Midweek 'Za

The first fifteen pages of my thesis are due on Monday. Thus, this week has been an emotional roller coaster which has included wandering around aimlessly with my shoelaces untied and/or teeth unbrushed wondering why time suddenly seems to be going by at warp speed, and making eating breakfast during class a very acceptable thing. I'm not proud of my behavior this week but I will say that my research is coming along pretty nicely and I have only had one meltdown. Well, two if you include this meal, which involved a very serious buffalo mozzarella meltdown that was truly delicious and much more enjoyable than my sputtering, sniffling "I'LL NEVER BE FUN AGAIN" debacle. 

Excuse my poor photography and paper plate (ugh) but I hope you can see this for the glory that it very much was. I love asparagus SO much and sauteed with a little EVOO, salt and pepper, I can eat it for days. It's crunchy and salty, and the head of it always absorbs all these yummy flavors that make for the perfect side-or star-of a meal. While in Italy, we found the best pizza in the fucking world in Bologna. I'm not joking. Every single item on the menu was outrageously good and we got in the genius unfortunate habit of eating entire pizzas at once there because you just simply could not leave any on the table. My absolute favorite was a glorious creation that had a thin layer of tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, thin and crispy asparagus, spicy salami, and a fried egg on top. When I was trying to find pizza inspiration last night in the sad vegetable aisle at Giant, this pizza in all its beautiful, comforting joy came to me in a vision.

This creation did not nearly do its inspiration justice, but it definitely did the trick. The flavors on this cannot be beaten. Salty prosciutto (which I subbed for salami because I couldn't find anything spicy enough at Giant...and it was actually a perfect alternative!), crispy asparagus, a little bit of egg in each bite, and a thin layer of sweet tomato sauce with chewy, melty mozzarella. So good. I also drank roughly a bottle of wine on the side which probably caused this shoddy photography. I wish I knew a better way to cook the fried egg on top-I just fried it separately and then placed it on top. Let me know if you have a better method! 

Ingredients

-1 Pizza crust (snaps for you if you have time to make dough yourself, I just use Boboli because it's so quick.

-4 tbsp. sweet tomato sauce (go light on this! otherwise the other flavors will be outdone)

-4 slices prosciutto

-8-10 asparagus stalks, halved lengthwise and brushed with olive oil, salt, and pepper

-8-10 slices of mozzarella, as thin as you can get them

-1 egg

Instructions

-Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

-Brush the pizza crust with EVOO, spread a thin layer of tomato sauce.

-Spread out mozzarella slices over the crust, do not double-layer them.

-Interweave the asparagus: some under the cheese, some over.

-Lay the slices of prosciutto over the asparagus and cheese.

-Add some more asparagus.

-Put the pizza in the oven for 10-15 minutes, depending upon how crispy you like it.

-Fry an egg on the side.

-Take the pizza out and put the egg in the middle. Tastes GREAT if it's still a bit runny, mine wasn't and I wished it was!

Enjoy!

Back on the Bandwagon and I'm Bringing Barbecued Chicken Pizza

I'm back on the bandwagon, and I've got yummy stuff to share. While senior year is slowly but surely eating me alive teaching me valuable skills in anger/stress management and forcing me to revert to 5-year old tantrums when presented with stressful situations i.e. the real world and my English thesis, it is also a lot of fun. My seven girlfriends and I are lucky enough to live in a house off-campus, which is fantastic for theme parties but not so much for cooking. Our kitchen, even when clean, is home to roughly 67,000 solo cups and a sad, kind of broken faucet. However, where there is a will, there is a way. And the beauty of having other friends with nicer kitchens around campus is that I am always welcome as long as I can cook!
To be honest, I'm not the hugest fan of barbecued...anything. I know that sounds terrible but I'm a New England girl and I've just never caught the BBQ bug. I always find myself wishing that BBQ sauce would just decide whether it wanted to be sweet or sour or spicy or salty. However, when cooking for males, BBQ is almost foolproof. I even found myself surprised by how tasty this was, and the flavors couldn't be better together. Pizza is easy and fun to make, and generally a crowd pleaser. However, I find it pretty difficult to find anything tasty in the store-bought tomato sauce department, which led me to the idea of making this bad boy.

Ingredients (serves 2, especially if 1 is really hungry, with leftovers)

• 1 Boboli pre-made pizza crust
• 3 Chicken breasts
• 1/2 red onion
• 1 cup Shredded Cheese (I used Mexican for a little extra spice to complement the tomatoes and cilantro)
• 1 cup Cilantro
• 2 cups halved cherry tomatoes
• 1.5 cups Jack Daniels Honey Smokehouse BBQ sauce (you can use any kind for this

Instructions

• Lay the crust out on a counter or other surface, preheat oven to 450
• Heat 1 tbsp. vegetable oil at medium high on a frying pan. Add chicken breasts after 2 min, allow 2 min on each side.
• While oven is heating and chicken is cooking, dice red onion and halve the cherry tomatoes.
• Place .5 cup of the BBQ sauce into a tupperware container. Remove the chicken from the stove, shred it with a knife and fork, and place the shredded chicken into the tupperware. Cover the tupperware and shake for ~15 seconds so that chicken is fully covered in sauce.
• Spread a generous layer of BBQ sauce on the crust, and sprinkle the cheese over it.
• Add the shredded chicken and red onions to the crust, sprinkle a bit more cheese on top, and bake at 450 for 8-10 minutes.
• Remove the crust and add tomatoes and cilantro. Finish with a last dash of BBQ sauce.

What's your favorite non-tomato sauce based pizza? Dying to try other alternatives to the jar-sauce boredom. Also- I didn't add avocado to this but I bet it would've been delicious.