Portabella Pizza with Roasted Eggplant, Garlic and Asparagus

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Still cutting down on our carb intake, we decided that we wanted portabella pizza.  I haven’t made this in years, but I also had eggplant and asparagus that needed to be used, so I decided to combine the whole thing.

• 4 large portabella mushroom caps
• 1/2 an eggplant (I roasted the whole thing – and I’ll use the other half in hummus)
• 1 whole head of garlic
• 2 bunches of asparagus (this is the time to use the really thick stalks)
• Tomato sauce (I used half a box of the Pomi chopped tomatoes)
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• olive oil
• olive oil flavored non-stick spray
• kosher or sea salt

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Slit the eggplant in half, cut the bottom off the garlic, oil them up and wrap garlic in foil. (Full instructions here if you need them).  Put in the oven and cook for 40 minutes.

Prep your asparagus, but snapping the tough parts off, if they’re really thick you might want to peel them a bit, I didn’t.  Cut into 2 or 3 pieces per stalk and toss with olive oil and salt on a lined, lipped baking sheet. 15 minutes into your eggplant/garlic cooking time, put the asparagus into the oven as well.  The asparagus is going to cook about 25 minutes – if yours are not as thick, adjust your cooking times.

Pull them both out of the oven when they look like this and set aside.  (in my photograph, I’ve already unwrapped the garlic, so they’ve been sitting a while)

Turn the oven down to 350.

Prep your mushroom caps by wiping the tops with a damp towel to remove any dirt.

Pop the stems out – just grab what you can of the stem and bend to the side, it will pop right out.

I like to take the gills out, I just don’t like the texture, but some people love it.  Do what you prefer.  I just take a spoon and gently scrape them out.  Get a fresh piece of foil and use the same tray that you did for the veggies.

Cook for 5-10 minutes, remove from oven and spray on both sides with non-stick spray.

Scrape the eggplant from it’s skin and squeeze the garlic out of its paper.  Put a bit of each on each mushroom cap.  Roasted garlic is very mellow, so don’t be afraid of using too much. It’s sweet and delicious.

Spoon some chopped tomatoes on top of that.

Pat down with your spoon so that the tomato sauce covers the surface

Put some asparagus on top of the tomato

and sprinkle some cheese over that

Put back into the oven and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is melted.  You could put this back in under the broiler if you like your cheese a little brown, but my whole family was standing in the kitchen at this point and it smelled so good that they were not about to wait another minute.  I plated each with some of the left over asparagus.

Then, I had the brilliant idea to rip some fresh basil leaves over the top.

Yeah. Like that.

I thought these were going to be light, so I served it with a tossed salad, but they were surprisingly satisfying!  Delicious.

It is OK to use my photos or content provided a link back and proper crediting is given