asparagus and mushroom pizza recipe

for the past 31 years of my life i have been ordering food without mushrooms. i don’t like them. or at least i thought. turns out i just like GOOD mushrooms. when we were in california a few years ago we stopped at a food truck that was serving morel mushroom pizzas. we sat by a small winery drinking buttery chardonnay munching on our pizza soaking up the sun. i haven’t eaten a mushroom since then. until we went to the farmers market in muskegon and started talking to one of the mushroom vendors and bought just a handful of morels hoping to recreate that moment we shared a few years ago.

i pulled one of the pizza crusts i made and froze using the pioneer woman’s recipe. if you don’t have any dough in your freezer I have used trader joes refrigerated dough in the past and it works great for this recipe. i sliced my morels open and washed them in cold water letting them dry on a clean paper towel. then i sliced the asparagus and set aside. the best part of this dish is the roasted garlic. i’m sure joe loves it but i could totally just eat cloves of roasted garlic. that’s gross i know but i could do it.

after you have prepped all your ingredients it basically comes down to just assembling and baking. i always put down a layer of parchment paper because i hate scrubbing burnt cheese off my pans. this pizza was light and perfect for an early summer fast dinner. if you can’t find morel mushrooms substitute for something else that is fun like a chanterelle or oyster. the beauty of pizza is you can make alterations without severe consequences. you don’t like asparagus? roasted potatoes would be so good on this. or even if you wanted to add some sausage! sky’s the limi!

ingredients:

16 oz of pizza dough
1/2 lbs of asparagus trimmed and sliced in half
1/4 lb of morel mushrooms sliced and washed
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 cup of mozzarella
1 cup of fontina cheese
1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes
1 entire head of roasted garlic*
1 tsp of truffle salt plus more for sprinkling if you are into that

* roast garlic by slicing the top off an entire head of garlic, place in a tin foil boat and place on a lined bake sheet. cook 375F for about 15 minutes. allow to cool and remove from skin.

heat your oven to 450F

in a saucepan pour 3 tablespoon of olive oil and heat on low. add in the minced garlic cloves and red pepper flakes. cook until fragrant. add in the mushrooms and truffle salt, cook 1 – 2 minutes until the mushrooms have soaked in some of the garlic oil. add in the asparagus and cook until it turns bright green (about another minute). remove from heat

roll out your pizza crust into a 12 inch disk. place on a parchment lined bake sheet. brush some of the leftover oil from the mushrooms on to the crust. spread your cheese over the crust and add the mushroom asparagus mixture. place the garlic cloves on top of the asparagus mixture (use as much as you want). then give the pizza a sprinkle of truffle salt, red pepper flakes. if you have extra garlic oil in the pan pour it on top of the pizza.

bake for 8 – 10 minutes at 450F

enjoy!