SHRIMP COCKTAIL REVOLUTIONIZED

Over the years, I have served shrimp cocktail more times than I can count.  Eventually, boredom set in and boiled shrimp with no frills cocktail sauce held no charm.  I began experimenting with new sauces and dips, trying everything from sickeningly sweet to killer spicy – learning the hard way to use wasabi powder in moderation.  Realizing that the shrimp also played a part in this lackluster appetizer, I marinated them in garlic, oil, salt, and crushed red pepper, grilled them and dipped them into a fragrant, nutty roasted red pepper pesto.  Success!  The combination was incredible and thus became my go to shrimp cocktail appetizer.  This revolutionized shrimp cocktail was the inspiration for my Shrimp and Red Pepper Pesto Pizza.

I have tested this recipe before and found it to have amazing depth of flavor resulting from the interplay of the roasted red pepper pesto and the piquancy of the Manchego cheese.  There were also several varying textural levels from the crispiness of the crust to the smooth, buttery texture of the cheese and the slight crunch remaining in the freshly sliced red peppers and onions that added to the overall complexity of this pizza; and the shrimp, because they were nestled in the pepper pesto and cheese, were cooked to juicy perfection.   With such great results from my first test run of this pizza you might be wondering why I must test it again.  For the first test, I baked the pizza on the outdoor pizza grill and it now needs to be baked in a conventional oven as per the recipe.  Yes, the amount of testing that is needed before finalizing recipes for Pizza Memoirs is mind boggling.  So, let the testing begin. 

I placed my cold pizza stone on an oven rack in the top third of the oven and began heating the oven to 500^o Fahrenheit.  Wanting to insure that the stone was truly heated to the maximum my oven would allow, I preheated the stone for one hour.   After slipping the prepared pizza off my pizza peel onto the very hot pizza stone and quickly closing the oven door, I began shredding the fresh basil leaves to use as the final garnish.  Within four minutes, I noticed the top of the pizza was already beginning to brown.  Oh no, that’s not good.  I probably should have placed the stone a little lower in the oven; isn’t hindsight wonderful?  Within nine minutes, the pizza was browned, glistening with the oil from the cheese and ready to come out of the oven for its final garnish of basil leaves and freshly grated lemon zest.  As the blend of yeasty, peppery, buttery and herbaceous scents reached my nose, I was jolted back to reality by two words that raced across my mind like an Arizona dust devil,  ‘Points Plus’.  Yes, my dream of eating half of this amazing work of art was dashed against the rocks of reality and with renewed resolve to remain faithful to my Weight Watchers plan for another day; I sat down at the table and SLOWLY consumed two small pieces of my Shrimp and Red Pepper Pesto Pizza. 



SHRIMP AND RED PEPPER PESTO PIZZA



 Yum, yum, and yum…it tasted as good as it looked and smelled; I could have easily eaten two more pieces.  Two, who am I kidding?  I probably could have eaten the entire pizza.   Instead, I silently repeated a quote I read in one of my Weight Watchers books – “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.”  Hang in there all my friends who are working so hard to improve your health; if you believe you can do it, you can do it.    Linda