photo by: John Young

Shaved Asparagus and Roasted Vegetable Pizza

Pizza is a fallback dinner at our house. When the cupboard is bare, I can still almost always pull together some sort of pizza-like concoction that pleases everyone and also uses up the random leftovers languishing in my refrigerator.

Pizza, in my mind, doesn’t always have to have red sauce and pepperoni. It is basically just a crust that is a vehicle for all manner of toppings and sauces. I had some tomatoes and a few spears of asparagus in my refrigerator, and my friend Lydia had gifted me some shiitake mushrooms her husband grew at his farm, so I wanted to find a way to use all of that up in one delicious meal.

Those veggies didn’t sound right with a red sauce and I didn’t have any cream cheese lying around for a white sauce, so I grabbed a container of hummus and thought “OK, why not?” It was an excellent choice. Both easy and delicious.

If you haven’t had shaved asparagus, you need to try it immediately. Those ribbons get toasty and crisp and bring a burst of freshness to every bite of the pizza. The mushrooms added a “meaty” quality, and roasted tomatoes are like nature’s candy. This is lovely combination of textures and flavors and a simple meal that can be put together in just a few minutes, if you have the dough made in advance.

Shaved Asparagus and Roasted Vegetable Pizza

For the crust
Makes two crusts
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons yeast
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cups flour

For the toppings

1 cup hummus
4 stalks of asparagus, shaved
Handful of grape tomatoes, sliced in half
2 large shiitake mushroom caps, sliced
Pinch of kosher salt
Drizzle of olive oil
2 tablespoons crumbled goat cheese or feta

Put the water in the mixing bowl with the yeast and let it proof for a few minutes. Then add the sugar, salt and oil and mix together. Finally, add in the flour and mix. I use the KitchenAid mixer and the dough hook, but it can easily be done by hand.

Remove the dough from the bowl, spread olive oil all around, and then put it back in to rise, covered, for at least an hour.

Prepare your toppings. To shave the asparagus, I first cut off the tips. Then I just lay the stalk on the cutting board and hold the end with one hand while I run a vegetable peeler over it to shave off thin strips. Turn it over and shave the other side down.

When you are ready to make your pizza, preheat your oven to 475 F. Roll out half the dough into one round crust (I like it paper thin) and put it onto an oiled pizza pan. Give it several good pokes with a fork and par bake it for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, pop the vegetables into a casserole dish or cast-iron skillet and put them in the oven to begin cooking while you bake the crust. I put the asparagus tips and the shavings in.

Remove the crust from the oven, cover it with the hummus, top with vegetables. Bake again for about 6 minutes at very high heat.

When it’s done, pull it from the oven and sprinkle with a little goat cheese or feta.