Pasta Pizza

Mai-Kero

So, I have a question.

My girlfriend recently tried some sort of pizza that had linguine with shrimp on top of it. She said it was a regular pizza crust with a garlic butter sauce, the pasta, and shrimp with cajun seasonings and BBQ sauce. She also said she wanted to try making it. Or rather, have me try making it. I have no idea what it's called or how.

Any ideas on what I should use in this? I've acquired stuff to make a garlic butter sauce (butter, garlic, basil, oregano.) And have some rudimentary ingredients for the rest of it sitting around. I just don't know how to go about this.

Asher

At the Pizza shop I work at we do a Spaghetti Bolognase Pizza. It's pretty simple and if you have all the correct ingredients the same method should work fine for what you want to do.

1. Cook the pasta. This step is pretty self explanatory. Just cook the pasta as if you were going to to serve it normally, drain it and set it aside.

2. Make the sauce. Prepare the sauce separately. So, assuming you know how to make the sauce just go ahead and prepare it. Then set it aside, it doesn't matter if it gets cold.

3. Prepare the Pizza base as normal (i.e. With Napoli Sauce and a light sprinkle of cheese).

4. Spread the pasta evenly over the pizza base. Make it about 1/2 and Inch to an Inch deep depending on how much you feel you can fit on.

5. Dollop the sauce over the top. Be generous.

6. Top with cheese

7. Bake until cheese is all melted.

Now, bare in mind that this recipe is designed for Bolognase sauce which is very thick. Now I'm not sure how thick the sauce is in this case, but try to make it as thick as possible. That way you'll get less excess moisture and the base will be less soggy. Be aware that you may have to drain the pizza after cooking.

EggyToast

Like Asher hints at, the biggest worry with making pizza at home is using ingredients that carry too much water, which will soggify your pizza. Cook the shrimp first, cook the linguini first, make the sauce and ensure that it's nice & thick.

Essentially what you are trying to do is create the basic dish as a "topping" that is served on a baked pizza "plate." The final baking is mostly just to melt any cheese and rise the dough.

Incidentally, when I cook pizza at home I tend to use some sort of prepared flatbread for it, so that it gets nice & crispy. Most pizza is cooked at temperatures that are higher than a typical home oven will reach, which is why you run into more problems with sogginess and such.

Asher

EggyToast has it right. You need to remove as much of the excess water as possibly from the sauce before you put it on the pizza. You still need some to keep the pasta soft and prevent it from hardening in cooking, but too much with reduce the pizza base to a soggy mess.