(Crustless) Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

So it's that time of year when the basil plants are turning into small trees and the swiss chard leaves in the garden have begun to look Jurassic.

Lulu and walked around the corner to Doug's Market to get ground beef for dinner as I racked my brain for meal ideas. At 6:30 pm.  I do that.

Pre-Baby this little errand took about 3 minutes, 1 minute to walk there, 1 minute to browse the butcher shop/junk food array and check out and 1 minute to walk home.



That was then.  Now it takes at least half an hour.

We have to stop and watch the "tiny ants" and explore the steps of the Metropolitan Baptist Church and step triumphantly in the mud puddle "wa-der under my feet!" And this is with me coercing and/or dragging her most of the way. But the good thing about these laborious trips is I have time to imagine what I will do with the fresh ground beef I just bought.  What needs to be eaten most in my garden tonight?

The answer was definitely swiss chard.  

The leaves were twice as big as my head.  

This picture doesn't show them because when I took it, 

they were already on my cutting board waiting their turn to go into dinner.

Here's what I ended up doing, and lo and behold Samm (who likes pretty gourmet food) and Lulu and I (who like home-cooked comfort food) all loved it.   

It's flavor and pie-shape inspired us to call it Deep-Dish Pizza, though obviously it's a far (healthier) cry from the real thing. 

Enjoy!

1 bunch of Swiss Chard
1 small white onion
2 T olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 clove of garlic + 2 T dry garlic
1 bunch of fresh basil
3/4 cup  canned crushed tomato
1 T honey
2 T (or less) red pepper flakes
1 t oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 lb parmesan cheese

Heat up oil in a skillet.  While it's heating, shop up onion and stems of the chard.  Once a drop of water sizzles in the pan, toss in the onion and chard stems.  Let them brown a bit (3-4 min), stirring once or twice and then add the ground beef. Turn on broiler. Once the beef is very close to being all browned, add garlic and chunky leaves of chard.  Once the leaves are wilted (3 or 4 min), add tomato sauce, basil (reserve a few leaves) honey, and spices.  Stir and pour into pie pan.  Shred the cheese on top and dip the remaining basil leaves in olive oil (or ideally a home-made lemon/oil/garlic/pepper salad dressing to go with your side salad!) and arrange on top of the cheese.

Put in broiler for a few minutes until the cheese begins to brown.   Voila!  Garden fresh, pizza -esque, low carb wonder.  The chard and basil together make a wonderful bright flavor and texture... It's pretty messy to get on the plate, but that didn't stop us from devouring all of it within minutes.  Serves 3 hungry people.  :)