Sometimes when I am thinking about what to eat I may start with a combo of ingredients like let’s say for example foie gras and pizza. (Doesn’t everyone have this thought?) I haven’t had pizza in a while and then my synapses started working and I come up with figs. Then I happened to look in my fridge and see a package of guanciale and the light bulb above my head starts blinking rapidly. Fig, Foie Gras, and Guanciale Pizza; Oh My! I guess I know what’s for today’s lunch. I’m typically an East Coast/NY thin crust double sausage pizza guy. Today I’m going West Coast! Not exactly the farm-to-table pizza that you would expect from the West Coast. But certainly using some non-traditional ingredients that are not typically found on an East Coast Pizza. Check here for my thoughts on pizza and about pizza in Temecula.

Most of you are probably saying, “who the hell has foie gras” as your first thought for lunch. I just happen to have some sitting in my freezer that I have been wanting to use, but keep on forgetting it’s sitting in there.

Some of the ingredients for my recipe

What Makes This Recipe so Good?

Many of these ingredients are just plain old umami bombs! Individually and together these ingredients are savory, full of flavor, and taste better in combination; perfect for a pizza. Let’s go through some of the ingredients…

Foie Gras is the fatted liver of a duck or goose and is so rich and buttery that I can use it as a flavor enhancer. After I sauté my foie gras, I use the rendering to sauté my mushrooms and I brush it on my par-cooked pizza dough to bring some flavor to my crust. I obtained my foie gras online from D’Artagnan

Guanciale is cured pork made from the cheeks of a pig and is rich and fatty. The flavor is similar to bacon and you know what they say about bacon? Who Doesn’t Love Bacon! You should be able to find this at your local Italian Deli if you can’t find it at your local market.

Truffle Sauce is a product from Urbani Truffles. Truffles are described as nutty, garlicky musky, and very aromatic. A very good reason to put it on your pizza. The question comes up, “Can’t I just buy some truffle oil which in most cases is fairly inexpensive. Yes, you can, but if you look at the ingredients on the bottle there is probably not a speck of real truffle in it. Most of the truffle oils on the market are flavored synthetically with ingredients like 2,4-dithiapentane. which is one of the aromatic compounds in truffles that give it the bouquet that makes truffles so special.

Figs and Balsamic Vinegar is another great combination that works well on pizza. The figs were chopped and then roasted for about 15-20 minutes until they started to break down. This definitely enhances the sweetness of the figs.

How do I Roll out My Dough?

I spent my 4 years in High School working at my local pizza joint, Compari’s Pizza. (That topic is a whole other Blog Topic that I may get into sometime in the future.) I have convinced myself I still have some skills, so I still fall back on my pizza toss hoping the dough will cooperate. Basically, we want to let gravity do the work for us. If we have given the glutens in the dough time to relax enough during that 2-hour resting period the dough will stretch. Hold the dough by one edge; pull and stretch it a little bit at a time into a larger circle. Keep on rotating it … stretch it. Rotate it … stretch it. Try laying your dough now on your work surface. Throw some flour underneath it to keep it from sticking. You can try pressing down on your dough from the middle pushing to the outside as you stretch it as needed.

Now, What Do We Do With The Dough?

Set your oven to 500° or whatever is the highest your oven will heat. It’s great if you have a pizza stone that you can put your pizza on. I personally have a pizza steel that I use and it works great.

After I stretched the dough to my liking, I placed it on a round pizza pan. I took a fork and “docked” the crust so that I could keep the pizza from having a lot of bubbles in the middle of the pizza. Now is the time to brush on the pizza some of the rendered fat from the foie gras. I par-baked my dough crust so it wouldn’t be soggy when I added my other ingredients. After about 10 minutes of cooking, I brushed on the truffle sauce and added the rest of my ingredients.

Are you are ready to experiment with something other than your normal New York, Chicago, Boston, Detroit styles of pizza? Let’s get started! Let me know what you think in the comments below. As always, thanks for Spending Time in My Kitchen!

Fig, Foie Gras, and Guanciale Pizza; Oh My!

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Recipe by David Frank – Spending Time In My Kitchen

Servings

servings

Prep and resting time

hours

Cooking time

minutes

Ingredients

2 2 Foie Gras, small slices
1/2 Can 1/2 Urbani white truffle, and mushroom sauce (optional)
4 oz 4 Mission Figs, small chop
4 oz 4 Guanciale (pork jowls), cut into 1-inch cubes (lardons)
1 Medium 1 Onion – cut the onion in half through the root. Then cut thin half-moon slices
6 oz 6 Mushrooms, dried or fresh (your favorite)
Balsamic Vinegar, drizzle
Pizza dough ball (from local Italian deli or Trader Joe’s)

Directions

Remove the dough ball from the fridge. Dust it with flour and place it in a bowl. Set it aside. Place a moist tea towel over the bowl and let the dough rest for a couple of hours until it starts to rise a bit.
Cut the guanciale into 1/2 inch small cubes. Add guanciale into a small carbon steel pan. Set heat on your stove to medium-low. Cook until most of the fat has been rendered.
Drain the fat from the pan.
Clean your cast iron pan.
Add foie gras into your clean carbon steel pan. Turn heat to medium-high until the outside is brown. Foie gras is mostly fat so if you leave it in the pan too long all you will have left is foie gras butter.
Remove foie gras from the pan and set it aside. Drain the drippings from the pan into a separate bowl and set it aside.
Add a couple of tablespoons of rendered foie gras into a saute pan and caramelize your mushrooms. Throw a pinch of salt into your mushrooms. Set aside when done.
Add a couple of tablespoons of rendered foie gras into your saute pan and slowly caramelize your onion. Drizzle some salt into the onions. Set aside when done.
Cut the figs into small cubes. Roast figs in the oven at 350° for 15 minutes. Cook till they have gained a little color and have softened up. When cooked, pull figs out of the oven and set them aside.
Raise the temperature of the oven to 500°
Take the dough out of the bowl. Turn the dough ball into a 12 inch round. (See discussion above)
Take your 12-inch round dough and place it on a pizza pan; dock it with a fork; brush it with the foie gras fat that has been rendered. Place the pan in the oven and cook till the dough will freely come off the pan without sticking.
Pull dough from the oven. Brush the bottom of the dough with more foie gras fat. Spread truffle sauce around the bottom of the dough. Spread caramelized onions onto the pizza.
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Add guanciale and foie gras to the pizza.
Place pizza back into the oven till the crust gets some good color. Pull pizza from the oven when the crust is to your liking. Top off with arugula and figs. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Cut and slice your pizza. You are ready to serve!