Rosemary Infused Shrimp Scampi Pizza: High Five Blog With Friends

Today’s post is the next in our series of Blog With Friends theme collaborations. Each month a group  of bloggers get together and each publish a project based on a theme. What I love about this partnership is that it’s not bloggers with similar interests or strengths but a diverse group coming up with a variety of posts. In any given month we may have a recipe, sewing tutorial, crafts projects, book review and/or a technology post all related to the theme of the month.

This month's theme is High Five Day.

There will be individual project pictures and links to what everyone else has to offer at the end of my post, but here’s a peek at what we all came up with:

I made Rosemary Infused Shrimp Scampi Pizza:

Rosemary Infused Shrimp Scampi Pizza

I've talked many times before about how, when we choose themes for this post and for the monthly poetry posts, we often check out the online lists of silly celebrations. I mean, there's only so many times you can interpret "April showers bring May flowers". For our poetry post (mine will be on this blog on Wednesday) we chose Walk on Your Wild Side Day, which is this Thursday. The other option, which was my choice and which lost the vote, I wrote about a few weeks ago in a post I called Found My Day. The vote for today's theme resulted in our taking inspiration from an upcoming "holiday". April 19th is National High Five Day.

You may question how I tied this, how I could associate any recipe really, with High Five Day. Turns out any day that I take the time to think up a new recipe, type it out, shop for the ingredients, take pictures of every step as I make it, adjust the recipe, talk my family into trying it, edit all the pictures . . . and it actually comes out? That, my friends, is my idea of a High Five Day!

I recently got back from vacation and was inspired by the amazing meals I had while visiting Marco Island. I had a lot of sea food, mostly grouper, but enjoyed many variations of Shrimp Scampi, another favorite of mine. On my last night away, at an Italian restaurant, they served hot crusty rolls we dipped in a rosemary infused olive oil. It was delish.

Let me also mention that I have just survived yet another Passover (high five) and am thrilled to be adding breads and shellfish back into my diet. So in honor of doing away with the Passover restrictions and inspired by 2 weeks of vacation time with family, I've created my High Five recipe:

I started by making a simple crust, which I infused with dried Rosemary. It just takes a few ingredients and some muscle. Mix the ingredients and knead. 

Once the dough is ready, I roll it out in a mixture of corn meal and flour:

Next I make the shrimp scampi topping. And force myself not to just eat all the shrimp and call it good. 

I brush the scampi sauce onto the prepared crust. 

Add the rest of the pizza toppings and the shrimp.

Bake until the topping is bubbly and the crust is brown and crunchy.

Slice and serve! The Rosemary in the crust and the scampi on top was the perfect homage to a great vacation. High Five!  

As always, any time you make one of my recipes, feel free to post a picture of it to my Baking In A Tornado Facebook Page. I'd love to see it!

Be sure to visit all of this month's other Blog With Friends projects:

Lydia of Cluttered Genius shares Five Tips for Happy Parenting.

Jules of The Bergham Chronicles shares High Five - Unique Rewards for kids.

Be sure to stop by again next month for more theme based projects.

Rosemary Infused Shrimp Scampi Pizza

                                                                          ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 tsp dried rosemary, chopped
1 TBSP corn meal

  1TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
1# large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 cup marinara sauce, my recipe for Homemade Marinara Sauce HERE
2 TBSP grated parmesan cheese
5 slices provolone cheese
1 cup shredded mozarella cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried parsley flakes

Directions:
*Grease a 16 inch pizza pan.
*Mix together 2 cups of flour with the baking powder and salt. Remove 1/3 cup and set aside. To the rest of the flour mixture, add the yogurt and rosemary.
*Sprinkle some of the reserved flour mixture on your counter. Knead the dough, adding more reserved flour mixture as needed for about 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.
*Sprinkle the corn meal and some of the remaining flour on the counter. Flour your rolling pin with the rest of the flour and roll out to a 16 inch circle. Place on the prepared pizza pan. Tuck under any edges.
*Heat the olive oil with the butter and minced garlic in a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the shrimp in a single layer and cook for 2 minutes. Turn over and cook until pink. Remove to a plate, reserving the scampi liquid.
*Using a pastry brush, brush the pizza crust with the scampi liquid.
*Spread the marinara sauce over the pizza crust. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheese. Place the provolone cheese on the sauce and sprinkle with the mozzarella cheese. Top with the shrimp and sprinkle with garlic powder and parsley flakes.
*Place the pizza pan on the lowest rack of your oven. Turn the oven on to 450 degrees. Cook for 20 to 25 minutes or until the top is cooked and the bottom of the crust has browned.