Cajun Pizza

So it’s not a big secret that I’m a big fan of Cajun food. Several months ago, I made pizza and jambalaya two nights in a row. I remember cutting up the Andouille sausage for the jambalaya and thinking to myself if there was a way I could use this on pizza. Well, it took me until now to figure it out and let me tell you, it was a huge success.

I’ve got something new here this week. We actually filmed me making the Cajun pizza for the first time. So please check out the premiere episode of Edible Experimentations: The Series and then read on below for some more in depth information.

First off, let’s talk about a few things that I didn’t really talk about in the video. The pizza dough was hand made using Alton Brown’s recipe. The sauce I wish had talked more about because this was the biggest and most pleasant surprise on the pizza. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out so I just sort of pushed it to the side. Well, I’m now here to amend my ways (and brag a bit).  The base of the sauce is just a can of tomato sauce. I sweetened it up a bit by adding in some dark brown sugar. There I just told you the secret ingredient, I hope you’re happy. And don’t get too comfortable. It’s not too likely to happen again. I opted for the dark sugar as opposed to just the regular stuff because dark brown sugar is coated in molasses and I wanted that flavor to come through. I then added a goodly amount of my homemade Cajun seasoning mix. I will confess I just found a recipe online for that, and you can too.

Next up is the Holy Trinity. In Cajun cooking, this refers to celery, onion, and green pepper. It’s a riff on the traditional mirepoix which is the vegetable bases of many classic French dishes. Now green pepper and onion are pretty typical pizza ingredients, but celery seemed a bit out there. I am happy to report that it didn’t distract at all.

As I mentioned before, Andouille was where this whole crazy train started. The addition of shrimp was actually a last minute idea that had been rolling around in my head after doing some research for my Po’ Boy sandwich.

The cheese was another one of the trickier elements. While cheese isn’t a prominent feature in Cajun cuisine, it’s kind of a big deal when it comes to pizza. After mulling over various options, I finally settled on getting a smoked cheese to compliment the smokiness of the Andouille as well as the fact that this was going to be a grilled pizza. I went with cheddar because that’s what they had at the store. And while cheddar is FAR from my first choice for pizza cheese, it didn’t actually bother me here at all.

Grilling was another last minute call. This was the first time I had ever grilled a pizza and so it was definitely a learning experience. I had my grill set to medium, and overall this worked fine. I will admonish you to work quickly however. It took a while to get all of the ingredients on the pizza and so the underside got a bit too charred for some people’s taste. You could also turn your grill down since that side will end up being on the grill for longer than two minutes. The other big tip for grilling is to pay attention to what you’re doing. The first attempt ended in disaster because instead of flipping the pizza, I put down the sauce and toppings on the uncooked side which led to one side of the crust turning to charcoal and the other to mush.

Overall I would call this a success and something we will definitely be making again.