This would be our second time enjoying this year’s greens from our garden – spinach & Swiss chard. It’s also the second variation of this pizza… but small changes can make a big difference!

This pizza was fresh and delicious, a great option for the summer.  Even though the greens star in this pizza, the plum sauce is the supporting ingredient that gives it an unexpected flare that truly sets this pizza apart from others. Here is what you’ll need.

Dough :
1  ¹/3 cups warm water
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
3 ½+ cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 scant tablespoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons ground flax seed

ingredients on top :
Swiss chard
spinach
arugula
basil
baby bella mushrooms
plum sauce
garlic
olive oil
kosher salt
smoked gouda

Here are the guidelines…

Before you get to mixing your dough prepare your spices. In a small frying pan, dry toast 1 scant tablespoon cumin seeds with 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Cut down on the crushed red pepper if you don’t want the crust to be spicy – half that amount will give it just a hint of spice across the 2 pizzas. Shake your pan over the heat and toast slightly until your cumin browns slightly – don’t burn it!

Mix your dough by hand or with a stand mixer. Start with 1¹/3 cup warm water and add 2¼ teaspoons of dry active yeast (one packet). Let it rest for a moment. Add 1 tablespoon salt, 3 tablespoons ground flax seed, about a tablespoon of honey, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and your toasted spices. Mix in 3½ cups flour; you may need to add more if your dough is too wet, just add a small amount at a time and mix until the dough can form into a nice ball. Let it sit for about fifteen minutes while you prepare your toppings.

We cut down all the chard and spinach ready to be used in the garden and then I added a few handfuls of arugula to the mix as well to bulk it up. I don’t have an exact amount of the greens we used. My logic suggests that more greens are better. While you’re preparing these greens it will feel like there is too much but once you slightly saute them, they will be much more manageable. You’ll wish you had even more.

Start with the Swiss chard. Slice out the center stem and chop it into small pieces, place them in a small bowl and set aside. Gather up the leafy parts of the chard and roll lengthwise, chop into ribbons. Do the same with the spinach. Place each chopped green in its own bowl. Keep them separate so it is easy to cook them at the appropriate time. Toss a few handfuls of arugula in with the spinach – no need to chop.

Gather up your basil – we picked a lot from our little plant. I happen to love the flavor of basil so I wasn’t concerned with having too much. Chop up as much as you think is reasonable or available. We also chopped up a few baby peppers that had fallen from in the garden – the Hungarian hot yellow pepper, and yes, even though it was just a baby it was very spicy! Can’t wait to try the big ones, they’re really getting huge right now!

Chop mushrooms, we used an 8 oz. package of baby bella mushroom. This is a nice amount to stretch across two pizzas, it’s a lot… a lot delicious. Once they are sliced add a few spoonfuls of plum sauce to coat. I didn’t measure this out I just added a few spoonfuls and mixed it up so the mushrooms were lightly coated with the sauce but not drenched in it. This just adds a new element to the pizza, a little bit of sweetness. I got this idea from my friend Alegra; we made a similar pizza a few months back and coated shitaki mushrooms with plum sauce – I thought this idea was brilliant and was very pleased with the results, it’s not something that I had ever considered doing before.  I think in this case it works really nicely as well.

Instead of sauce we used an oil flavored with a bit of garlic and spice. Crush or chop two cloves of garlic. In a very small frying pan add half of the garlic to about 4 tablespoons olive oil and slowly cook over warm/low heat. This will mellow the garlic and flavor the oil – I also add a dash of our pepper powder for an extra little kick. We use a pan designed to fry one egg, it’s actually something we use quite often. It’s very useful for frying spices or small amounts of oil, I use it just about every time I cook with garlic because I can’t eat fresh garlic without feeling a little ill (although I do love the flavor).  While your garlic oil is cooking keep an eye on it to avoid the bits from burning. Remove from heat for a moment if it starts getting too hot or bubbly. This can stay on the stove top until you’re ready to use it.

