I've been thinking about pizza a lot lately. Possibly too much. Ever since Mani Osteria opened in downtown Ann Arbor, I've been craving their thin crust, wood-fired pizzas. The pistachio and red onion pizza, in particular, has been haunting my dreams.

I've had an up-and-down relationship with pizza over the years. Like every red-blooded native of New York state, I grew up loving a good slice of dripping-with-grease, redolent-of-oregano, fold-it-in-half cheesy New York-style pizza.

But after a couple of trips to Rome in my 20s, I became a pizza snob. My perspective on pizza began to mirror my feelings about good dark chocolate. Once I realized how good it could be, I stopped wanting to waste the calories on inferior products.

Which brings me back to Mani. Their pizza is definitely worth "wasting" calories on, and I've wasted more than my fair share of calories there since they opened. AnnArbor.com's offices are on the same block, and I've been so often now, they greet me by name when I walk in.

It's always nice to go "where everybody knows your name," but I decided maybe it was time to cook at home a little more often. So what did I find myself craving? Pizza. I had asparagus and garlic ramps in the fridge, destined for a quick pasta dish. But why not make a pizza with them?

I've recently discovered just how delicious raw asparagus is. Crunchy and fresh, with just the slightest bitter flavor, it's a perfect addition to a tossed salad. But to add it to pizza, I needed to pare it down to bite-sized portions. Shaving it seemed like the perfect solution. At this point, I did a quick Internet search, and sure enough, the food blog SmittenKitchen.com ran a shaved asparagus pizza recipe last May. She's always stealing my ideas about a year before I have them.

If you've got a favorite pizza dough recipe, start with that. I was pressed for time, so I ran to Whole Foods and bought a container of their fresh pizza dough. I wanted to emulate the great brick crust from Mani, but didn't want to heat up my whole house by cranking my oven up to 500 degrees, so I turned to my gas grill.

You can grill your pizza directly on the grill, but I found it easier (and less likely to burn) to use a pizza stone. You can spend upwards of $100 on a pizza stone at a high-end kitchen store, but I bought mine for $20 at Cost Plus, and it has served me pretty well so far.

My biggest challenge with this recipe was getting the pizza onto the pizza stone without spilling asparagus and cheese all over the grill. The instructions for the pizza stone told me to "hop" the pizza off the pan and onto the stone, but I knew exactly what would happen if I attempted that: disaster. I stood there, looking back and forth between the beautiful uncooked pizza on the pan in my hands and the smoking hot pizza stone on my grill, thinking, "Well this was a dumb idea."

But then Karen had a brilliant thought: put the whole thing, pan and all, on the pizza stone. I cooked it like that for 10 minutes, until the crust was stable enough to move without folding or snagging. Then I carefully slid the pizza directly onto the pizza stone to finish cooking it. The resulting crust was exactly what I was hoping for: crispy but chewy and perfectly browned.

Shaved Asparagus Pizza (adapted from SmittenKitchen.com)

Makes 1 thin crust 12-inch pizza

Ingredients

1 recipe portion of your favorite pizza dough

1/2 pound asparagus

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1/2 pound mozzarella, shredded or cut into small cubes (do not use fresh, water-packed mozzarella for this recipe, as it will result in a soggy pizza)

2 teaspoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Several grinds black pepper

1 garlic scape or scallion, thinly sliced

Directions

Preheat your oven to the hottest temperature it goes, or about 500 in most cases. If you're using a gas grill, preheat the grill for about 20 minutes, which is about as long as it takes to prepare the pizza. If you use a pizza stone, have it in there.

Prepare asparagus: Wash and dry the asparagus. Holding the asparagus by its tough end, lay it flat on a cutting board and, using a vegetable peeler, create long shavings of asparagus by drawing the peeler from the base to the top of the stalk. Repeat with the remaining stalks, then discard the tough ends. Toss the shavings with olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

Assemble pizza: Roll or stretch out your pizza dough to a 12-inch round. Either transfer to a floured or cornmeal-dusted pizza peel (if using a pizza stone in the oven or grill) or to a floured or cornmeal-dusted tray to bake it on. Sprinkle pizza dough with Parmesan, then mozzarella. Pile asparagus on top.

Bake pizza for 10 to 15 minutes, or until edges are browned, the cheese is bubbly and the asparagus might be lightly charred. If you are cooking the pizza on a pizza stone on a gas grill, turn off the burners directly beneath the pizza stone. If you don't have control over multiple burners, just turn the burners down as low as they go.

Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with garlic scapes or scallions, then slice and eat.

Jessica Webster leads the Food & Drink section for AnnArbor.com when she's not dreaming of pizza. You can email her at JessicaWebster@AnnArbor.com.