Vegetables inspire me. Call it the Produce Driven Life. I bought some okra the other day thinking I’d make a gumbo or a jambalaya. Then a voice in my head (I think it was Dr. John) said, why not jambalaya pizza?

It’s not an original idea; Two Boots, New York’s “Pizza Pioneers,” have been melding the flavors of Louisiana and Italy since 1987. Their menu features a “Bayou Beast” pizza with BBQ shrimp, crawfish, andouille sausage, and mozzarella.

If you start with store bought pizza dough you can make your own pizza from (nearly) scratch in about half an hour, with whatever cheeses and toppings you like, and the end result will be better (and probably better for you, too) than just about anything you could have delivered, unless you’re lucky enough to live near Otto, Mario Battali’s pizzeria.

Speaking of Mario, Whole Foods carries his readymade pizza crust but I haven’t tried it yet, because I’m partial to Whole Food’s own whole wheat pizza dough. Conventional supermarkets sell pizza dough, too, though generally not whole grain or famous name varieties. If you want to make your own dough from scratch, be my guest.

There are really only four simple steps involved in making a pizza:

1 Lightly flour and roll out your crust; coat the bottom with a bit of cornmeal;

2 Spread a layer of tomato paste, as thick as you like, topped with crushed or minced garlic and basil, oregano and thyme, or whatever herbs you prefer;

3 Top with the cheese of your choice and anything else you like;

4 Place on a baking sheet or pizza stone and bake at 450 for about 10 minutes, or till the crust looks done.

For the cheese on my jambalaya pizza, I chose buffalo ricotta, which I’d never tasted, or even seen, before I spotted it at Buon Italia last week. If you’ve had buffalo mozzarella, you know how good buffalo milk cheese is. I figured the ricotta would be superb, and it was.

Next, I added the okra, which I had pre-cooked, and Wellshire Farms tasty, low fat turkey andouille sausage, along with a dozen or so Whole Foods pre-cooked Cajun shrimp and 10 oz. of Leo’s Cajun crawfish (warning: pre-seasoned but not pre-shelled!)

The pizza was excellent; when your ingredients are this good, there’s no way you can fail. Unless, that is, you forget to set the timer. In which case, I guess you’d have blackened jambalaya pizza. How Cajun can you get?