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Sunday, December 09, 2012

mushroom pizza bianca (for the late-night munchies)

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mushroom pizza bianca

I was hungry last night.  Usually when this happens, hubs will jet out and grab a snack (usually terrible for us) or we'll even cave and order in.  But something stopped me from doing that last night, and I'm super stoked about it.

One of my favourite shows on the Food Network is Chopped - I love the creativity the chefs have when they are confronted with an odd conglomeration of ingredients that don't really go together.  Now, I'm not going to say that this snack was Chopped-worthy, because there's nothing really odd in it, but I'm happy with what I came up with and it's DELICIOUS.  It's pretty quick to whip together as a late night snack (like 25 minutes start to finish; definitely faster than delivery!), but it would also be great sliced small as an appetizer, or alongside a green salad and/or soup as a light meal.

Essentially, all you need is some sort of flatbread (I had crappy white tortillas), some vegetables that you like (I had mushrooms and vidalia onion, along with garlic), something to make a sauce (sour cream and dijon), some cheese (cheddar and parmigiano) and then something green to cut through the richness (I had minced parsley, but arugula or any other leafy dark green would be great).

Sorry for the shite pictures - in a perfect world, the cheese would also be more brown, but the edges were starting to smoke, so I had to get it out of the oven before it set off the fire alarm and woke up the kids!

late-night mushroom pizza bianca
mushroom pizza bianca

2-3 flatbreads (tortillas or pitas)
3-4 cups chopped mushrooms (could also use zucchini, eggplant, roasted peppers, artichokes, etc.)
1/2 small onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 T butter
salt, pepper
1/3 c red wine (or other booze - white wine, sherry, marsala, or half this amount of brandy or cognac)
1/2 c good sour cream (look at the ingredient list - it should just be cream and bacterial culture.  If there's other stabilizers, it's bleh.  I like Western Dairy brand and I use light)
1/4 c dijon mustard
2 cups grated cheese (aged cheddar, gruyere, emmenthal are all great choices)
parmigiano-reggiano cheese
1/4 c minced flat-leaf parsley

1. Put flatbreads in oven.  Turn it to 400F.  Let cook for approximately 6-10 minutes, until they are crispy, slightly toasted and not burnt (just check on it every couple of minutes).

2. Meanwhile, melt butter in a large skillet.  Add onions, garlic and mushrooms, cook over medium-high heat until mushrooms have released most of their liquid and have browned a bit.  Deglaze the pan with red wine, and let wine evaporate pretty much completely.  Season with salt and pepper.

3. Take your toasted flatbreads and put them on a foil-lined baking sheet (seriously, who wants to scrub burnt-on cheese???  not me!).  In the centre of each, add a large dollop of sour cream and a medium-dollop of dijon (I like mine with almost as much dijon as sour cream, for a bit of bite).  Use a silicone brush or a spoon to spread it all around.

4. Turn on the broiler.  Add mushrooms over flatbread (just divide the mushrooms according to how many flatbreads you have).  Sprinkle with cheese, then grate some parmigiano overtop.  Broil for just under 2 minutes (mine started to burn at the edges after about 1min45s.  As always with broiling any sort of bread, keep a very close eye on it because it will burn quickly.

5.  Once cooked, sprinkle with minced parsley, cut into wedges and enjoy.

I had no intentions of blogging this, but it was seriously just SO yummy that I had to snap a crappy picture and share it anyway.  Totally making this again.

In other news, I've had a recent spate of success with some delicious pumpkin recipes.  I can HIGHLY recommend this pumpkin-gingerbread loaf with spiced buttercream, as well as this pumpkin mac&cheese (weird but good, I swear), and concluding the trifecta of pumpkin with pumpkin pie french toast (like this recipe, except using more milk, and only 5 pieces of bread).  Bonus: you can make all of the recipes with just one big-ass can of pumpkin.  Thanks for reading!

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