Egg, Country Ham, Asparagus and Leek Pizza--a Peek Behind the Scenes of Pizza Night

A terrific pizza for Spring--salty cubes of country ham paired with leeks and roasted asparagus, finished with a sunny side up egg.

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This pizza started on a treadmill and ended with a ham biscuit.

Oh, not exactly on a treadmill--but it was while I was on a treadmill [in socks, as it never occurred to me to bring my walking shoes to Ft Wayne, Indiana in February where I was scraping 3 to 5 inches of snow off the van each time I wanted to drive to or from the hockey rink--I don't recommend walking on a treadmill in socks] that I saw a Diners, Dives, and . . . . Drive Ins maybe? show on Food Network.  Not having cable TV at home I'm not up on all this lingo.  On that show, a talented pizza maker in Minnesota, after pulling a kimchi pizza out of a copper pizza oven that I am swooning over still, cracked an egg on a mostly cooked pizza, used a giant-handled pizza peel to lift it up to the upper dome of the oven, and cooked it just a wee bit.  Holy cow that looked good!

When I got a hankering for country ham biscuits--I think because my car was encrusted with salt but I'm not 100% sure--I had enough country ham left over to try my hand at an egg on a pizza.

Yeah, the crust is um blackened. It's a Feature.

There you are--treadmills to ham biscuits, from Minnesota to the Capitol of the Confederacy . . . on a pizza.

I wrote that introduction after my first attempt at cooking an egg on a pizza, thinking that surely I'd perfect the method with my second attempt.  I mean, I make pizzas for a living a whole lot, you'd think if any home cook in a kitchen could bang this thing out it in a try or two it would be me.  But the reality is I've tried this twice, and while I'm getting better and the results taste great each time, it's not perfect.  Yet.

So why am I posting?  Consider this a Keeping It Real edition of Friday Night Pizza Night.  A [literal, thanks to the spouse's new camera] behind the scenes in my kitchen.  A jumping off place for your home pizza making. Maybe seeing my failures will make you feel better about your less-than-optimal results in the kitchen?  I hope so. I'm trying right alongside you all.

Wee Oliver Picklepants is my kitchen assistant today.

This pizza is a fiddly one.  When I get into trouble with a recipe, I take it down to the bare essentials.

•  I tried this with homemade dough and it . . . um, well, it burned blackened before the eggs were fully set.  So I bought a Boboli® [No sponsorship. I bought it, they don't know I exist] to take the whole 'baking the crust' aspect out of the equation. The result was better, but I'm picky in that I prefer my egg whites to be . . . well, white . . . when I eat them.  
• I made this without, and then with, roasted asparagus.  It's better with more vegetables, like many things are in life. 
• I tried this with an assortment of cheeses.  I do not like to use slices of fresh mozzarella on this pizza, but shredded mozzarella, shredded cheddar, Grand Cru all taste good.
• I've made this with country ham and regular ham, and I prefer the country ham (if you eat ham, that is--leave it off if you don't, and the salty cheese will still rock on with the leeks, asparagus, and egg).

For more recipes with asparagus, please see my Asparagus Recipes Collection. For more recipes with leeks please see my Leek Recipes Collection. They are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

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NOTE: This recipe is not gluten free as written, because I used a pizza crust containing gluten. To adapt this recipe for a gluten free diet please substitute the gluten free pizza crust of your choice.
Check labels to confirm that your other ingredients are also gluten free. Good sources for determining gluten free products can be found here:
http://knowgluten.me/2012/03/31/other-names-for-gluten/
http://glutenfreedoctor.com/gluten-free/
http://www.celiac.com/categories/Safe-Gluten%252dFree-Food-List-%7B47%7D-Unsafe-Foods-%26amp%3B-Ingredients/

Egg, Country Ham, Roasted Asparagus and Leek Pizza

Ingredients

• 12-15 stalks of asparagus (if you've got a bundle, roast 'em all and use half)
• olive oil (about 2 Tablespoons total, divided)
• salt and pepper (about ½ teaspoon each, to start)
• 1 prebaked pizza crust of your choice
• 1 clove roasted garlic (here's how I put up my garlic crop, or use minced fresh)
• ⅓ cup sliced leeks (thawed if frozen. what? of course you can freeze leeks)
• ½ cup finely diced country ham, or regular ham
• 1 ½ cups shredded cheddar, or mozzarella, or Grand Cru cheese, or a blend
• 3 eggs, set out so they become room temperature

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  
2. In a large bowl, toss asparagus with about 1 Tablespoon of olive oil and ½ teaspoon each salt and pepper.  
3. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 10 minutes, then shake the pan to turn the spears and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.  
4. Remove from oven and then switch the oven over to the Broil setting.  I think at least 10 minutes of the oven hanging out on the Broil setting would do the trick. I did 5, enough to top the pizza and take some photos, and I should have let it go longer.
5. Combine the remaining Tablespoon olive oil with a smashed clove of roasted garlic or minced fresh garlic. 
6. Brush this roasted garlic oil over the crust, and think of your friend Heather who gave you the idea to use roasted garlic oil in the first place.  
7. Scatter leeks and ham across the crust, then place the asparagus thusly in a pleasing pattern (I did it like spokes, and that works for me).  
8. Top with shredded cheese, leaving 3 open areas without cheese to nestle the eggs.  
9. Make these open areas towards the outer edge of the pizza crust, because if your egg is in the middle it will never cook. Trust me. Crack the eggs into the open areas.  
10. Place the pizza under the broiler for 3 to 5 minutes until the egg is set but before the crust burns becomes a Featured Blackened Crust.  If necessary, take the pizza out and cut it before returning it to the broiler to fully cook the egg white.  I don't really care about the yolk--it can be runny, but my egg white needs to be not clear.

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