Seafood Party: Buffalo Calamari and Shrimp Flatbread Pizza with Arugula

So I'm sitting here watching the Browns vs. Ravens game and well, I needed something else to do. Watching this game is painful; I can't believe how bad the Browns are this year. Will we ever have a good football team in this town? Doubtful. All I can say is, I can't wait until the Cavs season, because so far Cleveland sports have not been that much fun this year.

Anyway, over the past couple weeks, even with going to school, I've caught the cooking bug again. So, every chance I get I try to cook something good up so we have good eatin' all week long. I always cook too much anyway, so we always have leftovers, which have been coming in quite handy on school nights when we're eating our late night dinner.

This weekend we were in the mood for seafood, so we decided to make some calamari and some shrimp flatbread pizza. The idea for the calamari comes from a restaurant I used to work at as a server and I have to say, one of the only things I liked about the place was the way they made a few things. One of those things was their calamari. They would bread and fry the calamari, hit it with some Frank's Hot Sauce, then sprinkle on some tangy banana pepper rings. The calamari was served with a side of blue cheese dressing and I'm telling you what, the combination of these flavors is excellent. The hot sauce is just spicy enough, but not too spicy, then the punch of tanginess comes through from the banana peppers. It's all brought together with the cool and sharp blue cheese dressing. So, I went ahead and made a batch up at home. There's really no recipe, just do the following:

1. Get some frozen calamari already cut into pieces for you, thaw it
2. Cut it into rings if it's not already done for you
3. Dredge it in flour, then egg wash, then panko bread crumbs
4. Fry them at 360 degrees in canola oil until golden brown.
5. Put them on a plate and hit them with some salt
6. Drizzle on some Frank's hot sauce
7. Sprinkle on some chopped banana peppers
8. Serve with a side of bleu cheese dressing.

Easy. ...and very, VERY good. Perfect food to eat with a beer (we had a delicious Great Lakes Oktoberfest) and watch the game.


Now let's move on to the Shrimp Flatbread Pizza. MMmmmm just look at it...



This pizza is light, fresh, and perfect for an appetizer, lunch, or dinner. I came up with this recipe from several inspiring recipes. Mark has made shrimp pizza in the past, plus I saw an episode of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the Food Network, and Aida was talking about a flatbread pizza she loves that's topped with fresh greens right when it comes out of the oven. It sounded like such a great idea and a good way to get more greens into our diet. And so was born this pizza.

To make this pizza, start by making the dough (see how to make our pizza dough here). Next, infuse some olive oil with some minced garlic. Just heat about a half cup of extra virgin olive oil in a pan over low heat and add two big cloves of minced garlic. After you really start to smell the garlic aroma, add your shrimp to the pan. Season the shrimp with sea salt and pepper and only leave them in the oil long enough until their just done. Remove the shrimp from the olive oil, and put them on a plate. Set aside. Next, pour the garlic infused olive oil into a bowl and set that aside. This will be the oil you paint onto the pizza crust later.

Next, in the same pan, add a little more olive oil, and turn the heat up to medium-high. Add some sliced shiitake mushrooms and cook long enough to get some color on the mushrooms. Remove then from the pan and set aside. Then, in the same pan, add about a half cup finely chopped shallots and saute until they too get a little color. Now remove them from the pan and set aside. Now, shred up some mozzarella and parmesan cheese, as much as you want to use, and also chop up some fresh oregano and basil. Alright, we're ready to assemble our pizza:

Roll your dough out and get it on your pizza pan or screen. Paint on the garlic olive oil until the entire dough is covered.



Sprinkle on some mozzarella cheese.



Now sprinkle on the shallots.



Next add the mushrooms.



Now add the shrimp.



Next, the herbs.



And finally, the parmesan cheese.



Pop it into a 450 degree oven for about 13 minutes, or until the cheese is starting to brown on top.

While the pizza is baking, get some arugula ready by rinsing it off with cold water and drying it. Also, quickly throw together some shrimp sauce. (Oh, and by the way, if you are a Benihana fan, THIS is THE shrimp sauce recipe... yeah that's right... THAT one. You're welcome.) The recipe is at the end of this post.

When the pizza is done, take it out of the oven and put it on a board to slice. While it's hot, sprinkle on some arugula so you basically have a salad on top of the pizza. Slice the pizza after it has rested for a few minutes, then hit it with some of the shrimp sauce. It's really delicious and I can tell you that it's also good cold seeing as I just walked back into the kitchen and grabbed another piece. :-)

Now, back to the Browns game. Oof, they're down 34-3 now... Uh, it's tough to be a Browns fan. Have a great rest of your weekend!

School is starting, TV will soon not suck anymore, and I'm ready to blog again!

