Our friend Rob is, if not an expert, at least a very accomplished mushroom forager. He's also a dry stone waller like my husband, and brought TJ on to help with a big project this summer. So he's been arriving for worker pick-up early every morning for the last few weeks – and delivering some of his precious haul. Two weeks ago it was a clutch of perfect chanterelles, which I turned into a fine risotto with some local sweet corn. Friday, he handed over a brown paper bag containing close to a pound of the most extraordinary (and gigantic) oyster mushrooms I've ever seen. He'd spotted a tree along the roadside that was covered with them; he harvested about 10 pounds, and claims there's easily that much remaining.
Now, there are all kinds of wonderful things you can do with oyster mushrooms, but given the unprecedented quantity and quality, I opted to go 'showcase' and make them the star of a crusty pizza.
Given all my DIY cooking projects, one might expect me to have perfected a homemade pizza dough, but yeasted doughs are one area I haven't gotten much involved in (yet). I fear that once I set myself to breadmaking, I will be consumed – and so I've resisted. One of the local grocery stores carries a very respectable frozen pizza dough (from one of the commercial Italian bakeries over Schenectady way), and I keep the freezer stocked with 3 or 4 at a time so that we can wing a pizza on a whim (which we seem to do pretty much weekly). I can pull a bag out of the fridge at lunch time, and by the time dinner needs fixin, the dough is thawed and slightly risen – just right for stretching.
When I finished work for the day, I pulled a few big fat onions from the garden, sliced them thin, and set them to caramelizing on the stove. I gave the mushrooms a light brushing to clean them, cut off and discarded only the toughest part of the stems, and tore the caps into long strips. I sautéed them in butter with a little salt and pepper until they'd given up most of their liquid and were lightly browned at the edges.
I had some Gruyere cheese hanging around, and some mild parsley & parmesan pork sausage left over from Thursday night's dinner. Once I'd stretched the dough, I spread it with the caramelized onions and sprinkled it with about a cup of grated Gruyere. Then I scattered the mushrooms over the top and dotted it with slices of the leftover sausage. 10 minutes later, I pulled this beauty from the oven:
A few tips for novice pizza makers:
- Don't try to stretch cold dough. Really. It'll just keep springing back to a tight little puck. Room temperature dough is relaxed and compliant.
- Use a pizza stone.
- Get the oven and the stone hellishly hot. My oven only goes to 550°F; I put the stone in and crank the oven all the way up for at least half an hour before slipping the pie in.
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