Fresh | Winter garden grows pizza

Finally, I got around to racking the leaves. While this might seem to have nothing to do with a new food column, stay with me. Since Thanksgiving (our first big snow) I have been waiting for a warm, snow-free day to coincide with a day off and the energy to bag the leaves I raked into big piles in the fall. The piles that have been slowly rotting in the driveway and all over the back porch.

Finally, that day was here and after using all the bags I had, I decided to turn some leaves and grass clippings into my not-so-great garden soil. Which is when I found these: little onions that had been escaped the last garden harvest and had been quietly growing and hanging out through snow and ice under a blanket of maple leaves.

I am by no means a great gardener. Or even a good gardener. I harvested about four radishes last year, no tomatoes, some rosemary and enough lettuce to make two dinner salads. I managed to kill: the basil, the squash, the pumpkins, the sage, the coriander, the cabbage, the chamomile, and an entire garden of succulents.

Still, I am drawn to the inescapable magic of pulling something out of the ground and eating it. I am thrilled to completely bypass the supermarket, and participate in the magic that is the earth making something to keep me alive. So, although it's by no means "onion season" I've decided to start this food/photography column with these little onions, little bits of magic in these winter months.

Since there are only a few of these babies, I decided to make one of my favorite (and easy) healthy-ish dinners, an onion tart that I adapted from a recipe found long ago in Cooking Light. Start with some onions. The original recipe calls for 1 large Vidalia. I say, use what you‚ve got.

Just chop up enough sweet onions (red, yellow, whatever) to fill a large cereal bowl. You want them to be kind of large pieces; remember, these are the main part of the dish, not a seasoning. Add either around 10 garlic cloves, or 2-3 tsp. chopped garlic. If you go for cloves, you‚ll have yummy big pieces of roast garlic in the tart. If not, you‚ll still have the taste, but less prep.

The original recipe also calls for 10 shallots, cut in half. I put them in if they‚re easy to come by (meaning, cheap and I can find them at the store), but the tart is just fine without them too. In another bowl, mix up 1-2 tbsp. butter, melted, about 1 tbsp. honey, and 3 tbsp. balsamic vinegar. Add some thyme.

Dump the onions in and stir them up to coat them. Spread them on a baking pan and bake at 425 degrees for around 40 min., stirring once. Note that this can make a real mess of your baking pan, so either use a high-quality nonstick pan, or cover the pan in tinfoil to keep from having to soak and scrub the pan forever. While the onions are roasting, take a canned pizza crust and spread it out on a pan that has been sprinkled with a bit of corn meal.

Crumble 2/3-1 C blue cheese. When the onions are done, dump them in the middle of the crust, put the cheese on top and salt and pepper to taste. Fold the edges of the crust over so nothing escapes and pop it back in the oven for another 15 min. or so, until the crust is brown. Yum!

* Fresh is photo/food column by Yakima Herald-Republic photographer Sara Gettys. To see Sara's tips on food photography, visit the photo blog at yakimaheraldphotos.com