Tomato Harvest. Celebrity, Early Girl, Enchantment, Green Zebra, and Sungold varieties.

Summer is drawing to a close here in my edible landscape and I’ve been busy harvesting the last of the tomatoes.  We all have an elegant sufficiency of tomatoes sometimes…so, what to do?

I suggest you throw a “garden pizza party”.  You supply the pizza dough and veggies from your garden such as eggplant, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes (of course!).  Add in some fresh herbs like basil, cilantro, thyme, oregano, and rosemary and you’re ready.  Set up your kitchen assembly line style and let your friends design their own pizzas.  To get you started, here is one of my favorite tomato pizza recipes with a Mexican flair:

Mexican-Style Pizza with Cilantro

This unusual pizza marries the best Southwestern seasonings with Italian basics. It’s dynamite! You can use any homegrown great tomato for this recipe but paste (roma types), if you can get good ones, are quite meaty and make your pizza less soggy. If you want you can substitute pepper Jack cheese that is pre-seasoned with jalapenos and leave out the minced jalapenos.

Serves 4.

Mexican Pizza

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 3 large cloves garlic, pressed, divided
• 1 uncooked 10″ pizza shell, your own or a commercial one
• 1/3 pound (1 1/4 cups grated) Monterey Jack cheese
• 1 to 6 teaspoons minced jalapeno peppers, to taste
• 3 to 4 ripe tomatoes, sliced
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 3 to 4 finely chopped tablespoons of fresh cilantro
• 1/3 teaspoon cumin seeds

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Heat a medium skillet, add olive oil. Add the onions and two cloves of pressed garlic and sauté them over low-to-medium heat until the onion is soft and translucent, about ten minutes.

Place the pizza shell on a baking sheet. Grate the cheese and distribute it evenly over the pizza shell, reserving about 1/2 cup of cheese for the top. Spread the onions and jalapeno peppers over the cheese. Slice the tomatoes and place on top of cheese and onions. Grind black pepper over the tomatoes. Mix the chopped cilantro with remaining clove of pressed garlic and distribute mixture over the pizza. Sprinkle cumin seeds and reserved 1/2 cup of cheese over the pizza.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until the cheese is bubbling and the crust is light brown. Cut pizza into 8 slices and serve immediately.

Enjoy!