Posts Tagged ‘Turkish pide’

21 Killer Fruit Pizzas!

 

Okay, here they are, some great pies that I have made over the years because I just love fruit on pizzas. It adds such an great counterpoint to sour cheeses and is the perfect accompaniment to aged and crunchy wheat. The Tellegio and mango schiacciata (above) is a perfect pairing with Jamaican flower and dried cherries that I turned into a re-hydrated jam.

Above is my Paw Paw Turkish Pide (PEE-day) with lentil cream, arugula, goat feta, pancetta and black sesame.

How bout this Rabbit and Persimmon Pizza with winter carrots,wild jeruselem artichoke, arugula and Griffin’s Dream-this cheese is made in the style of Saint Maure and is a little creamier than traditional chevre with hints of citrus and nuts.

Lets move on to a double whammy with a peach and Gorgonzola dolce pizza with balsamic glaze in the foreground and a Tahini “Bap” with French Brie and a Bosc pear poached in vanilla, honey and maple syrup.

Here are some fabulous local Pide with a take on the “Schiacciata Con la Uva” of Tuscany. These I made with fresh local pancetta, chevre, cumin and walnuts. Thanks to Neil Cherry for grapes that taste nothing like store bought grapes!

Yea, I’m stretching this because of the tomato but IT IS A FRUIT Y’KNOW. This gourgous Pizza al Metro has pancetta, provolone, fresh summer tomato, shaved onion, arugula and some Calabrian chilies.

Here is a roasted chipotle onion with blueberry pie with smoked King Family bacon and fresh mozzarella. (Hmm, pork again, see a trend?)

Lets delve into a pizza that has fruit as a back-up singer. Both chicken leg and the morel mushrooms were poached in a Parmigiano Reggiano broth with lemon. This combination with Bulgarian Kashkaval cheese and wild local watercress just made the morels and chicken SING!

Now for something wayyyyy outside the box. This is a Nama-yuba pizzette, (This is a soy-milk skin in layers as a crust) with fresh spring strawberries atop New Zealand Spinach, some killer Griffins Dream cheese from Integration Acres, balsamic vinegar, and some soy-maple pickled burdock root.

When blackberry season starts here in Southeast Ohio, I love to make this schiacciata with fresh spinach, mozzarella, provolone, guanciale, pancetta and finished with maple syrup.

   

The creation of great pizza and bread starter can also be achieved through the use of fruit. These wonderful Cabernet Franc and Vidal Blanc grapes made a wonderful naturally yeasted starter. All I did was add local spring water and waited for the magic, (or what some would call scum) to form. then a little strain and some wonderful sugars in the form of flour for the yeast to eat and VOILA! A grape starter!

Speaking of the above-mentioned grapes, here are both kinds paired with Harmony Hollow rabbit and Castelveltrano olives. Along with that, I paired some great local flat leaf parsley and French Soignon cheese for a melty-rabbity delight.

Sometimes fruit in Athens comes in buckets. When that happens, I like to use a couple at once on a particularly pork-centric schiacciata like this Stilton and apple schiacciata with local smoked bacon and fresh persimmons topped with a persimmon-mango glaze! (CHECK PLEASE!)

Speaking of Pork, here is some French Emmenthal paired with local apples and King Family Ham and a magnificent ramp-pistachio pesto.

Here is a cilantro, pear, curried cauliflower and pear pizza made with natural starter and some fab fresh chevre.

Okay, I know it isn’t the traditional pizza shape but this brioche and banana beauty is adorned with Nutella, toasted almonds and a great almond pudding made with ricotta and mascarpone.

Another curried cauliflower pizza with New Zealand spinach, Gruyere, potatoes and pear for a balanced “Agra dolce” effect.

Yumm spells a plethora of spinach, Stilton and pear pies with the salty Serrano ham from Spain.

Yes, I would go out on a limb and call beets the “Fruit of the dirt” just so I can put this pic in here. Gourgeous with ramp pesto, fresh chevre and provolone with spinach and ricotta.

I still cannot decide which I like better, Stilton or Gorg but here is some great Gorgonzola dolce with a poached pear, atop fresh spinach.

