Asparagus Alfredo Pizza

Yeah, so I'm not good at shredding my own Daiya Jack from the block. Tastes stellar, though!

I absolutely cannot take any claim to coming up with this genius concoction. I stole it from my pal and food soulmate, Veggpanda. She gets the credit all the way. I will, however, take full credit for pestering her until she posted it on her blog. You can thank me anytime.

You might think, "But, Chickpea, I cannot fathom asparagus on a pizza." To which I will reply that I didn't either. What intrigued me even more is the use of lemon on a pizza. But, my fellow vegan piggies, it worked like peanut butter and jelly. I ate the whole damn pizza. Oops! I did make a few small changes from the original recipe. Those changes consist primarily of using more garlic, adding some finely chopped red onion and using my homemade herbed pizza crust. Oh, and then slathering a little garlic butter onto the crust once it came out of the oven. It might not be healthy, but damn it tastes fucking killer. For Veggpanda's original recipe, click here. The homemade pizza crust makes two 8-inch pizza crusts or one rather large one. The sauce recipe below is ample for the 2 smaller-sized pizzas.

I made the alfredo sauce while I was waiting for the pizza dough to rise for about 30 minutes.

Sauce Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup vegan cream (I used MimicCreme I found online at VeganEssentials.com)
• 3TB vegan buttah
• 2 TB nutritional yeast
• 2 1/2 TB all-purpose flour
• 2-4 TB vegan parmesan (I used Parmela, which uses cashews and almonds)
• 2 huge cloves of garlic, minced.
• salt and pepper to your liking

Making the sauce:

1.  Heat a small saucepan over med-low heat. Once hot, add the butter and the garlic. Cook about  5-8 minutes letting the oils from the garlic warm and spread into the butter. 
2. Now turn your heat to medium and add in the cream, whisking to combine the butter and the cream. Let it cook a few minutes this way, then whisk in the flour, nutritional yeast and parmesan until there are no lumps.
3. Whisk regularly making sure to scrape the bottom or else the flour may burn to the bottom of the pan. I cooked mine until it came to a very gentle boil, and then removed it from the heat. It thickened up a bit more after coming off of the heat. Now set it aside while your pizza dough finishes rising. 

Pizza Ingredients:

• dough (homemade is my favorite, but you do your own thing)
• Daiya jack cheese, shredded from the block
• asparagus, which I marinated for 30 minutes in fresh lemon juice and a smidge of olive oil.
• onions 
• alfredo sauce

Pizza, or dough with cheese and sauce and possibly other ingredients

1.  Preheat your oven to about 420 degrees F.
2. Lightly flour your baking sheet (or use parchment paper as my pizza rarely sticks to it)
3. Slather on lots of alfredo sauce.

4. Sprinkle with the cheese and onions. 
5. Top with the asparagus spears. 

6. Squeeze a tiny bit more lemon juice onto the asparagus.
7. Bake until you can't wait any longer. The crusts should be golden and the cheese fully melted. 
8. Top with a little melted butter mixed with some garlic salt. Brush onto the crust.
9. PIG OUT!