Foraging Recipe: Fast Easy Pita Pizzas with Goat Cheese, Pepper Cress and Roasted Field Garlic

These quick pita pizzas feature one of my favorite late-winter flavor combinations with the crispy crust of classic Roman-style pizzas, and go yard-to-table in about 15 minutes. For busy homesteaders, these pita pizzas are a workhorse, turning home-grown and foraged produce into quick and easy meals with few dishes and little clean-up. 

But this is slow fast food. The flavors of pepper cress and roasted field garlic, tempered with mild goat cheese are a combination fit for gourmet restaurants.  

Biding its time underneath the snow for the first thaw, Cardamine Hirsuta is everywhere this time of year. It goes by many names, peppercress, shotcress (as I was taught) and hairy bitter cress, though it is neither hairy nor too bitter.

It's especially fond of damp places, but I've found it in almost every type of environment throughout the Great Lakes region, from woodlands, gardens, and waste sites, to sandy soiled barrens, and lawns. 

 

It looks, tastes and has a very similar delicate texture to its close gourmet relative, watercress. It forms a small rosette in fall and grows over winter. Though most of its look-alikes are other edible cresses and "little mustards," for beginners honing their plant eyes, it bears a very slight resemblance to some poisonous plants of the carrot family, including poison hemlock, pictured below, which lacks the rounded leaflets seen above. 

(Ooooh, not this one! This one's poison hemlock!)

The next ingredient in this recipe is field garlic, allium vinaele, another plant that's nearly universal around the Great Lakes region this time of year. 

It's often found in grasslike dense clumps that have outgrown your lawn over winter and have a strong garlic aroma when crushed. The greens and the bulbs are edible and have no poisonous imposters. 

The bulbs can be roasted in a hot oven just like garden garlic. Together with the peppercress, the two form a nice flavor combination. 

Recipe:

Ingredients 

1 Lebanese or other thin pita (not Greek pita.)

1/1 - 1 C chopped pepper cress

1 clump field garlic (12 bulbs)

Pasta or pizza sauce to taste

Goat cheese to taste

Fresh mozzarella to taste

Pinch dried italian herbs (fennel seed, oregano, basil)

Pinch sea salt

1 T olive oil 

Remove the greens from the field garlic and set aside. Wrap the clean bulbs in tinfoil and add a few drops of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and a crack of pepper. Place in the oven to cook while the oven heats and turn the oven to 450 degrees. Garlic should roast in about 15 minutes. 

Sprinkle the bottom of the pita (you decide which side will better hold the ingredients) with olive oil and then italian herbs and sea salt. Turn it over and give the edges of the crust the same treatment. 

Spoon dolops of sauce onto the pizza, then a light crumbling of goat cheese and pieces of mozzarella. Don't over-do it. To many ingredients will keep the pizzas from getting crispy. 

Add 1/4 - 1/2 Cup of chopped pepper cress, keeping some aside for the finished pizza. 

By now, the garlic should be ready and the oven hot, so remove the garlic and put it on the pizza. 

Then put the pizza in the oven, directly on the rack. At this point, I often switch the oven to "broil" to finish the top of the pizza. It should cook up in about 5 minutes. 

Voila! Sprinkle some more fresh pepper cress on top and a drizzle of olive oil. A quick gourmet meal from your yard months before the first annual vegetables will be ready! 

Vegetables for a Zone 6 Winter Garden

Seeing my neighbors walking down the sidewalk in t-shirts today, it's easy to forget that it's mid-late December. Especially when compared to the last two winters, which were some of the coldest on record. 

But it's also easy to forget that the last two winters were abnormal, at least in recent memory. In my lifetime in Michigan and Northern Illinois, we've had a white Christmas less than 50% of the time. 

And so long as there isn't snow on the ground, we can go outdoors and be greeted by some of our winter plant friends. Many seem to think you need a green house or hoop house to enjoy fresh greens in the winter, but it ain't so. In fact, even after having a good snow cover a couple of times, there are a whole cadre of over-wintering ephemerals and early spring ephemerals that only appear in the cold months, and they're some of the best!

So, here are some greens we can grow and forage to kick off the scurvy through the holidays.

Starting with some of the traditional vegetables, kale still looks great this time of year and in my opinion is at its sweetest after a snow. 

 This is a perennial leek, Babington's leek, but other winter leeks should look just as good right now. 

Arugula is also looking good still, though starting to get bitter. But harvesting young plants and small leaves still gives amazing gourmet salads. 

A wide variety of perennial herbs help spice up savory winter dishes. Sage is great with winter squash recipes. We're still making "Delicatta fries" with oil (or butter) and browned ssage sauces, and we'll soon move on to Butternut and Seminole pumpkin, sauteed with sage and turned into a pasta sauce.

A wide variety of thymes are also still helping out in egg dishes and soups. 

Our perennialized patches of garlic are producing greens this time of year and can be dug when the soil's dry for fresh garlic bulbs. An absolute farmhouse delicacy. 

Blood-veined sorrel and blue-stemmed Welsh onion. 

A crunchy cultivated purslane, Stella Minutina. 

Beautiful rosettes of endive, which were cut a month before to encourage fresh new greens over winter. 

Others endives were potted up and brought inside for a true gourmet vegetable, Belgian endive loaf, that sells for as much as $5/head at the store - if you can even find them! Blanched in a dark closet or basement, they produce crunchy green heads than can be grilled, roasted, or used in salad or pasta dishes. We like to use the crunchy spoon-shaped leaves as "dippers" for hummus or tapas dishes instead of crackers or bread. 

Deer stay away from the Evening Dame's Rocket, but I think it tastes better now than the Turkish rocket they've been feasting on. 

Turkish rocket is a bit hairy this time of year. Not my fave to be honest. 

Parsley is great in winter dishes. Next year I plan on growing way, way more. Bill Mollison says a sort of self-sowing permanant parsley patch can be set up so that you never have to do without. We'll plan on testing that out next year. 

Salad burnet is at its best right now, too. A nice cucumber flavor and a texture like pea tips. 

Egyptian walking onions are still producing green onions, and will continue to, even under the snow. 

Chickweed is going strong and reminds me of sprouts when added to a sandwich. 

Peppercress or shotcress is a great green that's a relative of watercress and gardencress. This time of year, it has a texture and flavor (and reportedly, nutrition) very similar to those two gourmet vegetables.

Speaking of, here's watercress growing in bowls of water on our window sill. A very economical way of producing winter greens that are very nutritious. 

Looks very similar to the wild cress. At this size, virtually indistinguishable.

A polyculture of chickweed, onion grass, cress and sticky willy carpet the forest garden this time of year. 

Young seedlings of miner's lettuce are just emerging and will be ready by spring. 

A few larger specimens are further along, competing here with dead nettle, chickweed, and motherwort (and a leaf of poison hemlock! One must be very careful when foraging.)

Sorrel leaves are tangy and tender this time of year. Unfortunately, the deer think so, too. 

The deer are also a little too fond of our campanula persicifolia, which is at its best this time of year. This one has been over-harvested by the deer.  

Dead nettle Vs stinging nettle. Can you tell them apart? The nettle stings and is just finishing it's growth cycle for the year. The Dead Nettle is a mint with no sting, and it's just starting its yearly growth.  Both are edible as a cooked green. 

Winter forest garden, looking pretty dormant to the untrained eye, but to the initiated, it's still a full-service healthfood store! 

Garlic and wild cress omlette with winter greens salad and olives. 

Tasty winter salad.