Unleashing your inner monster chef: What outrageous homemade pizza inside you is growling to get out?

If you pay attention to what happens here in the pizza pages, you know I sing the praises of some classic and minimalist pizzas. Last week’s homage to pizza marinara is a perfect example. It’s a pizza so simple you might accuse it of being boring—until it shows up and whacks you in the mouth with a minimalist maximum flavor bomb that spins your head around and modifies your hairstyle.

​But that doesn’t mean I’m all about minimalism. Yes, may have heard me say that less is more—but that’s the nature of a good pizza. If you're making a pizza and you overload it with a hogshead of sauce, cheese and toppings, you’re going to end up with a regrettable and unfortunate situation that may require a shovel. But I do believe in unleashing your inner creative monster chef and coming up with your own classics--and they in no way need to be minimalistic, just well thought out.

Earlier this week, I was thinking I really needed to do something with the surplus of marina sauce in my fridge, along with an overstock of alligator sausage. (Yes, that’s a thing around these parts. It tastes great—due in no small part to the healthy ration of pork involved, I’m sure.)

ABOVE: The resulting alligator-sausage pizza inspiration


So, I thought that after praising classic minimalism, it’s time to have some maximal fun by spinning a little Cajun country into a pizza.
 
I took the remaining marinara (which is just tomatoes with fresh garlic, a little dried basil and salt) and spiced it up with garlic powder, onion powder, my standard ground pepper trinity (black, white and cayenne), more basil, as well as oregano and thyme, a glug of olive oil, and a splash of red wine.  


The use of extra spices and herbs in there, especially the pepper and thyme, give the sauce more of a Cajun kick.

SIDEBAR: anyone who wants to argue that "Cajuns don't use tomatoes!" is going to have to explain Cajun-country tomato-inclusive favorites like sauce piquant, Cajun red gravy, and every single tomato-based recipe in Donald Link's excellent cookbook, Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link's Louisiana: A Cookbook.

And yes, that link above is an Amazon affiliate link. I thought you might want it because a) it's an excellent book and b) the Kindle edition is only five bucks right now. 

If you don't know of him, Donald Link is an authentic Cajun who grew up "on the back roads and bayous of Louisiana...making gumbo with my granny" before giving us fantastic New Orleans restaurants like Herbsaint, Cochon and Cochon Butcher. (I had a cornmeal fried oyster at Herbsaint that was one of the most astonishing things I've ever popped into my pizza hole.)

But I digress. If you don't know me, you don't know that I get a little cranked up by people who illegitimately claim rights to food authenticity. Thought I'd nip any Cajun tomato hate in the bud. Anyway...


I took that leftover marinara and gave it a little Cajun country kick in the flavor pants.
 
Then, I sliced an alligator sausage, thawed some gulf shrimp, and cut up a fresh serrano chili.
 
For the cheese, I used a standard blend of mozzarella and Parmigiano Reggiano. I sauced the pizza, put down a moderate amount of cheese, and evenly distributed the shrimp, sausage and chili for a composed pizza.

ABOVE: Alligator sausage and shrimp pizza with Serrano chilis preparing for launch...
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And just by the way, it doesn't matter how composed you try to be, those toppings are always going to wander around the pizza. It’s frustrating, but there’s an element of the poltergeist at work inside the oven when you’re not looking.

​ABOVE: An alligator sausage and shrimp pizza with Serrano chilis after launch and preparing to send us all into culinary orbit. Also, note the toppings that are attempting to make their escape--especially that one sausage slice near the back that looks as if it's trying to climb up on a Serrano.


An 8-minute bake at 550F gave this pizza a crisp crust with a nice char. I garnished it with some flat-leaf Italian parsley fresh from the garden and drizzled it with a little olive oil.
 
And it was good. I recommend this pizza.


But more important, I recommend thinking about what pizza makes regional sense for you. 

​What local foods have you got in your area that you've never seen on a pizza--but might belong on one?

ABOVE: The luscious landscape of the alligator sausage and shrimp pizza with Serrano chilis fully baked as it re-enters the atmosphere of our kitchen counter. 


I’ve had people who grew up here in the south say, “I never would have thought to put THAT on a pizza.” They've said it about boudin (a traditional Cajun pork sausage), tasso (a kind of Cajun spiced pork shoulder), gumbo, étouffée, crayfish, or any of a dozen other 100% common foods.

Why are we always building a wall of pepperoni around the pizza? There’s so much good stuff out there! No need to keep it off the pizza.
 

Even if you consider some of the efforts silly or excessive, California has certainly made the effort at unexpected pizza. All kinds of unusual and garden-fresh ingredients found their way onto pizzas at places as wide ranging as Chez Panisse and Spago, Mozza and even California Pizza Kitchen.

A lot of credit for those out-of-the-box pizzas goes to Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, and especially the late, great Ed LaDou who developed the pizza programs for CPK and Wolfgang Puck. His creative pizzas continue to inspire fans at his Caioti Pizza Cafe in Studio City, CA. 

ABOVE: A crater of gator meat rubbing up against a shrimp amid the parsley and peppers and making cheesy small talk. 

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For a short while, I lived on France’s Côte d’Azur, where the pizzerias always offered seafood pizzas—something I almost never see in the US. Clams, mussels, squid and prawns all find their way onto pizza in France.

Americans would see the menus and be aghast. But I’m looking out the door of that pizzeria to the sea literally across the street, and the harbor with all the small, wooden boats that go out to harvest les fruits de mer, and I think, Why wouldn’t you put all that on a pizza?
 

So how about the place where you are? What’s a local food by you that you’ve never seen on a pizza? And is it about time to try making it happen?

Fall River, Massachusetts has the Chow Mein sandwich. How far a leap is it to a Chow Mein Pizza?
 
Nashville has their famous Hot Fried Chicken. Is there a spicy white pizza with Hot Fried Chicken bits just waiting to happen?
 
There are so many places in the south where biscuits with sausage gravy is ubiquitous combo. Why not a pizza with sausage gravy? 

Or if you really want to get crazy, how about that same pizza with a corn-grits crust? (Just when you're ready to laugh, you'll find out it's been done. There's a recipe for that. But is it as good as your recipe?)
 

You often won’t find an existing recipe for whatever craziness you dream up. But that’s half the fun. You get to play the game.

You're allowed to wonder, How am I going to make this work? What are the limitations? How do I need to adapt this? What are the moisture issues or fat issues involved? Does anything need to be par-cooked before going on top of the pizza?
 
When I started doing shrimp on pizza (a serious crowd pleaser), I realized I had to be careful. A shrimp is about 78% water.

Using just a few raw shrimp is easy.

Using many more shrimp might create a splash. The wrong kind.

In that case, par-cooking the shrimp avoids the swimming-pool pizza effect.
 
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So what’s on your locally inspired pizza? The only limitation is your imagination. Have a great idea? Tell me about it here. Maybe we'll put it into an upcoming Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post...

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A lot of big-time professional artisan pizza makers once made their first pizza in a home oven just like yours. You can do it, too. My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. The book is about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​​