In a large pan add a splash of oil and toss in the remainder of the garlic. Saute for a moment over low heat and include the Swiss chard stems. They are very tough so you’ll want to saute them until they are tender. This will take a few minutes. Once the stems are tender, add the Swiss chard leaves and toss it around. Allow it to wilt sightly. Add the spinach and arugula and remove it from the burner. The heat of the chard will wilt the rest of the greens enough. We don’t want to completely wilt them, just enough to tame them – that way we’ll be able to fit more greens on the pizza, it will be easier to top!

Prepare 2 sheet pans by buttering or oiling the surface. Our sheet pans are about 12 x 15. Cut the dough in 2 pieces. We use a dough cutting tool, it’s awesome for cutting dough as well as scraping and scooping chopped ingredients off the cutting board, we just love it. Roll out the dough to be thin and about the size of your cookie sheets. My mom gave us a new silicone rolling pin last week for a house warming gift. It’s great; we’ve been wanting a rolling pin of this shape for quite sometime. The silicone feature is nice because the flour sticks to the pin and the dough rolls right off. Really great gift, we’ll be using it a lot this year – thanks mom!

Get ready to top! I like to top both pizzas at the same time so I can evenly distribute the ingredients. Making pizza is great in this way because you can always make it work with what you have – have more? add more! have less? add less! It’s easy to adapt and hard to mess up.

Start by brushing the garlic oil onto the rolled out dough. Brush all the way to the edges. Give it a nice coat but don’t create oil pools. Adding a lightly flavored oil will really enhance this super flavorful dough.

Next add the greens. Sometimes when they’re wilted they clump together. Spread them out as best you can.

Fill in the blanks with the plum sauced mushrooms.

Sprinkle with basil and any other extra ingredients you might like to include, in our case we scattered the little Hungarian hot pepper bits.

Finish it off with shredded smoked gouda cheese.

Bake at 450° for about 15 minutes. Check it towards the end of it’s baking time and remove the pizza once it’s slightly browned and crispy.

This pizza is extra delicious. With out using a red sauce and by including lots of greens, the pizza feels very fresh and light. Great for dinner, lunch, or a snack!

Surprise your guests with a hint of plum sauce and loads of nutrients.

Our garden has officially moved! And so did we, of course. I guess I can blame all of the busyness and work of moving for my slow-to-post attention to this site as of late. But now we and all of our plants are settling into our new space and getting ready to share again.  But first let’s touch base with last couple of weeks of the garden’s progress, a lot has happened since the first update.

Throughout the month of June, Chicago was hit with pretty much constant rain, so much that I barely even needed to water anything.

Above you can see the peppers are coming along well, definitely a lot of growth and flowers in the past few weeks. But no Peppers before the move.

The greens have grown so much they have at least quadrupled in size from the time they were planted. They are definitely ready for eating at this time on June 14th.

Over the first couple of weeks in June our cilantro plant bolted in to flowers. We’re new to growing cilantro but generally you don’t want your herbs to flower because all of the energy goes to the flowers and slows the growth for the rest of the plant – also many herbs get bitter once they flower. I think it’s best to use the herbs and prune them regularly in order to promote new growth, keep them happy, and get the most of them.

Cilantro is considered a short-lived plant. It’s recommended to plant new seeds every few weeks in order to keep up with the demand. At this point we just didn’t have the time to eat the cilantro before it went to seed, and it’s lucky for us because now we get to see how coriander seeds are made! Here’s an image of the flowers a couple of weeks back.

Joe and I have been moving our belongings over to the new spot slowly over the past few weeks, including all of the house plants. So in the end we basically just had our big furniture and our garden left to haul over….

