I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen those four words together before: Blackberry + Asparagus + Gruyère +/= Pizza? Yeah, fo reals. Back to this in a minute!
This has been happening for a while, but I’ve noticed it a lot lately: people hear I’m a food blogger, or know I am and invite me to dinner, and then express their anxiety about having me eat their cooking. It’s like they think I’m some sort of professional or something! Ha! I mean, yeah this is my job… but that doesn’t mean I’m an expert. It just means I eat a lot of sugar and put it all out there for you to see!
I’ll openly admit I still have a LOT to learn about cooking. I can just barely cook a perfect steak without a grill (really, we’ve had a lot of underdone/overdone steaks in this house in the last year), I’ve never poached an egg, and I just recently roasted my first chicken. I’d love to successfully make pad thai, perfect macaron feet, or even just a darn good carrot cake: none of which I’ve really ever done.
So, if you’ve been hesitating on asking us over for dinner because you’re nervous I’ll judge: FEAR NOT! I’m no culinary expert — just a brave/idiot soul who is willing to share my weird thoughts and recipes with the public. Case in point? This pizza.
We eat a lot of pizza around here, but I almost never share it with you. I think I have one [edit: OK actually two, three, and now four] recipe, from WAY back in the day (cringe at the awful photos… ugh). Usually pizza-making goes like this: open the fridge, pull out all leftovers, veggies, and weird tidbits, throw them all on a pizza, and bake it. Sure, we have favorites (cream cheese, pineapple, spinach, sausage, etc.), but sometimes something is born of pure random choice.
This pizza was a bit of one of those — we had a few things I needed to use… and we recently discovered that Gruyère is MAGICAL on pizza. It melts into a perfectly pizza-y cheese, and just tastes so freaking delicious. I use a veggie peeler to tear off little sheets of it, and usually underestimate how much to put on. This pizza can handle Gruyère, and lots of it!
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 15-20 stalks of asparagus
- 1 pinch of salt
- ½ recipe pizza dough
- ⅔ cup of your favorite pizza sauce
- ¼ cup fresh basil leaves
- 4 oz Gruyère cheese
- 8-10 fresh blackberries
- Preheat the oven to 500F with your pizza stone in the oven.
- In a frying pan over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the asparagus and a pinch of salt. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the asparagus is bright and mostly cooked. Remove from heat.
- Shape your dough on a pizza peel, spread the sauce on the dough, the sprinkle with the basil leaves.
- On top of the basil, spread about half of the desired amount of cheese, then arrange the asparagus and blackberries, before finishing with the rest of the cheese.
- Bake for 9-12 minutes, depending on how dark you like the crust.
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This pizza combo sounds great! Wow!
I get the same thing being a food blogger. None of my coworker’s wives will send desserts to work anymore since they found out I bake so many desserts. All sugar is good! 🙂
wow, pizza with blackberry? very interesting! 🙂 and i’m sure very delicious!
I’ve never thought of putting gruyere cheese on pizza – actually I’ve never thought of putting asparagus or blackberries on either! Sometimes unlikely combinations are actually delicious together – thanks for the creative idea.
Gorgeous pizza! I never would’ve thought to add blackberries – I love it