Shrimp Scampi Pizza

Set your oven rack close to the top of the oven. Preheat your oven and the pizza stone (if you have one) to 500 F. Let the oven and pizza stone preheat until you prepare all of the remaining items.

Into a small pot over medium heat, add the butter and let this melt. Skim off any foam from the top and discard. If you want to strain the butter into a bowl through a fine mesh sieve, you can go that route. But for this recipe, any of the solid fats that might remain are fine. Reduce the heat to low, and add the garlic, chili flakes, wine and shrimp. Poach the shrimp just until they become opaque, about 5 minutes on low heat.

Stretch out your pizza dough so that it’s roughly a 14 inch pizza size. Once stretched, remove the stone from the oven and carefully place the dough on top.

Add the cheese, the place the shrimp on top of the pizza. Drizzle with a few tablespoons of the garlic butter. Place the stone back into the oven, and cook for about 15 minutes, or until the pizza dough is golden and everything is cooked through.

Remove the pizza from the oven and place onto a wire rack. Let the pizza cool for about 5 minutes, then shower with the parsley. Slice and serve.

I ended up making this pizza only because I had some leftover butter to use up. Well, not only that, but my wife (and I for that matter) really loves shrimp scampi. I would normally eat this with some pasta, or just the shrimp by itself, but I decided to go the pizza route this time. And this pizza was incredible to say the least.

I served my wife the first piece and I heard her from afar talking to herself with food ‘umms and ahhs’. I knew this was going to be great. The smell of the garlic buttered shrimp, poached with that white wine was apparent right off of the bat. And the cheese just held things together and did not interfere much with the shrimp. I know I say this from time to time, but this pizza was really, really good.