It was pretty cute to see all of our largest plants in the back of a U-Haul! We sent some smaller ones along with them too. Since we only moved a few blocks away the trip wasn’t too stressful for them. Now they lay in a very sunny yard full of life. Here is a peak at some of the plants already growing in the yard…

We’re still figuring out the set up of the new garden. We kept all of the peppers together outside in full sun and the mint, greens and strawberries pushed off to the side in another section – they still get a lot of sun as well. Behind the wooden planters is a patch of mint and strawberries already established. Definitely no shortage of mint in this yard! The strawberry patch was loaded with fruit at the beginning of the month. Our little potted strawberry plant is hopefully just a late bloomer – we still haven’t seen any flowers yet.

The light in the yard is definitely full sun which is much different than our previous garden spot that had only morning and evening sun. So, with the excessive amount of rain paired with a much brighter setting, the outdoor garden has a little adjusting to do. Some of our peppers have burnt leaves.

With a few really heavy storms many of the pepper flowers have been blown off and most of the pepper plants have been up rooted by being blown over a couple of times. When we loose those cute little flowers we loose the chance of it becoming a pepper. A little heartbreaking but there is nothing I can do about it except cover up the roots and help the plants stand tall so they can continue to grow. Even though they have had some weather related struggles they are still doing really well; we may have lost a few buds and a few little branches but that doesn’t mean we’ll be short of peppers. In fact we’re already seeing peppers on half of our varieties.

The cayenne peppers are the most plentiful so far with a minimum of 10 peppers already forming! They are so long and skinny all they way from the beginning of their growth. This is the first time I have ever grown cayenne peppers. I use cayenne powder all the time but it’s not often that I get to eat fresh cayenne peppers. I’m looking forward to it.

The Hungarian hot yellow peppers are up next with several peppers already forming, quite large considering how young they are. When they are under an inch long they are a nice fresh green and once they pass an inch they seem to become a lighter color…. must be heading towards yellow! I wonder how they taste?

Next is the red chilies with a few little babies. I know we’ll end up with a ton of them and I can’t wait to make more of our Chili Garlic Sauce again! We’re just finishing up our last jar now – absolutely delicious, a perfect amount of spice with a hint of sweetness. This makes me particularly eager for these peppers to grow!

The Jalapenos are flowering but have yet to show any peppers, the habeneros are not showing much progress at all. I think they have been very much over watered with all of the rain this month.  I still have hope for them though, we had a lot of luck with them last year and I don’t see why they wouldn’t come around this time.

The banana peppers are on their way. We’re seeing a lot of flowers now as well as new growth. In the first image you can see where a few little branches were torn off in the storm. Never grew these before either, excited to see how big they’ll grow.

Now that we have a sun porch we decided to take full advantage of it and keep our herb garden indoors. It’s right outside of the kitchen so it’ll be supper easy to access while cooking. Also I think it’ll be easier to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re being used quickly enough.

This is the beginning of out indoor garden, we have a lot of house plants out there right now soaking up sun with the herbs. Our last apartment had very little sunlight and as a result most of the plants were not doing their best. So this is a much needed retreat for them. The tree in the corner is a grapefruit tree. My Dad planted it from a seed years ago for my brother and it was passed down to me last year. Over the winter it wasn’t doing well at all and I thought it was done for. But once I brought it outside in the spring it perked back up with tons of new growth, and now it’s living very happily on the porch.

Below is a quick peak at our herbs. Starting from the top – lady lavender, dill, munstead lavender, sage, oregano, French thyme, rosemary, orange thyme, and basil. All doing really well, we have already started using them too!

Let’s not forget about our cilantro, or shall I say coriander? We missed our chance to eat our cilantro, so now we’re moving on to coriander seeds. I have always known that coriander seeds are cilantro seeds, but I never knew exactly how it happened. It all makes sense now.

More to come soon!