And finally this is the last slice of out chocolate pizza with Nutella, tiramisu cream, whipped cream, brulee’d banana, strawberry coulis, mint and a fab…I’ll bet you think I am gonna say “Pork”….no, its a ‘WAFER THIN BACON ROULADE WITH CAYENNE AND HONEY.”I am very proud that we helped Re Napoli with this pizza at the Food Network Pizza Challenge in New York last month.

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face!”

 

Mike Tyson really had that one right. It seems he might have owned a busy pizzeria or bakery because try as I might, I just can’t seem to stay on track as indicated by my weekly menu above. Last week, I dumped all the photo’s I have from my dough-encrusted iphone and realized I really have no plan and no clue. This is the reason why I am always experimenting with foods. Some are winners, some lose and some just weird. Here they are.

Much of the stuff that I bake hasn’t gotten documented on this blog and usually gets gobbled up fast by my fabulous customers like the wonderfully hydrated pizza bianca crumb above!

 

Then there is the Tuscan Crema Paradiso, a ground-up combination of pancetta, white wine vinegar, pepper, rosemary and garlic. Please go here to Pizza Today for the recipe. This little paste used in moderation is the bomb. That’s TWO B’s for Bacon Baby!

 

Now lets progress to the meter-long Turkish Pide, (PI-DAY). Here I have some fabulous parsnip and carrot pide’s with aged provolone and basil pesto and cherry tomatoes.

 

I believe this year marks number four into my obsession with highly hydrated doughs like the teglia, (pan) pizzas left. I love to proof them, par cook them, top them like this one on the right. I salt-cooked the local white raddichio then added finely chopped Calabrian Chilies, shaved turnip, spring onion and kohlrabi to it and tossed it with a smidge of white balsamico for an Italian-style kimchi that macerated for two days. At bake time, I topped the long pizza with mozzarella and some great aged Taleggio and some meatballs made from local King Family pork.

Speaking of white radicchio, my friend, Rick Vest of Vest berries grew this great “Pan di Zucchero”, or sugar loaf radicchio that I wrapped around some local Shagbark Milling polenta that I cooked with ricotta, parmesan and sun-dried tomatoes. I cooled the logs and wrapped the polenta in some quick-shocked sugar loaf then I wrapped the logs tight and set overnight.

The next day, I took the inner core of each sugarloaf radicchio and tossed them with a slurry of anchovy and freshly ground garlic with blended with copious amounts of extra virgin olive oil and lots of lemon juice, (channel Bagna Caulda). I passed them into my pizza oven at 474 degrees until the smell made me cry in anticipation of eating this glorious crunchy heaven. Then I made some schiacciata with 70 percent hydrated dough that had been cold-fermented for three days topped with the tender outer leaves of the sugarloaf with sauteed local apples from Neil Cherry’s orhard, and some freshly shredded Asiago cheese. When done, I placed the polenta roulade on each schiacciata.

 

Speaking of my first love…it has to be my “Flinstone Wheel”, I think of each loaf as a child of mine. Check out the bark on these…deep, dark and crunchy with a creamy crumb from high hydrated, 80-hour cold fermentation and blasted in a steamy 570 degrees…simply the best…well, except the “Leek a Choke” fougasse that I make with roasted leeks, artichoke and Parmesan cheese kneaded into a high protein flour and cold fermented also.

Speaking of meat that I have made this year; on the left are the chorizo meatballs that I just love. I use smoked paprika, cilantro, onion, egg, cooked cornicione, basil, garlic, pepper and local King Family Pork. In the middle is the crunchy orgasmic flavor bomb of a dried Prosciutto di Parma chip. Check out the veins of salt! This is my secret. On the right is a curry meatball that brings the flavors of India blasting onto a pizza! I usually use Gruyere cheese, curried cauliflower, spinach, onion, beans and paneer on a pizza with this meatball…(the secret here is a little bit of cinnamon.)

Don’t forget the simple but fragrant Emmental and Local Harmony Hollow ham schiacciata or the brioche schiacciata with nutella, almond pudding and banana.

