Imagine you are out to dinner at an Italian restaurant and you’ve ordered Shrimp Scampi as your entree with a side of Alfredo sauce and Garlic Bread. Wow! Look at you! You are good at ordering! Now take those 3 things and put them together on an open faced sandwich and you have this smart little recipe! Yup. You heard me. How does it taste? Insanely fricking good, right?!
I could have eaten all 4 servings of this recipe. You think I am exaggerating? I’m not. No joke. The crispy crunch of the bread is well matched with the creamy sauce-saturated bread! Then you have the garlic! The shrimp! The ricotta! Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.
Let’s get on with it!
You start by separating 12 cloves of garlic. 8 for smashing. 4 for chopping.
Take the smashed garlic cloves and brown them in the olive oil. Set olive oil aside or leave it in the pan!
Put the browned garlic in a food processor with a bunch of trimmed parsley. Whir it up!
Set aside some of the garlic & parsley mixture. Now add ricotta & Parmesan to what’s left. Mix it up!
Take the 4 chopped cloves of garlic and put it in the oil with some red pepper flakes. Let it sizzle.
Add your shrimp and cook. Then top with the reserved parsley mixture. Tada!
Smear the finished ricotta spread on top of your hunks of bread.
Top with the shrimp. Sprinkle on some more Parmesan and shove it in the oven!
Serve with a salad…
Or not…there’s green in the ricotta mixture. That should be enough, right 😉
Shrimp Scampi Pizza Bread
(recipe adapted from Rachael Ray Magazine)
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 12 cloves garlic , 8 smashed and peeled and 4 finely chopped
- 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, trimmed
- 1 15 oz. container ricotta cheese
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for sprinkling
- 2 lbs. shrimp, peeled, deveined & chopped
- salt & pepper
- pinch red pepper flakes
- 1 baguette, split lengthwise and quartered crosswise
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium low heat. Cook the smashed garlic until golden, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer garlic to a food processor; reserve the oil.
Add the parsley to the garlic in the food processor and pulse to finely chop; set aside a 1/4 cup. Add ricotta and Parmesan to the food processor; pulse to combine.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. In the same skillet, heat the reserved olive oil on medium high heat. Add the chopped garlic and the red pepper flakes and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add the shrimp, season with salt & pepper and cook, stirring until opaque, about 5 minutes. Stir in the reserved parsley-garlic mixture.
Spread the cheese mixture on the cut side of each piece of bread and arrange on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Spoon the shrimp mixture on top and sprinkle with more Parmesan. Bake until cheese is melted, 7 to 10 minutes.
***It must be noted that I had some extra ricotta spread leftover. Perhaps I didn’t add enough to my bread? Also it’s a good idea to eat these RIGHT away. If it sits out, you lose the crispy bread situation. You don’t want to miss that. The shrimp that I used were frozen cooked large shrimp. Because they were so big, I only needed 1 lb.***
