the lobster, and extra for dipping.

Place a small saucepan over very low heat. Add a whole stick (1/4 cup) of unsalted butter and leave it alone. You want the butter to warm slowly so that it melts but does not brown or burn. Avoid temptation to stir or swirl the pan, as this will reincorporate the milk solids. When the butter is completely melted (which may take as long as 30 minutes), turn off the heat and let it rest for a minute or two. Carefully tip the saucepan, pouring off the clarified butterfat, but leaving the milk solids behind in the bottom of the pan. Do this a day or two ahead, if you wish. Keep the clarified butter covered and refrigerated until ready to use. Reheat over medium-low heat, or in the microwave, but only 15 seconds at a time.

Prepping and cooking the lobster tails:

If you have purchased the lobster tails frozen, it’s best to thaw them slowly in the refrigerator, as it makes separation of the flesh from the shell a bit easier. In a hurry? Place them in a heavy, ziptop freezer bag, squeezing out excess air (the shells have sharp edges, so sandwich-type bags won’t do). Put the bags in a large bowl or pot filled with cold water. Place something heavy over them to keep them submerged during the thaw process.

  • You need strong kitchen scissors to snip through the top shell of the lobster tail. Cut as far as you can toward the tail fins.
  • Lift the fleshy meat up on top of the shell, drizzle with butter and broil about 7 minutes.

Use strong kitchen scissors to cut the top side of the shell lengthwise, clipping as far as you can to the tail fins. Next, carefully slide a sharp, slim paring knife between the meat and the shell, and shimmy it all the way around to loosen the flesh. Using one hand to gently pry open the cut shell top, carefully lift the tail flesh up through the shell opening to rest it on top. This affords the prettiest presentation. Blot away excess moisture with paper towels. Cover and refrigerate until you are ready to broil the tails.

Set your oven to high broil setting for about five minutes, with oven rack in the center position. Arrange the lobster tails, at least 4 inches apart from each other, on a baking sheet lined with foil or parchment, or use a broiler pan. If the tails don’t sit upright without tipping, you can make a nest of aluminum foil to hold them in position.

Drizzle a spoonful of clarified butter evenly over each tail. Broil on high for about 7 minutes, until flesh is plump and white, and shells are bright orange-red in color. Remove immediately, drizzle on more butter and sprinkle with fresh parsley. Serve on top of lemony risotto with wedges of fresh lemon.

Simply elegant, and totally delicious!

Want to make it?

Lemony Lobster RisottoDownload It