A lot has happened in the garden since the last post in July.  We are now at the beginning of September and the air is already starting to feel like fall. What a strange summer it has been here in Chicago and I’m assuming in most places.  It has been unseasonably cool with about a scattered week of actually hot days through out summer. Despite it feeling like an unusual summer, we have been really lucky to have a lot of rain and enough sun to keep our garden productive and happy. So, Here is an update of the progress:

We’ll start with the peppers because there are so many types and so many peppers growing! Our habeneros started forming around the beginning of July; they seemed to reach full size towards then end of the month and while it seemed time for them to turn orange it took longer than I expected.  It wasn’t until mid August when the first few started to change and by now we have already picked 5 peppers and it won’t be long before the next. The other night we made a fresh salsa and a roasted pepper sauce to top our chiles rellenos all using the heat of our home grown habeneros. For such a cute little pepper it sure does create an intense heat, you definitely need to use these sparingly.  The plant itself is short and squat the peppers are near an inch large and turn into a beautiful bright orange, but the heat might be the most impressive part of all.

Next, we have ancho peppers as labeled when we purchased the sprouts, they are also known as poblano peppers which are traditionally used to make chiles rellenos. I didn’t realize these two peppers were the same until I Wikipedia’d them and found out that “ancho” usually refers to dried pablanos. Anyway, we have already eaten a few of our anchos so far in our gourstada. They were definitely the largest of the peppers on our porch but not as large as we are use to seeing them at the market. We decided to cut them because the the plant was not creating any new peppers and it seemed to have a difficult time supporting the weight.  Since the first harvest a few more peppers are off to a great start and we’re hoping to grow them even larger than the first batch- hoping for 5-6 inches. We will see!

Last of the pepper updates is on our red chilies which are planted in a large pot along with jalapenos.  This pot of peppers was the first to fruit.  We started seeing peppers at the very beginning of July.  When I planted the sprouts I remember doing it in a specific way- one row of 3 jalapenos in the center and 2 red chilies on each side of that row.  Once the peppers began to grow I was no longer sure how I planted them; it was very confusing because all of the peppers were seemingly the same! I would see peppers that seemed to resemble a jalapeno, dark green and a bit round at the bottom and then would see others that seemed to resemble chilies- thinner and a bit more pointy, but there was no consistency from plant to plant. All the same color growing from plants that looked alike. As they would grow they would seem even more similar and because of this I felt more confused- I had planted them specifically in such a way that I would know which was which.  In the past when I have grown red chilies, in a smaller pot, they would start off as a slightly lighter green and have a distinct chili shape.  They also took less time to turn red.  Judging from the limited experience under my belt I began to lose hope in that they were actually “red chilies.” I started to assume that they must have been mislabeled and came to terms with it. Whatever the case, this pot bears over thirty peppers (jalapenos and chilies together) ready to eat at any moment.

After going a way for the third week of August we came home to find that our chilies were beginning to turn red! Yessss! And, to make it even more exciting, the first two peppers to turn red were the first two to start growing in the garden- I know this because one of them had a particular mark and an odd shape- within a week a few more turned red justifying my original planting method! Mystery solved, we picked our first 4 chilies earlier today and made my favorite soup Arhar Dal using them- look forward to the recipe this fall!

I’ll make a quick mention of the serrano peppers, I barely have any photos of them for some reason, they seem to get lost among all of the other peppers in the garden. They’ve been growing well throughout the summer but we have not eaten any yet! I’m thinking they’ll have to have a special meal revolved around the first ones we pick.

Let’s breeze by possibly the saddest part of our garden- the cucumber(s). I almost didn’t mention them at all but once I saw the lone stunted cucumber emerge from the vine I thought- how the hell did that happen?- I figure I should mention them too, even if pathetic. I love cucumbers and before planting them I imagined a healthy row of cucumber vines wrapped around the porch rails, and maybe we would even get some food from them. They are planted in 18in wooden cube along with mint. Cucumber & mint, it’s obvious they would go together.  The 2 types of mint were quick to get comfortable extending their roots in all directions.  The cucumbers however never got comfortable at all. The entire time we’ve had them they looked somewhat alive but never healthy. It’s only promise is the one cucumber that is hanging on by a strand, still slowly growing.  I think these sprouts were not doing well to begin with and once the mints took off they hogged the nutrients and the light making it even more difficult for the cucumbers to survive. But, it’s not quite over yet, there is still an ounce of life left but I don’t expect you’ll hear about them from me again.

