homemade pizza with caramelized onions, blue cheese, and spring greens.

This is a sort-of recipe, but mostly it’s a plea for you to whip out your pizza stone (or cookie tray), fire up your oven, and get to baking yourself homemade pizzas before the summer temperature rises and the thought of voluntarily making your apartment warmer sends you running.

I had the craving for pizza last night at 6:30 pm, so I did what any reasonable person would do and headed to my local pizzeria for pre-made dough. Next stop, the grocery store for a vidalia onion. And homeward to find the last nubbin of Point Reyes blue cheese and two bags full of greens: pea shoots and arugula.

Here’s what happened next:
I sliced up my onion, added it to my cast iron skillet with plenty of olive oil and let the pieces cook down and caramelize for the better part of 45 minutes. In the meantime, my oven slowly cranked its way up to 500 degrees. Somewhere in there, I poured myself a glass of a red wine. Not necessary to the process, but helpful. Next, I washed and spun dry several large handfulls of pea shoots and arugula and crumbled my blue cheese into dime-sized pieces. When the onions were good and browned, I covered a cutting board with cornmeal, stretched my pizza dough into a circle and scattered onions and dots of blue cheese across the dough. I drizzled the whole thing with olive oil and slid the dough onto my preheated pizza stone. After 10 minutes, I opened the oven and mounded the whole thing with more arugula and pea shoots than really looked reasonable. This is the best measure I have for you: pile on lots of greens, then add more. Drizzled again with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, I slid the pie back into the oven for another two minutes. The pizza was ready when the greens had wilted down to a beautiful jewel-toned mess.

And there you have it: a springtime pizza that almost has me wishing this cool spring would last just a little bit longer.

Now your turn. What are your favorite springtime pizza toppings?