So yeah, I guess I needed a break from the whole blogging thing, right? I must have because over the past couple of months I have not had the slightest urge to sit in front of this computer and blog about food. That doesn't mean I stopped cooking, because I didn't... I couldn't! I love it too much. But for a while there, I just didn't feel like taking the time to take the pictures, get them in order, size them, make them pretty, upload them, then write about the whole experience. Not that I don't enjoy doing that - because as you can see, here I am doing it once again.

What you have to understand about me, if you don't know me personally (because if you do, you already know this), is that I get on "kicks". Now, it doesn't seem that this food blogging thing is a "kick" because in November it will have been going on for two years, and I love cooking and talking about food/eating/cooking so much that I don't think I'll ever stop, but sometimes my "kicks" can trump other things in my life that I know can take a backseat for a while. It seems this has happened with my latest Facebook "kick". Have you been on this site yet? Well, if you haven't, then you don't know... go on, sign up... in five minutes a hundred people you know from your past will find you and send you a friend request. Then you sit there like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't seen that person in a million years! Oh look, pictures!" Two months later, here we are. haha...

In all seriousness, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with people you never thought you'd have time to keep in touch with, or with people you never thought you'd ever find again. So it's great for that. However, it's also a huge life-sucking time waster so beware...

So yeah, that was one of my recent kicks. Another has been getting more interested in fashion and shopping and just having fun putting outfits together and accessorizing. I have never been that girl before, but I feel like another piece of me has been awakened by this new interest, so it's been fun. I'm officially addicted to the show, "What Not To Wear".

What else have I been up to? Oh yeah, 10,000 Cleveland Indians games. Don't get me wrong, I loved going to them because I love my team and I love our stadium, and I LOVE drinking cold beer outside in the hot sun, however recently I've become a very peeved gal because the owners of my beloved team has decided to trade away almost all of our good players! They even traded Victor Martinez, who has spent his entire career playing for us and did not want to be traded. He was visibly sad in his press conference talking about how he was bummed about the trade. AAagggghhhhh, I die!

Coming soon, the 2009-2010 Cavs season begins and we have season tickets. Lebron AND Shaq. Woohoo!!

I also just finished my summer semester at school and Fall is starting up in less than a week. And that, in a nutshell, is what I have been up to over the past couple of months.

So, I found myself perusing some blogs today, food-related and non-food-related, and I finally got the urge to blog again! It just hit me square between the eyes. I think it's because the blog I was reading, Cleveland's A Plum, was talking about having writer's block, however she described how she powered through it and was still able to come up with a blog post, which was actually quite entertaining. And of course, the reason I was reading her blog in the first place is because she was giving away a new pair of GAP jeans, so yay! But after reading her post, I thought to myself, "I used to love to blog, and I haven't done it in so long! I need to do it now!" And here I am.

So what have you all been up to? Thank you to all my readers that kept checking back to see if I was alive, and the new ones that stumbled across this here blog and gave me such nice compliments! That really helped pull me back into this as well, so thanks. :-)

So, whatever am I going to share with you today? I've cooked many things... some easy fast boring stuff (yes, I do that too sometimes!), and some really great stuff. This recipe I'm going to share with you comes from Ciminna, Italy and was found on a website put together by my neighbor's cousin that lives there. The original recipe is in Italian, so it has been translated for you below. Thanks to my hot Italian boyfriend Mark for translating! :-)

The recipe is for something called Polpette di Melanzane, which translates to Eggplant Meatballs. Now, I know many of you are currently being overrun by mass amounts of eggplants coming from your garden, so hopefully you'll find this recipe to be a new and fun way to use up some of your eggplant.



To make these, start by peeling and cubing the eggplant.



After boiling the cubed eggplant in some salted water "until it come a nice" (as Mark's late grandmother would say), you want to drain the eggplant in a strainer.



Next, using a wooden spoon, smash the eggplant against the sides of the strainer to squeeze out as much water as you can. Transfer the eggplant to a bowl.



At this point you want to add 3 to 4 eggs (you decide based on how much eggplant you have), around 3/4 cup bread crumbs (give or take), about 3/4 cup shredded Romano or Parmesan cheese, a handful of shredded basil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flake to taste. Combine the mixture using your hands so you can feel if the consistency is right. You want it to be just firm enough to be able to form it into ping pong sized balls without it falling apart.



Next you want to form the mixture into as many ping pong sized balls as you can. Roll each ball in breadcrumbs so that they form a nice crust when deep fried.



Deep fry the polpette about 6 at a time in 300 degree canola oil until dark golden brown on the outside.



When they are done, remove them from the oil onto a plate lined with a paper towel. Immediately salt them on all sides with sea salt. Serve them with a small dish of warmed marinara sauce if you'd like. Mark mentioned that he thought these might also be great used in a vegetarian meatball sandwich and I have to agree. They taste almost like meat!

They have a great texture and are delicious with or without dipping them into the marinara. These would make a great appetizer, or you could throw these on top of a plate of pasta, or use them to make a meatless meatball sub.