The cherry tomatoes have been mentioned a few times; throughout August we have been eating them, more and more appear each week and they’re still coming.  I sense the plant will be winding down for the season soon, but I expect we’ll see a more tomatoes for a while.

Another unexpected surprise appeared when we returned from our vacation.  One giant strawberry (image taken on August 23rd). The last time we saw strawberries in our garden was towards the end of June and I assumed that would be it for the year and put the pot off to the side but continued to water it. By mid July the plant was sending out new vines reaching for the ground in order to sprout more plants. Towards the end of July a few new flowers appeared and by the end of August we received this beautiful strawberry, the largest of the year! 2 days later the strawberry was bright red, for some reason it had gone unnoticed by the squirrel who lives upstairs and is known for meddling in our plants. Because it was a cold and rainy day I decide that I would photograph and pick it the next morning… but by then it was gone.  I should have learned my lesson the first time around and pick it immediately when ripe! Perhaps there will be another this fall.

The brussels sprouts are showing some progress.  They are not drastically taller, but the stalks are getting a little thicker and the tiny sprouts are getting bigger every week.  Joe does not notice the change and worries we will not get sprouts this year,  but I am confident that they are eventually going to give us some food even if they’re smaller than we’re use to.

Last, an update of our herbs- mint, sage, lady lavender, thyme, french lavender, and basil.  We have been able to use fresh herbs all summer so far and I’ll mention that we have saved a lot of money because of it.  I absolutely love basil but I will often choose to not buy it at the store in order to save some money; we bought a our basil plant for $2.99 and have used it in 2-4 meals a week for the past 2 months. I’m interested in continuing the herb garden inside for the winter.

Gourstada, as in gourmet tostada.

Tostadas have to be one of the easiest and quickest meal or snack to make.  We make some sort of variation of a tostada meal at the very least once a week. Whether it’s our huevos rancheros, a simple bean and cheese, or loaded with random delicious it always proves to satisfy.

On this tostada we used almost all home grown vegetables! Starting from the top- straight from the garden, 3 anchos, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil were combined with balsamic vinegar and salt to make a fresh Italian inspired salad. Just beneath baby bella mushrooms sauteed in plum sauce with home grown kale. Below that are black beans warmed with fresh jalapeno from… you guessed it, our garden!  And of course at the base of it all are El Ranchero’s tostadas.

Ingredients : cherry tomatoes, basil, ancho, balsamic vinegar, kosher salt, baby bellas, kale, plum sauce, black beans, jalapenos, El Ranchero tostadas, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese.

At the base of most our our tostadas we use some sort of bean, in this one we used black beans- no, we did not grow them. However the jalapenos were fresh cut from the pot, our first actual harvest of peppers all year! We may have picked these jalapenos a little soon, but they have been growing for quite a while & we just wanted to try them. There are plenty more where they came from; our jalapeno & “red” chili pepper pot is growing like crazy. So many peppers to go. Now, if only these supposed red chilis would turn red. Back to the black beans and jalapenos- drain black beans and simmer on low heat with diced jalapenos while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Next prepare your salad for the top.  We used all the red cherry tomatoes from our garden, which was about ten and an additional handful from our organic produce delivery. They were chopped in quarters from the top making small wedges, a perfect bite size for this dish.

3 anchos were hollowed out, sliced in thin rings and then halved. They were the largest of our peppers so far, although they probably would have grown a little bigger; we felt it was time to cut them down as the slender stems could barely hold them up anymore and were not producing any more flowers. They were perfect for this meal though, very crisp and had a nice mild spice to them.  The basil was sliced into thin strips as well. All ingredients were combined and tossed with some balsamic vinegar and kosher salt to taste.  Set aside and refrigerate until serving time.

