My friend Karen is a serious mushroom forager and had an assortment of lovely mushrooms to cook with (including a beautiful chicken of the woods!) I selected a mushroom piadina from my favorite Italian cookbook, Polpo. The recipes in Polpo are very simple and delicious, which is good for allowing the wild mushrooms to stand out. A piadina is a thin, folded flatbread from Romagna, if you were curious. To pair with this, I selected a fruit crumble from Jerusalem that I’ve always wanted to try because it features a guava-plum compote that sounds interesting. Finally, I used the extra dough from the piadina to make a pizzetta as well.

Mushroom Piadina (Polpo): The flatbread uses the same dough as a pizza crust; this is convenient! The dough is also nearly identical to pitas as well as far as I can tell, so you have a lot of options when you make a batch of it. For the piadina, it is precooked on a stone (or in my case, a giant cast-iron pan), and then finished on a grill / grill pan. I have made this dough many times before, and it came out a bit more wet than usual, probably because of how I stored the flour (open in a hot, moist location.) I decided to leave it more wet and the resulting flatbreads were fine – so the bread shouldn’t be too sensitive to slight changes in wetness. The cookbook also makes a big deal out off rolling the dough thin, but I’ve never had a problem getting though dough thin enough; if anything, you want to make it a little thicker by starting each flatbread with a ball of dough that is a good bit bigger than the suggested golf-ball size.

The resulting dish was tasty but seemed to be missing a sauce. We added creme fraiche. I think an aioli would also go well here. We also experimented with adding a smoked miso; this was delicious, but definitely made the dish a bit rich for the heart of summer.

Joe’s Rating: 6
Difficulty: 5

Walnut and Fruit Crumble Cream (Jerusalem): The guava and plum compote was indeed very tasty (more tasty than the fig compote, which we also tried.) You can get guava in Hmart seemingly year-round. We were also big fans of the spiced mascarpone cream; I always like adding star anise to desserts! We were disappointed, however, that the crumble was baked and assembled separately from the fruit. I was hoping for more of a classic gooey American crumble. Be careful not to burn the crumble!

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 5.5

Prosciutto & Rocket Pizzetta (Polpo): At this point I have made seven of the nine pizzettas in Polpo and I have loved all of them. Unlike most of the other Polpo pizzettas, this one has a tomato sauce and basic mozzarella cheese underneath the listed toppings. Unfortunately, I think this base took some of the magic out of it compared to the others I’ve cooked. I’d recommend skipping this one!

Joe’s Rating: 5.5
Difficulty: 4.5