Pizza Bianca with Grilled Rosemary Rubbed Turkey Fillet, Shiitake Mushrooms and Truffle Oil

Ever since I discovered pizza on the barbeque, I've been hooked. The smoky taste and the crisp base never fails to delight me and I love being able to make a simple dough in the morning and head back home in the anticipation of crisp pizza topped with anything my imagination fancied in the evening. 

When Mushrooms Canada and Turkey Farmers of Canada asked me to come up with a summer recipe featuring both turkey and mushrooms on the grill, I pretty much knew that one of my recipes had to feature pizza while the other one had to be tandoori. 

I threw around ideas with a few friends and one of them suggested a white pizza. I love white pizzas and one of my favourite combinations is a potato and prosciutto with picked rosemary and parmesan shavings. It was only a very quick jump from there to the final ideas brewing up in my head.

Now, you've got to remember that when I first got this brief from Mushrooms and Turkey Farmers of Canada, it was still snowing in Edmonton. Nope, no kidding, still snowing. So with my barbeque under a few feet of snow, I was looking at the situation rather bleakly, even drolly saying to the other half that it would be June and there would still be snow on the ground. But luckily for me, it thawed a little at the end of April, so I determinedly dragged my barbeque out and decided that it was the day to make the pizza, whether the weather liked it or not.

I was lucky enough to have overwintered my rosemary plant, and as it was spring, the first tender shoots of fresh new rosemary sprigs were just the right ones to use for this recipe. My first task was to rub a turkey fillet with my picked rosemary and my flaked Maldon sea salt. I then grilled it to succulent perfection... then resisted as hard as I could to stop gobbling the whole thing then and there.

I'd already made my dough, so I then made a basic white pizza sauce. I had already decided that the best mushrooms to use were the earthy, delicious shiitake mushrooms, so I de-stemmed them and sliced them very thin.

I topped my pizza with the rosemary rubbed shredded turkey fillet... again using all my will power to resist eating the whole damn thing ... and the sliced shiitake mushrooms, and then grilled it to smoky perfection. I then topped it with shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese.

I loved the flavour combinations in the pizza, but when I had it for the first time, I felt like there was something missing... something umami. And then, it clicked, as I raced for my prized white truffle oil bottle that I'd picked up from MoNa Mushrooms here in Edmonton.

It was the missing piece of the puzzle. The drizzle of truffle oil absolutely elevated the simple, elegant pizza to something totally divine. The earthiness of the mushrooms, complemented the eucalyptus fragrance of the fresh, baby rosemary, and the turkey was the juicy foil to the creamy white sauce, the whole lot resting on the crisp, smoky pizza base.

If there ever was a love song to pizza, this might just be it :)

To download the recipe for Pizza Bianca with Grilled Rosemary Rubbed Turkey Fillet, Shiitake Mushrooms and Truffle Oil, please check out the Mushrooms Canada Facebook Page and the direct link for the recipe is here (Page 6). There are some pretty awesome recipes by other bloggers as well, so what are you waiting for? Get Your Grill On!! 

Disclosure: I was offered a stipend to create these recipes. Both recipes are original and were developed, tested, written and photographed by me, in keeping with the theme of this site and my personal cooking and eating philosophies. But then you know that already, right? :)