Swiss chard pizza

OK, first I have to apologize for not writing sooner. I have been getting complaints about not blogging for a week. Sorry about that, my friends. I love you and I love food, but I do have a full time job and I do work on a master's degree at the same time. Being on vacation was so lovely. Unfortunately life does not stop. So it's been a lot to get caught up with work and my class work this past week. In addition, I do this blog for FUN. If you cannot deal, read someone else's blog. If you can deal, here's my latest adventure in the kitchen:

PIZZA is my fav food, along w/ burritos. See, my tastes are not complicated even though I do appreciate "frou frou food" as one my friends likes to put it. I also adore greens. One of the best things about winter in the South is the greens that are in season. One of the most beautiful and delicious is rainbow swiss chard. I stumbled across it in Harris Teeter. It is very seasonal and usually they only carry the regular green variety. Rainbow chard has green leaves but the stalks are beautiful shades of yellow, orange, and red. I LOVE IT. It tastes the same as regular swiss chard but it looks gorgeous on the plate.

Anyway, what does one do w/ chard? I like it chopped up and sauteed w/ garlic and red pepper flakes, but I recently discovered a great recipe on epicurious.com for pizza with chard and goat cheese. Here's the basic idea:

Preheat oven to 500F.
1. Make or buy pizza dough.
2. Mix 2T of olive oil w/ 1/4 t. red pepper flakes and 1 clove of crushed garlic. Let sit for a couple of hours.
3. Chop up the chard and place for 5 mins. into boiling water. Drain and saute in olive oil w/ garlic for a couple of mins. Season w/ salt and black pepper.
5. Drizzle half of oil seasoned w/ pepper flakes and garlic on the pizza dough.
6. Sprinkle shredded mozzarella on top of oil. Use however much you like. I probably put on 6oz.
6. Spread chard on top of cheese.
7. Slice a 4oz. log of goat cheese into rounds and place on top of chard.
8. Drizzle w/ rest of oil.

BAKE for 15 min. or until crust is done.

Yum!

Next time I will write about the joys of whole wheat flour which, by the way, makes great pizza dough!