Escargot & Chanterelle Pizza
Submitted by gmadair
Luxe French-Italian pizza topped with garlic-butter escargot, earthy dried chanterelles, and melting raclette cheese on French bread dough. A white-tablecloth pizza for special occasions.
YIELD
4 servingsPREP
15 minCOOK
25 minREADY
40 minFrench-Italian fusion pizza that doesn’t apologize for itself. Burgundy snails bathed in garlic butter, earthy chanterelle mushrooms rehydrated to their forest-floor fragrance, and a generous layer of Alpine raclette cheese melting into a chewy French bread crust.
The escargot and chanterelles both get pre-cooked separately before hitting the pizza, which seems fussy but isn’t. The snails need 10 minutes in butter to mellow their iron bite; the mushrooms need soaking and simmering to reconstitute and release their concentrated woodsy flavor. Shortcut these steps and the pizza tastes rubbery and flat.
Raclette is the star cheese. It’s what makes this dish Alpine rather than Italian. The tomato base stays thin so it doesn’t fight the butter-garlic-snail combination or the cheese’s nutty melt.
Chef Tips
- Buy Burgundy (Helix pomatia) snails if you can find them. They have a more delicate flavor than land snails. Canned is fine and easier to source.
- Dry the rehydrated chanterelles well before adding. Wet mushrooms release liquid into the pizza and soggy the crust.
- Bake on the top rack, as the directions say. Bottom-rack baking burns the crust long before the toppings warm through.
- Save the chanterelle soaking liquid. Strain and freeze it for risotto or soup stock later.
Variations
- Substitute gruyère or reblochon for raclette if you can’t find it. Any good Alpine melter works.
- Use fresh cremini or oyster mushrooms when chanterelles are out of season, though the flavor shifts considerably.
- Skip the snails entirely for a raclette-mushroom pizza. Still excellent, less dramatic.
Ingredients
Directions
Make the French Bread dough recipe at least 1 day beforehand if you can. Roll the dough out into the shape of a pizza, put it on a pizza pan, and set it aside. It will keep in the refrigerator overnight.
Prepare the dried mushrooms according to published recipes (soak, wash, cut, resoak, wash, drain).
If the snails are too large (larger than a garlic clove), then cut them in pieces. Drain the snails well. Melt the butter in a baking dish , add the snails, crushed garlic, about ½ salt and ground black pepper to taste.
Put the bread-dough pan on the top rack of the oven and the snails on the bottom rack of the oven, and cook them both for 10 minutes. Take them out.
Spread the tomato sauce in an even layer on the bread, then sprinkle the Raclette cheese over it. Add the snails, and then the mushrooms. Sprinkle with fresh parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Bake at 425 degrees F. in the top rack for 12 minutes (bottom rack will burn the crust).
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