The last step in preparation for this meal is the mushroom kale layer.  First chop kale into small pieces.  Remove the stem from the center and slice or tear the leaf into small bits.  Set aside and slice the mushrooms, in a large frying pan heat up a 2-3 tablespoons of plum sauce and a splash of olive oil, sautee mushrooms coating them with the plum sauce flavoring.  Toss in kale and saute a bit more. Once they are done cooking it’s time to plate your tostada.  Remove from heat and get ready to assemble your meal.

Joe and I made 4 tostadas, 2 each and it was the absolute perfect amount.  We were both completely full but not even a little bit over stuffed!

To assemble : lay El Ranchero tostadas on the plate, add beans and jalapenos, sprinkle with cheese if desired- we used a mixture of shredded cheddar and mozzarella because that’s what we had. Next make a layer of the mushroom and kale with plum sauce and top it off with your fresh ancho, basil, and tomato salad.

Generally we think of tostadas as being a mexican flavored dish, we still used a lot of the same traditional ingedients (beans, corn tostada, tomatoes, and jalapenos) but introduced some completely different flavors to the dish as well. I really enjoyed this combination because the bottom layer of beans was a bit spicy and totally cooked, the middle layer was cooked a bit but still somewhat fresh with sweetness of the plum sauce, and the top layer of salad was also a bit spicy and flavored with basil but very fresh. It’s an odd mix of flavors but they all add something interesting to the dish and complement each other quite nicely.

Our cherry tomatoes are finally turning red! The other day we made our first salad using them- I have to say, fresh picked cherry tomatoes are oh so delicious and satisfying; I’m already anticipating the next ripe bunch any day now. This salad was thrown together with a mix of our usual produce, offerings from our organic produce box and some wonderful from our garden. Just thought I’d share the idea with you, it’s always nice to have salad inspiration- mmmm vegetables!

ingredients :: red leaf lettuce, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, olives, cheddar cheese, 1 baby ancho, pine nuts, basil, hard boiled egg, mustard seed dressing.

The preparation of this meal is pretty obvious, chop vegetables as necessary and combine.  The basil in our garden is now growing well and we have been able to use it a couple times a week with out depleting it completely.  One of our plants started off slowly and seemed to be struggling so we repotted it, changed it’s location, and trimmed it down. Now, it’s growing really well. Another basil plant started off full and healthy, once we started to chop stems from it we found it wasn’t growing back; we started to pick just the larger leaves from the top so that new growth could move in and it seems to be working out right. New leaves keep appearing and the plant is now becoming more stable.

Our ancho peppers, also known as pablano peppers, are probably the most impressive peppers growing in the garden right now because they are getting so big. We have three fairly large ones that seem to be taking over the plant and weighing it down.  We’re going to pick them to eat tomorrow and hopefully the plants will continue to produce.  The one we used for this salad was tiny and fell prematurely- but we decided to use it anyway.  Although it was very small it still tasted nice. Anchos are a fairly mild pepper, this one smelled like it might be spicy but didn’t really offer any heat.  We just sliced it as a topper for fun.

The cherry tomatoes are doing well, the whole pot of plants is filled with green, orange and red fruits.  We only had a handful this time around but it was definitely enough to brighten up this salad.  They were near perfect!

We used a red leaf lettuce as the base of our salad, raspberries from our fresh produce delivery last week, and pine nuts.

Green olives are always a nice addition to a salad, I don’t always like to use dressing- if I do, I take it on the side.  Olives and fresh herbs usually add enough extra flavor on their own for me.  And last, cheddar cheese and a hard boiled egg for some extra protein. We have a little egg slicer which is perfect for slicing uniform rounds for a salad. I also like to quarter them or halve them as well- any way will be good!

The dressing on the side is one we have been preparing an awful lot these days.  It originated from our raw kale salad, and now that we’ve made it several times it’s an easy one to whip up and modify quickly.  This time we added some crushed red pepper to spice it up.