Blackberry Asparagus Gruyère Pizza

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!

Blackberry Asparagus Gruyère Pizza

• Author: by Mary
• Prep Time: 15 mins
• Cook Time: 10 mins
• Total Time: 25 minutes
• Yield: 2 1x

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Ingredients

Units USM Scale 1x2x3x

• 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

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Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 500F with your pizza stone in the oven.
2. 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.
3. Shape your dough on a pizza peel, spread the sauce on the dough, the sprinkle with the basil leaves.
4. 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.
5. Bake for 9-12 minutes, depending on how dark you like the crust.

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