Grilled Shrimp and Grape Tomato Pizza; Elegant Seafood Pizza; Daisy

     When I started reviewing the steps to creating these two pizzas, I realized that I was in for quite a bit of prep work.  I started, as I frequently do, by looking at the crust requirements.  For the grilled shrimp and tomato pizza, it required the same grilling crust we had used for several previous pizzas.  I scanned the freezer.  Apparently, last week I had reached the end of the stored supply.  I would have to make a new batch. 
     I threw the ingredients for the grilled crust recipe into the Kitchen Aide and checked out the "Elegant Seafood Pizza" recipe.  That required a basic crust.  I checked the freezer again.  There weren't any doughs labeled "Basic Crust".  There were a couple of Brioche doughs and a couple of foccacia doughs, but nothing labeled "basic".  I debated using a "grill crust".  I debated using a Brioche dough.  Then, I thought better of it and threw the ingredients for a basic dough into the Kitchen Aide, and let it do its thing.
     For the Elegant Seafood Pizza, the recipe suggested that to achieve the full effect of the elegance of the pizza, you should boil the shrimp at home.  Where I agree with the author that precooked shrimp isn't worth anything - it is always rubbery (overcooked) - and if you are putting it on a pizza and re-cooking it, it is most definitely going to be chewy.  Usually when a recipe (especially a pizza recipe) calls for precooked shrimp, I do it myself. I saute them in butter and garlic until it is somewhat shy of being cooked.  I figure, if you are going to put it on a pizza and put the pizza in the oven, it can finish cooking then.  There is such a fine line between cooked shrimp and overcooked shrimp. 
     However, NEVER, and I mean NEVER have I boiled shrimp.  I have read about it, and I realize that many people do it, but I have never believed in it.  I find that whenever you are boiling some kind of protein, it leaches all of the flavor out of the meat.  With such a delicate meat as shrimp, I was very skeptical.  BUT, one of the benefits of doing this pizza night the way that I have (anally) arranged it, is that I try new foods, new methods, and expand my horizons.  It didn't sound so bad, either.  There was garlic in the water, bay leaf, and allspice.  It would have to have some kind of flavor with that kind of action going on, right? 
     Now, I realized that the instructions said to turn off the heat under the boiling water, then put the shrimp in, but for 10 minutes?  My shrimp were pretty large and may be able to handle a little more heat than the typical little shrimp, but regardless of that fact, I still thought that 10 minutes was way too long for them to be swimming in the hot tub.  Not to mention, I was going to put them on a pizza that was going to cook for another 10 minutes or more in the oven.  I set my timer for 7 minutes.  
     Meanwhile, I prepared their ice bath.  I filled a large bowl with ice and topped it off with cold water.  I wanted to make sure that when they were done with the boiling water that they would stop cooking.  Unfortunately, I used the microwave timer.  During this time, my husband had come in from perusing the freezer and threw some bacon in the microwave to thaw.  When I heard the beep, I assumed it was the bacon, so when I looked back at the stove a few minutes later, I saw that my timer had ended some time ago.  I had no idea how long ago.  I quickly moved all of the shrimp to the ice water bath.
     The recipe also called for clam broth.  I didn't notice this when I had originally made my shopping list, and I am not sure I would have purchased such a thing if I did see it.  I figured, since I was flavoring the water the shrimp were boiling in, and most definitely, some of the shrimp flavoring was eking out into the water, I thought that would be a better choice for "clam broth".  So, once the shrimp were removed from the water, I poured off a little more than a cup of it into a jar to save for the next day's sauce.
     I had only purchased one pound of shrimp.  If I were going to follow both recipes exactly, I would have needed to purchase a pound and a half of shrimp.  I didn't for two reasons.  I figured that with the scallops, I really wasn't going to need a full half pound of shrimp.  Also for the grilled pizza, an entire pound of shrimp seemed excessive.  So, I only purchased the one pound, but cooked them all in the same manner, so that I would have cooked shrimp for the grilled pizza as well as the "Elegant" pizza.
     My next step was to prepare the lemon cream sauce for the grilled pizza.  I have made this before and have had problem with lumps.  I am not sure if, in the past, I had used regular flour instead of Wondra or maybe I didn't whisk enough while adding the cream to the roux or what, but I had always ended up throwing the stick blender in the pan and whirring it up until it was smooth. 
     I didn't have to do that this time, but it turned out I didn't have to.  It came out really smooth.  When it came time to add the parsley, though, I realized that wasn't one of the items I had prepared for my mise en place.  I had actually purchased the foul weed from the grocery store, and I was going to use it, darn it (I have purchased it several times before and never ended up using it, because it is usually a "post-oven" direction, or I subconsciously "forgot" that it was supposed to be added at some point).  I grabbed a handful of leaves and ripped them off the bunch.  I held the leaves over the pan and snipped the with a scissor, and most of the snips went into the sauce (there were some whole leaves that took the dive by accident, and some snips found themselves outside the pot on the stove or the wall - apparently my scissors have a torque on them and snips find themselves flying through the air, set on impact for the wall behind the stove.
     I started whisking again.  Some of the parsley that hadn't quite gotten chopped wound itself around the tines of my whisk.  I whisked through it and most of them found their way back into the sauce.  I kept whisking until the sauce was thickened.  I added the cheese and took the pan off the stove to cool, so I could put it in the refrigerator for the next day.
     While the sauce was cooling, I sliced the cheeses.  I feel it is very important to try new ingredients before they become part of the finished dish.  In sampling each component of a dish, I hope to be able to pair that flavor with other ingredients for new recipes.  So, I had to try the cheeses.  They were delicious!  The butterkase was smooth and creamy with a sharp tang to it.  The Gruyere was earthy and very sharp with a hint of nuttiness.  I looked behind me, and there on the counter was the freshly opened bottle of wine that I had used in the lemon cream sauce.  It seemed a shame to just put the cork back in it and put it back in the fridge, when I had these lovely cheeses here.  As I suspected, chardonnay was the perfect compliment to the two cheeses.

