Recipe: Garden-variety focaccia decorated with whimsy
The finished product: Edible art.
(Photos: Debbie Arrington) |
It's OK to play with your food, especially when making focaccia.
This simple Italian flatbread can be a blank canvas for garden-inspired edible "art." Use cut vegetables, tomatoes and herbs as your "paint."
Using sliced peppers, tomato, onions and more, create geometric designs or whimsical flowers. Clusters of sliced cherry tomatoes can become bouquets of appetizing blooms.
Slice toppings about 1/8- to 1/4-inch thick. Dip parsley or cilantro in lemon juice mixed with water, so those leaves will retain their green color during baking.
Then, have fun. Garden-variety focaccia is something the whole family can help create.
A bread machine speeds up the dough-making process. The actual baking takes less than 25 minutes.
Too hot to turn on the oven? This focaccia can be "baked" on the grill.
Garden-variety focaccia
Makes one large loaf
Ingredients:
Use a variety of vegetables to "paint" a picture. |
Satisfied with the picture? Brush with olive oil, sprinkle
with salt, and pop it in the oven.
|
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Garden Checklist for week of May 5
Survey your garden after the May 4 rainstorm. Heavy rain and gusty winds can break the neck of large flowers such as roses. Also:
* Keep an eye on new transplants or seedlings; they could take a pounding from the rain.
* Watch out for powdery mildew. Warmth following moist conditions can cause this fungal disease to “bloom,” too. If you see a leaf that looks like it’s dusted with powdered sugar, snip it off.
* After the storm, start setting out tomato transplants, but wait on the peppers and eggplants (they want warmer nights). Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.
* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.
* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.
* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash.
* Plant onion sets.
* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias. Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.
* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.
* Don’t wait; plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.