I’ve been on a pizza-making kick, as of late, and my previous post: https://southernwestvirginia.org/?p=1427 was essentially a love-song to Jus-Roll “Round & Thin” Pizza Dough, which we recently discovered, and which rocked our foodie world and saved us from Pizza Hut for life! This post is a bit of a continuation of that, as I used Jus-Rol to create something very delicious that I’d never found on a recipe site! I’ve made clam pizzas before, and the internet has many recipes, the most famous probably being “New Haven-Style Clam Pizza”, which is quite yummy, but it is definitely a “white pizza”- nothing tomato-y at all. I make it by sautéing chopped clams in olive oil and garlic and herbs, and top the pizza with that, Parm & Mozzarella. This time, however, I had a tray of my oven-dried tomatoes, aka “Tomato Flavor Bombs”, made from Andrew Zimmern’s wonderful and super-easy recipe: https://andrewzimmern.com/recipes/oven-dried-tomatoes/ , and it occurred to me that while Red Clam Pasta Sauce is definitely a “thing”, I’d never seen a Red Clam Pizza! And it just HAD to be created!
The first thing I did was heat olive oil in a non-stick pan, and sauté chopped garlic and herbs (Italian mixed herbs, Oregano & Parsley) in it. I added the clam juice from two cans of chopped clams, a chopped fresh tomato, a bit of Kosher Salt, White Balsamic Vinegar, white pepper, and dry white wine, and simmered it a bit, tweaking it to taste. Then I added the two cans of chopped clams (which are already cooked), and simmered it on low a bit more to blend the flavors.
I preheated the oven and a perforated pizza pan to 425 F, rolled out the Jus Roll on its baking paper onto the hot pan, pricked it with a fork, (you do this so you don’t get giant bubbles), and baked it for 5 minutes. Then I took it out of the oven and began to top it, first with a thin layer of grated Mozzarella cheese. Then came a layer of my oven-dried tomatoes. Then I strained the tomato/clam mixture, reserving the sauce they cooked in for later, and sprinkled the clam-tomato mixture over the tomato slices. Then came a layer of grated Parmesan, and, finally, of grated Mozzarella. Then it got popped into the oven for 14 minutes and Voilla! Red Clam Pizza!
The pizza, partially topped, so you can see the layers, on its baking paper, on the perforated pizza pan.
Slow-dried tomato slices from Andrew Zimmern’s excellent and easy recipe: https://andrewzimmern.com/recipes/oven-dried-tomatoes/ These take several hours to make, and you need to make these before you start making the pizza. You slice the tomatoes, toss them with olive oil, Kosher salt, and pepper, put them on aluminum foil on a baking sheet, & bake them at 225F for anywhere from 3-6 hours depending on how thin you slice them. I start checking them at 3 hours. This is an especially great thing to do with the tasteless “Walmart tomatoes” you get in the winter, as slow-baking them truly turns them into “Tomato Flavor Bombs”, to quote Andrew Z! Note that you will need a number of tomatoes to cover a pizza, as the slices reduce greatly in size when they are baked.
This is the sauce that I sauteed the clams in: Olive oil, garlic, herbs, White Balsamic Vinegar, a dash of Kosher salt, white pepper, and white wine, with some of the clams, and the chopped fresh and oven-dried tomatoes. This is a WONDERFUL pasta sauce! Make your pasta al dente (“to the tooth”), and toss it around in this sauce. If you’re a “chilehead” like me, add hot pepper bits, too!
Here is my just-out-of-the-oven Red Clam Pizza, shortly before we inhaled it, my slice festooned with dried oregano from our garden, and hot pepper bits! And I have to tell you that it was DEE-LISH!
The next day we inhaled that bowl of pasta with the tomato-clam sauce, and it was delicious, as well!
If you haven’t already, I urge you to try Jus-Rol “Round and Thin” Pizza Dough, as you can really have a lot of fun with it, creating restaurant-caliber pizzas topped with anything you can imagine in 20 minutes flat!
Let me know in the comments what you top your pizzas with- I’m always game for a new idea! Pizza Pizza!