     I pulled out my prepared ingredients and thought that I could get the scallops and mushrooms sauteed before anyone arrived.  I hadn't gotten very far before Pam showed up.  I tried to concentrate on my task, but I hadn't seen her for a while, and the chitchat was distracting me from my task.

     She offered to work on something to help things move along.  I explained to her my failure at trying to find apricot nectar and handed her the apricots I had purchased instead.  She noted that one of them had a soft spot.  She said she would cut around it.  Then, she reached in the bag and pulled out a second apricot.  "Oh!" she exclaimed.  "What?", I said.  "Is that one bad too?".  She winced.  She took out the rest, and they all had soft spots of some kind.  She thought maybe since we only needed a little bit of the nectar that she could salvage the rest of each of the apricots, but when she cut them open, it looked as if they had rotted from the inside out.  I had purchased them for last week's pizza night, but didn't use them, since it was only me drinking.  I didn't think they would go bad that quickly, but maybe they were bad when I bought them.
     She set to task on finding another drink we could make with the ingredients we had on hand.  Her friend, Mary, had given us a Mr. Boston drink recipe book the week before, so we thought that we would try one of those.  She chose the "Vodka Daisy".  Vodka, lemon juice, grenadine.  Sounded delicious.  And, it was.
     Jennifer and Gracie showed up, and the kitchen became a buzz of Thursday night activity.  Pam was working on the drinks, I was sauteing mushrooms and scallops, Jennifer was preheating the oven for the cheese pizza for Gracie.  Jeff came home and declared he was "starving"!  He bustled into the thick of things and grabbed some bread for a peanut butter sandwich.  He offered a bite to Gracie, but she declined, knowing that there were better things to come.
     That didn't quite sooth the beast of hunger for him, and he grabbed another piece of bread and headed to the pan I had just removed the scallops and sauce from.  This time, Gracie couldn't resist.  Jeff gave her half of his slice of bread, and the two of them hovered over the pan and sopped up the extra sauce that was clinging to the pan.

      The sauce met with their approval.
      Meanwhile, Jennifer offered to roll out the crusts.  I had seen how the seafood sauce was shaping up, and thought we needed a deep dish for that one.  I told her to ignore the instructions to make 6 individual pizzas and roll it out for the deep dish.  I wanted to make sure none of the good stuff leaked out while baking.
     She didn't like the shape she made the Basic Crust into for the Elegant seafood pizza.  When she put it into the deep dish pan, it didn't uniformly fit in the pan.  The dough climbed up over the edge of the pan in some places and didn't go up the edges of the pan in other places, so she cut the excess pieces off and attached them to the low spots.

