Pie of the Week #14

The spatchcock chicken recipe I posted Tuesday may have led you to think I abandoned the pie of the week project. Never fear: here’s this week’s: an onion marmalade, walnut, blue cheese pizza!

I am not a huge blue cheese fan. But I do like a little funk from time to time. And when pears come in to season, I certainly appreciate a nice salad with baby arugula, spinach, walnuts, pears, and a bit of gorgonzola. This was part of the flavor profile I was attempting to emulate with a blue cheese pizza.

However, I’m out of pears. They were delicious this year, even though the deer got way too many of them. But real pears are short in season. However, I had left over onion marmalade from the Thansgiving pizza feast that really needed to be used soon. I thought It’s sweet/sourt tang would really go well with that blue cheese funk.

So, I used my standard quasi-neapolitan pizza crust, topped with with a fairly thick layer of the carmelized onion marmalade, walnuts, then my blue cheese.

What blue cheese? I wanted something a little on the mild side for a blue cheese pizza. At least when only feeling a little adventurous. Pizza is comfort food, after all. I thought I had just the thing bouncing around the fridge, a wheel of Borgonzola I had picked up at Aldi on impulse.

Borgonzola is sort of a blue cheese x brie hybrid. It’s made using the same mold cultures as gorgonzola, but with the process used for brie. Its funk is mild, and it melts gooey. Perfect!

Blue Cheese Pizza Results

So, I assembled the pizza, and into the Roccbox. How did it turn out?

Really good. But room for improvement, if I really want to create a stunning blue cheese pizza.

The flavor profile was proven. My idea of pairing blue cheese, walnuts, and onion marmalade certainly works. However, the walnuts started to burn a bit before the crust was as dark as I’d like. It was fully baked, but I appreciate a little char bubble here and there.

The Brie side of the Borgonzola cheese yielded mixed reviews. Xenia, a brie fan anyway, loved it. I liked the melty, gooey texture it created. However, the challenge for me with brie in general remained: ammonia rind. While I love the interior of a good brie, the rind always makes me think someone forgot to separate the food from the cleaning products.

I think to turn this into a more optimized blue cheese pizza I need to change a few things. Mostly with the cheese. If I topped the pizza with shredded mozzarella after the walnuts, the cheese would help protect them from burning. That would give me a bit more bake time for the crust to turn out like I’d like. Then, I could switch to maybe a little drier, stronger blue cheese. The mozz would provide the creamy/melty necessity, while allowing a bit more funk in the blue cheese to not overpower. A sprinkling of arugula microgreens might also make a nice callback to my original flavor profile inspiration.