Autumn vegetables turned pizza toppings

I’m not going to wax poetic about how autumn feels. Yes, those crisp winds are starting to sting, and the rustle of the leaves make my heart sing…Blah blah blah. My priority is that the pizza business is starting to rebound from that hot summer slump and fall is the time for a nice revenue bump! This is the time of bounty and excitement where the culinary rubber hits the pizza road separating me from my staid competitors.

The abundance of local vegetables and fruit are all around and just waiting to be fabricated to adorn a great autumn pie. Local farmers, farmer’s markets and local vegetable purveyors now provide some of the freshest pizza and pasta components for you to play with. Let’s dive into the many categories of foods, traditional recipes and pizza toppings that can make this autumn a humdinger.

Late season tomatoes

These may be gnarly looking, but these last hangers-on of late fall have a reputation for thick skins, strong umami and intensified sugars. The late cherry tomatoes taste like candy (halved, sliced horizontally between two plastic ricotta lids and just strewn on a pie). Larger varieties like Mortgage Lifter, Big Rainbow, Ponderosa Pink, Amana Orange and Cherokee Purples shine in this late season. I’ve fallen in love with making spicy tomato skins to finish pizzas off with. After oven-drying tomatoes to intensify their flavor, peel the skins off and sprinkle Piment d’Espelette (French Basque chili powder) or fine Korean pepper flakes on the skins and dehydrate until crisp and flavorful.

Squash

These heavy varieties look daunting, but the price-per-ounce yield is phenomenal. Don’t be intimidated by the size of these bad boys. If choosing Butternuts, Honeynuts and other long squashes, make sure they have long or thick necks because that’s where the usable flesh is — and you won’t have to deal with the seeds. My new favorite is the Tromboncino, an Italian heirloom squash that is creamy and can be eaten sliced raw, roasted with lemon or
maple, and even pickled. The huge North Georgia Candy Roaster sweetens as it is stored for up to six months. Squashes have historically paired well with other winter vegetables like the Lombardian Gnocchi di Zucca e Patate, or pumpkin and potato gnocchi. Winter squashes are a perfect match for Prosciutto di Parma, country ham, apples, coriander, cream, garlic, nutmeg, onions, Parmigiano, Pecorino, Fontina and Gruyere.

Cabbages 

Savoy, Napa, Oxheart, and red cabbage can all be boiled, braised, grilled, brined, marinated or steamed. This flexibility lends itself to be manipulated in many sexy ways on pizza. The crunch is a great foil for melting cheeses and salty pork toppings and can be fantastic when used with fruit like apples and sour cheeses. Chicken, ginger, bacon, caraway, mustard, vinegar, garlic, and Taleggio, feta, Cheddar, Swiss and Teleme cheeses are great pairings with cabbage. Many modern chefs in Italy have taken to making a defining cabbage edge with flair. Like chef Gianluca Gorini in Emilia Romana with his Passatelli, a pasta with grated Parmigiano, eggs, breadcrumbs and very little flour. His Passatelli Romagnoli, Brodo di Verza, Semi di Zucca is a Savoy cabbage broth (using the outer leaves that usually get thrown away) with pumpkin seeds and (ahem) soy sauce.

Potatoes

Potatoes are another vegetable that has a broad range of manipulation and fabrication in any pizza menu mix. Sliced on a robo coupe into salted water (to ward of oxidation) then squeezed out just before topping on a pizza is fantastic. Potato mash is a convenient and delicious way to build a pizza. Colorful potatoes and small fingerling potatoes are popular to either slice or smash on a cutting board before transferring to a pizza for a dramatic effect. Like cabbage and squash, potatoes can be cooked in the South American Rescoldo style in a pile of glowing hot charcoal. Great pairings are garlic, shallots, tarragon, chorizo, thyme, bacon, cream, Gruyere, Comte’, Gouda, Manchego, Raclette and Fontina.

Peppers 

My favorite fall vegetables are the sweet Italian and the long Toro peppers grown by farmers near me. I like to roast them over hot coals. But in a pinch, I turn to torching them on a gas burning range which does the trick. After roasting, just put it into a bag or covered pot to steam for easy skinning. Stuffing peppers is another of my favorites with spicy sausage or ground duck. Spicy peppers are really getting popular and are extremely easy to grind into your proprietary marinara for spicy pizza specials. I like to make what I call “Spicy Crueltons”— take the hottest of the hots and grind up with extra virgin olive oil, and raw garlic and toss with house-cut croutons, then bake the bread until crisp and finish with Parmigiano and herbs. There is a great salad served at Christmas in Naples, Italy called Burdiglione, which provides rinforzo (reinforcement) when they eat lean, fish-based dishes. It contains quick-pickled sweet peppers, cauliflower, and carrots, with capers, olives, anchovies, parsley and a vinegarette.

Eggplant 

Once upon a time, you could only hope to find the large black “Nadia” eggplant around. Now, there is a plethora of small, long and medium to large eggplants around that have their own flavor niche and cooking techniques. The long Japanese eggplants are great peeled, sliced down the length and poached in lemony miso, or dashi to look like an octopus on a pizza. The small Thai eggplant with their denser flesh is great grilled. The Italians along the Amalfi Coast have even been making desserts like the Mulingnana C’A’ Ciucculata, which is fried eggplant slices coated in chocolate. 

Nuts 

These easily foragable nuggets from the forest include both the English and black walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, (or filberts) ground nuts, as well as acorns, chestnuts and pistachios. I feel that nuts are the best finishing item on pizzas behind herbs to make a great pie stand out because of the texture and crunch. Any nuts that are coated in something sweet like honey, maple syrup or agave with some sort of spice like cayenne really stand out. The Ravioli Del Plin Con Ripieno Alla Nocciola e Crema Al Riccaverano, or Pinched Ravioli with Hazelnuts and Cheese is a standout in the mountain town of Magliano Alfieri in the Piedmont Region of Italy. It combines hazelnuts and mascarpone filling in pasta with a soft, ripened Robiola cream sauce.

JOHN GUTEKANST owns Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.