     Her methods proved sufficient enough to hold my elegant seafood and all the corresponding sauce.

          The next step for this pizza was a stint in the oven.  While that was baking, we gathered all the necessary for an outdoor dinner, including the ingredients for the Grilled Shrimp and Grape Tomato Pizza.  We gathered plates, ingredients, paper towels, our drinks (which Jen & I had refilled), etc., and headed outside.

     I started the grill and enjoyed a bit of the replenished drink.  Pam had said that the original drink (as written) wasn't sweet enough.  I thought it was plenty sweet, but too lemony.  Jennifer seemed to agree, so when we refilled mine and Jennifer's cocktail glasses, I doubled the vodka, halved the lemon, and halved the grenadine.  Fabulous!

     The grill was ready, so I started the deal.  Grill the dough on the hot side of the grill and flipped it onto the "cooler" side of the grill after a couple of minutes (any longer, and I'm trying to peel the burn marks off of it).

     I didn't bring the book out with me, and after a couple of cocktails, my rote recall is shot, so I just threw the rest of the ingredients onto the pizza (Jennifer offered to go inside to get the book, so I could be sure to put the ingredients on in the order they were intended - she knew it was bugging me.  However, I didn't want her to do that, and I need to get over that.).
     So, next went on the lemon cream sauce....

     Next was the halved grape tomatoes and the shrimp.

     Then, I covered everything with the butterkase.  I thought this was a good choice, because I was already worried that the shrimp would overcook, since I had already boiled them (hopefully until just before they were fully coked).   I thought that, perhaps, it would protect the shrimp from being turned into a rubbery oblivion.

     This was topped with the mozzarella.



     Next step was to top it with the foul weed.

     We closed the lid and went inside to remove the Elegant Seafood Pizza from the oven.  I had explained to my sisters that I had considered changing up the order because the two (seemingly random) pizzas were so similar, but I thought that this was an opportunity to compare and contrast two different methods for a seafood pizza, and we could critique and see which method proved to be the tastier 'za.
     I took the Elegant Pizza out of the oven and actually remembered the "post-oven" directions - putting on the pre-chopped parsley.  It was beautiful.

     Apparently, Gracie had some kind of problem with the toy horses she brought to play with.  It was apparently a technical difficulty, and Pam tried to assist....

     The grilled pizza wasn't quite ready, so we thought we would start on the Elegant Seafood Pizza, since it was just sitting there all lonely, and we were all hungry.  We served up some pieces, and then the mosquitoes decided they were hungry, too.  And attacking large humans while they were poised to feed was their perfect opportunity.  We swatted for about 1½ minutes, before we acquiesced and decided to go in. 

     All ran in with all of the plates, pizza, napkins, drinks, etc.  I went to check on the second pizza.  I lifted the lid of the grill.  It was almost done but could use just a little more heat to bubble it up and brown some parts.  I put the lid back down and heard a pffft.  I lifted the lid back up and peeked inside - no flame.  At this moment, Jennifer walked back outside and asked me how much longer the pizza needed on the grill.  I told her it was done, because we were out of propane!

     It was still pretty, and we brought it inside to share with all.
     We dished up and tried them both.  We started with the Elegant Pizza since it had time to cool (and some of us had already served some up before the mosquitoes attacked).  It was heavenly.  It was silky, earthy, creamy, butter, smooth and delicious!  The scallops were tender and juicy, and melted in my mouth the second I bit into them.  How can you top that?
     Then, I tried the grilled pizza.  It, too was delicious!  The grape tomatoes cut through the creamy richness of the Alfredo-like sauce and provided a nice tang to combat it.  The shrimp was perfectly cooked - no rubberiness detected at all.  Their fresh saltiness and their perfect texture against the sweetness of the tomatoes and the hint of lemon was the perfect combination.
     I tried to get my sisters to chose.  Tell me, which one is better?  Which is your favorite?  If you could only have one of these pizzas for the rest of your life, which would it be?  They both said that they were both good.  COP OUT!