What-I-Found-In-My-Refrigerator-Pizza

When I'm really busy, working on one thing or another, I tend to work in bursts, intensely. And, when most people would forgo cooking and maybe just heat up leftovers, my breaks from projects consist of rapid chopping, sauteing, baking, saucing, whatever I can do with what I have on hand.

So, this weekend, I whipped up something pretty good with stuff from my refrigerator.





1 bag of pizza crust dough from Trader Joe's
2 medium sized yellow onions
olive oil
1 T. butter
A few mushrooms
asparagus, fresh or frozen
Gruyere cheese

I let the dough warm up a bit, by sitting at room temperature for about an hour on a cornmeal dusted cookie sheet.

While the dough was warming up, I heated up a saute pan, adding the butter and a couple of T. of olive oil. Chopped up the onions into a large dice and added to the pan to caramelize, and seasoned with salt and pepper. In a separate pan, I heated up another tablespoon of olive oil and added chopped mushrooms and cooked until they were golden brown, then added salt and pepper.

I continued to stir the onions until they were golden, limp and caramelized all over, about 20 minutes.

I had frozen asparagus from TJs, so I threw that in the mushroom pan and stirred around until thawed.

In the meantime, I spread the dough out until it looked about as big as I wanted it and brushed it with olive oil. I shredded about a cup and a half of Gruyere cheese and spread 3/4 of it over the dough.

Added a thick layer of caramelized onions, the mushrooms, the asparagus and the remaining cheese.

Baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Wow, was it good. Back to work!