Duck breast prosciutto, goat's milk cheese and mushroom pizza (Nov. 23, 2009)

This is an earthy pizza with strong flavors.  We were aiming for something without a lot of milk fat and instead for something with a bit of animal fat--perhaps something like the lardo pizza we've read that Mario Batali makes.  It's a wonderful Fall pizza, with a dry and aromatic quality that echoed the unseasonably 50 degree November night.  Along with this we drank a very nice bottle of (Giovanni Almondo, 2006) Nebbiolo.  This one was cooked on the Big Green Egg at around 650 degrees.  For the dough, for example, see my notes in this blog.

Because we couldn't easily find lardo, we used a bit of Tracklements' duck breast prosciutto we had in the freezer.  You don't need much.  This particular piece was about two inches wide, and I sliced it on the thicker setting with our mandoline and it produced the ideal amount, about 10 generous slices.  (TR recommends slicing it slightly frozen.  The meat thaws very quickly.)

For goat cheese, a richer and fattier variety is ideal.  Goat cheese isn't particularly fatty, so a newer goat cheese will give you something that melts well and blends with the other ingredients.  Frankly, I think part of the success in this particular pizza comes from the way that the ingredients blend together without losing their distinctiveness of taste.  In this case, we used a round of fairly new Crottin de Chavignol.  I sliced it in tiny wedges and even though the rounds are small, I was able to get enough tiny slices to give good coverage to the pizza.

Ideally, for mushrooms, you want something earthy as well.  Our local market had some really pretty blue oyster mushrooms, which I sliced in reasonably substantial slices.  Pizzas on the BGE can cook quickly, so to avoid the possibility that these would come off essentially raw, we sauteed the mushroom slices quickly in olive oil.

A few other elements helped bring all of this together.  I  spread about 1 T of olive paste on the crust before beginning the toppings.  A tiny bit of fattier cheese will give an even quality to the top; this one uses about an eighth of a cup of grated Fontina cheese, added after the duck breast and mushrooms.   Scatter the leaves from a couple of stalks of rosemary over the top and add a few twists of ground pepper and a bit of salt (fleur de sels is great).  Finish with a generous grating of parmesan.  Drizzle with some hot pepper-flavored olive oil after it finishes cooking.