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.

A quick entry with a recipe for fancy butter…

1 stick of salted butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon honey
2 cloves of roasted garlic
1/8 heaping teaspoon hot pepper powder

Combine ingredients into a small storage container and enjoy all week while you use it to make all your breads and crackers taste more exciting ;)

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.

Salad is a dish that has infinite possibilities. You can add just about anything you desire and it’s near impossible mess it up (with the exception of adding raw onions).   We are trying to eat salads more often- like everyday.  I don’t know why we don’t do this already because it’s not hard to prepare, it can be a very filling meal, and you never feel gross after eating it.  The freshness is light, leaving you with energy instead of feeling overstuffed and heavy.

I want to share with you the salad we made the other day as inspiration for you to increase your salad intake as well as getting creative with what you add to your own.  The best part about this is that you have control over what you include in your salad, which means you can make it perfectly delicious to your taste.  Plus it can be as laborious or as simple as you want to make it. Here is what we used in ours this time…

Baby spinach, greenish red heirloom tomatoes & cucumbers.

Herbs- rosemary, thyme & sage.  Each chopped up a bit, especially the sage which we only used a tiny amount of.  We still don’t quite know what to do with sage yet but I like the flavor so we try to use it anyway ;).

Portobello mushrooms sauted in olive oil with chili garlic paste & basil. I like a little spice so I easily added a bit of our favorite hot sauce.  Crushed red pepper or black pepper would be a nice and convenient option for heat as well.  I like to saute the portobello slices until almost cooked before i add the Basil. Adding it towards the end wilts it just enough to cling to the mushrooms but still taste fresh.

#1 Best tofu and crumbles.   This salad was delicious and extremely satisfying.  Adding either the tofu or the crumble would be enough crisp for one salad, but adding both is twice as nice.  More salad ideas to come…