For award-winning chef, instructor and writer of “Exterior: Cooking Outside – Recipes for the Wild” Gill Meller (@gill.meller), foraging for wild mushrooms is a joyous exercise. Based mostly in Dorset, England, he’s fortunate sufficient to reside close to woodlands with an abundance of wealthy, fertile soil the place mushrooms thrive, and one in every of his most well-liked methods to make use of them is as a pizza topper. Gill is particularly keen on porcini with their nutty and earthy style and hedgehogs, that are candy, floral, nutty and barely crunchy in texture.
Each porcini and hedgehogs are harvested round Europe and North America, however when you’re nowhere close to a forest or and not using a background in foraging, they’re additionally obtainable at most grocery shops or farmers’ markets. Meaning you may make Gill’s wild mushroom pizza with gorgonzola, thyme and ham from virtually anyplace and through any season.
Beginning with a selfmade dough base, Gill tops his pizza with handfuls of untamed mushrooms, candy and salty pancetta (cured, spiced and dried pork stomach) and a smattering of gorgonzola. If he’s preserving issues tremendous native, he’ll go for Dorset Blue Vinny, a scrumptious, tangy, aged cow’s cheese made simply down the highway. (Whereas difficult to supply exterior of the UK, if you would like one thing related, search for creamy/crumbly blue cheese constituted of pasteurized cow’s milk.)
The important thing to having the strong flavors play off one another greatest right here is roasting the mushrooms first in olive oil, garlic and a sprinkling of contemporary thyme. Utilizing the oven’s excessive warmth will burn off moisture, caramelize the sides and intensify the umami, balancing properly with the candy tomato sauce, robust blue cheese and fragrant thyme.
An alternative choice is to make this a vegetarian pie: merely drop the pancetta and tear over some cooked, drained spinach for an additional dose of greens and nutritional vitamins. Irrespective of the way you slice it, this pizza is bound to be your new favourite strategy to spotlight mushrooms!