Two succsessful fermentation projects I undertook were the “kimchied” apples and pears at left and the kimchied kale stems. I held both for four months in a Kimchi brine. The apple made a great sweet/salty spice to salads and the kale stems was fab in a salsa with japapeno’s and cilantro with a chiffonade of kholrabi and turnip.

Feeling bored, I made some Gnudi that I once had in Florence. This mixture of blanched spinach, ricotta, parmesan and egg is simply balled up and boiled just like gnocchi till it is nice, warm and the egg has set.

Then I took these delectable balls of power and wrapped them in high protein pizza dough with our sauce from Avalanche and some shredded provolone and mozzarella and baked at 475 degrees until browned.

Then I put them on a pizza with some local King Family sausage for a fabulous combination of lumpliciousness.

Speaking of pizzas, here are two that sit atop an airy, proofed crust. On the left is a large Campo di Fiore pizza and a variant on one I had in Rome. This one has Pecorino Sardo down first, then  mozzarella, Peruvian purple potato and zucchini that has been tossed in egg and more pecorino then baked at 500 degrees and finished with ricotta fresca. On the right we go back to the new world for a Detroit Red-Top pizza. When par-cooking the proofed raw dough, I took a handful of aged white cheddar around the edges of these awesome heavy-gauge pans to act like glue so the dough stays close to the pan. Then with the final bake, the toppings are hidden under the cheese which forms a jagged, razor bark of flavor around the red sauce that sits on top.

Of course, the fun never ends here. I’ve learned never to let a jar of methylcellulose sit around too long with my young staff before the name gets changed. And also to never underestimate the power of a Christopher Walk-in!

Because we get whole, local wings and raw ground pork, I decided to take the chorizo meatball filling and fill a chicken wing with it by lifting up the skin carefully, stuffing and baking the bird part until crisp. Yes, fairly high-maintenance but talk about juicy!

I cannot talk about obsession without the word “baguette” coming up. Enough said. Luckily I now have a great baker in Jacob Seidel that makes the best around.

During the spring of this year, the Japanese cherry trees blasted giant pink puffballs around Athens. I decided to sneak into a neighbors yard and grab buds like the devil and run like hell. With these, I made “Sakura no Shiozake” or pickled cherry blossoms. I salted these until they sat in their own juice, then drained them and added rice wine vinegar and sugar. I then let them sit another week and a half until draining them and putting them into my dehydrator for a very light dry. When I needed them, I re-hydrated in water and popped ’em on pizza for a great “wow” garnish.

Spring also brings in buckets of asparagus for my ricotta-whole grain mustard-parm-pistachio-asparagus-cheddar stuffed fougasse. (Freight-train writing intrigues me.)

My fave this year was the massive amounts of ramps I was able to pair with morels, asparagus and pizza!

Left is ramp pizza al metro, middle is a ramp-almond pesto pizza al metro and pizza Siciliana on the right.

 

Asparagus is fabulous on a croissant tart like above but lets not forget those deeply colored roots like the beets in what I call a “Tromba Paradiso” with fresh chevre, mandarin orange, mozzarella, walnuts and spinach.

I don’t want to beet this ingredient to death but because getting people to buy any food item is just like bass fishing, the colorful beetroot is to customers what the Texas-rigged plastic worm is to bass. Just look at the schiacciata I made with direct-method, (very young dough) and some local chevre, ramp pesto, spinach and those purple beauties!

 

I cannot seem to keep away from the pickle jar. On the left is Shiozuke, or Japanese salt-cured pickles that I squeezed then put to sleep in a blanket of red and sweet miso with chopped garlic. On the right was a great project of kimchifying Belgium endive. Both were stellar!

I also had four huge bags of daikon from the Amish in Chesterhill to pickle. Turned out nice also.

Finally, with my new oven, some steam and up to 670 degrees to work with, I baked into the sunset with my large Pizza al metro and the blistered heaven of a crusted boule. From there I left the States last summer for Europe…

…where I had some great foraging adventures with my greatest friend, Bruno di Fabio and a Dolomite mountain man named Farro! But more on that later.