For award-winning chef, teacher and author of “Outside: Cooking Outdoors - Recipes for the Wild” Gill Meller (@gill.meller), foraging for wild mushrooms is a joyous activity. Based in Dorset, England, he’s lucky enough to live near woodlands with an abundance of rich, fertile soil where mushrooms thrive, and one of his preferred ways to use them is as a pizza topper. Gill is especially fond of porcini with their nutty and earthy taste and hedgehogs, which are sweet, floral, nutty and slightly crunchy in texture.
Both porcini and hedgehogs are harvested around Europe and North America, but if you’re nowhere near a forest or without a background in foraging, they’re also available at most grocery stores or farmers’ markets. That means you can make Gill’s wild mushroom pizza with gorgonzola, thyme and ham from almost anywhere and during any season.
Starting with a homemade dough base, Gill tops his pizza with handfuls of wild mushrooms, sweet and salty pancetta (cured, spiced and dried pork belly) and a smattering of gorgonzola. If he’s keeping things super local, he’ll go for Dorset Blue Vinny, a delicious, tangy, aged cow's cheese made just down the road. (While challenging to source outside of the UK, if you want something similar, look for creamy/crumbly blue cheese made from pasteurized cow’s milk.)
The key to having the robust flavors play off each other best here is roasting the mushrooms first in olive oil, garlic and a sprinkling of fresh thyme. Using the oven's high heat will burn off moisture, caramelize the edges and intensify the umami, balancing nicely with the sweet tomato sauce, strong blue cheese and aromatic thyme.
Another option is to make this a vegetarian pie: simply drop the pancetta and tear over some cooked, drained spinach for an extra dose of greens and vitamins. No matter how you slice it, this pizza is sure to be your new favorite way to highlight mushrooms!
