This is my tuna and sauteed shiitake pizza with raw yellowfin, ricotta, mascarpone, basil, late season shiso atop a crust made “Shaobing” style with pork drippings, (i.e. lard-yea, yea just calm down.) and sesame.

Please forgive the pictures in this post. They are hazy because I accidently dumped a half bottle of truffle oil all over my camera while making pizza. (Best smelling camera around)

Well, I’ll be first to admit it, I was blindsided last March when, after three grueling days at the International Pizza Expo making pizzas for demonstrations and competitions, I tasted one of the best pizzas in the world. I hate to admit it, but this pizza wasn’t at the show, or in the competition, or even made by a pizza guy. It was made by….gulp…a chef at the Bellagio Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. (Okay, all  you pizza dudes, throw those eggs and rotton cabbage, I can take it!) 

Who was this guy? I had to find out; then steal his recipe, butcher it, and make it my own!

        Akira Back slicing and dicing (left) and (right) with some other older-looking chef named Robert, or Bob..something.

After investigation, I found that this was no ordinary chef. It was Akira Back, the professional snowboarder who’s talents propelled him to win “Rising Star,” from Restaurants and Hospitality Magazine, “Best Chef in Las Vegas,” and appeared on Iron Chef with Bobby Flay. He’s worked as Executive Chef under at Nobu and with Masaharu Morimoto and Bryan Nagao and appeares regularly on the Food Network. His Restaurant Yellowtail is a AAA 5-diamond award-winning place that features Akira’s unique combination of rare and exotic ingredients paired with natural, sustainable fare….Oh and a killer pizza that I came face to face with just last year.

My General Manager and I took a strole to the Bellagio Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip and (after donating a major amount of money to the damned roulette table,) had a few drinks at Yellowtail. This restaurant has the coolest interior, especially the glittering wall fitted with shiny discs mimicing fish scales. Sitting next to us in the lounge were three woman from Tennnesee.

“Y’all just gotta try the big eye tuna pizza!” One woman said in here southern accent.

“What’s so great about it?” I giggled like the pompous pizza know-it-all that I am.

“It’s just the most fabulous pizza you will ever have, that’s all!” Her tablemate chuckled. They left and after I had another beer I ordered this pizza. The tortilla crust was so thin and crisp that it seemed as though it was wafer. The beatuful red tuna lay atop a luscious sauce accented by tastes of lemon, cream and red onion. The real kicker was the white truffle oil that was drizzled atop the tuna and further accenuated by the sharp micro shiso.

“Canya beleive it? A freakin’ chef made that pie?” Was all I muttered the rest of the night. I flirted with the idea of getting one to go and entering it in the pizza contest as I continued to lose copious amounts of cash. Luckily, Joel stopped me and my stupid idea.

 This a picture from Lasplash.com, it is the Yellowtail Big Eye Pizza made famous by Akira Back. The pic does not do it justice.

I made a “Note to Self” to try to make this pizza and have put it off until just a week ago, Matt Starline of Starline Organics brought over numerous shiitake logs that we had innoculated the previous summer. (I have a blog post about a shiitake pizza and the way we innoculated the Amish hardwood logs.)

“I think these babies are ready to pop soon.” He said after we hefted these heavy hardwoods into place under my huge dawn redwood that resides in my back yard. I only saw one shiitake then and decided to wait. Two days later I knew I was in for a blast of shiitake. The little bulbs seemed to pop everywhere and looked like little marbles, then after a few days they grew…and grew…

And grew.

And grew, and are still popping and growing at this time.

So I decided to make my version of the Chef Back pizza that I so adored. I paired it with the shiitake that I grew. I made some Shaobing flatbread once using the croissant method of folding. Only I didn’t use butter, just bacon, guanciale and salt pork drippings and sesame oil and seeds.

I hope Chef Back will forgive me for veering from his recipe but this pizza goonish behavior is in my DNA.

here we go.

For the Shaobing: Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Three types of pork at four ounces each- Salt pork, smoked bacon and smoked guanciale (pork cheek or jowl.)

One seven ounce dough ball from the easy dough recipe

One tablespoon toasted sesame oil

Sesame seeds for sprinkling

Sea salt

Roast the fatty pork; Salt pork, guanciale (pork cheek) and bacon. Roast in a 450 degree oven until the fat melts away from the meat. Cool the pan and pour the fat into a container. Add one tablespoon of toasted sesame oil to the fat. Eat the meat. (yum)

Using a seven ounce dough ball from the Easy Dough Recipe, lay it out on a table and cut in half.  You will have two 3.5 ounce dough balls.Reserve one and stretch one out to an oblong shape. Brush with oil and sprinkle sesame seeds on top then fold over.

Turn vertiaclly on the table and brush and sprinkle again, then fold again and pick up and form into a aball. Brush the ball with with the oil then sprinkle with sesame seeds and press down again.

Continue this process again. When you get to the ball stage, you are finished brushing the oil. You will have achieved several layers.   

Using a rolling pin, roll out the shoubing into an eight-inch round. Do not make a raised crust. The disc should have the same thickness all over.

Place on parchment paper and insert into your oven for 8 to 14 minutes or until golden brown. (Yea, truffle oil photo again.)

Slice One to three shiitake mushrooms, (depending on size-here I just used one that was portabello sized) and saute over medium-hight heat with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Slice a fresh raw piece of tuna thinly. (you know that eating raw stuff can cause an immeasurable amount of distress if…bla, bla, bla.)

Mix two tablespoons of mascarpone cheese an two tablespoons of ricotta together. Add salt and pepper to taste and spread on the cracker, add chopped basil leaf and thinly sliced onion that has been rinsed under cold water.

Arrange the tuna then shiitake atop the cheese and drizzle white truffle oil  over all.

Place small shisto leaf on top of the pizza and eat with abandon

Thanks chef  Back for this inspiration and we’ll see you at Yellowtail in March…and tell that roulette table to be nicer next time.