Pizza Ai Frutti Di Mare Party

Monahan's Seafood Market | Fresh Whole Fish, Fillets, Shellfish, Recipes, Catering & Lunch Counter-Ann Arbor, Michigan

pizza partyLast week we had a few friends and fishmongers over for a seafood pizza party. What a great time! Everyone was in the kitchen getting involved in the preparation. Counselor (and former fish monger Vic) was slicing squid and peeling shrimp, current fish man Vasili was a major help with his past family restaurant pizza dough throwing experience. Others were dicing tomatoes, chopping onions and herbs, mincing garlic; it was fantastic!

I’ve made quite a few pizzas at home and I can tell you, there’s a definite learning curve here. Even though my early efforts didn’t look perfect, everybody still loved them cause I always started out with the best, freshest ingredients. There’s a bit of work and prep involved but the final result is definitely worth it, especially with a little help from your friends.

One very important part of the prep is coming up with great dough. So far this is the one ingredient I haven’t made from scratch. I’m not trying to discourage you from making your own dough but I’d recommend using someone else’s pre-mixed and pre-risen dough until you get the whole process down, then maybe try on your own. We’re lucky here in Ann Arbor to have N.Y.P.D pizza. Owner and good customer at our fish market, Domenico, sells his dough in different sizes all ready to go! It’s good, easy to work with New York style. If you don’t live in our area, call your favorite pizza parlor and ask if they sell their dough. They would be schmucks not to help you out.

Our recipe uses fresh made marinara sauce. You could use a pre-mixed sauce but it’s so easy to make and it does make a big difference. After the sauce all you need is olive oil, fresh basil, good mozzarella or ricotta, reggiano Parmesan, fresh garlic, purple onion, maybe some good anchovies and a mix of fresh mollusks and crustaceans. Since seafood has high moisture content, we did a fast par boil on all the shellfish to firm them up and reduce the amount of excess liquid.

A pizza stone will help make a better crust, and better pizza. A peel (giant pizza spatula) makes it easy to move the pie easily from stone to cutting board. You can use a pizza pan to bake but the heat coming off the stone makes a crispy, browned crust. The stones aren’t very expensive and I know that you’ll be so pleased with your outcome I’m sure you will get plenty of future use out of it.

The following recipe makes one large pizza. I like to make two smaller pizzas for easy handling. Invite some friends over, gather in the kitchen, put ‘em to work, have a ball and enjoy!

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Monahan's Seafood

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