Chard Tart with Pine Nuts

I remember you making chard pie when I was younger, Mom, and I got to thinking about it this week when I bought some tender, lovely Swiss chard. I didn't want something too eggy -- not a full-on quiche, but rather a light, creamy pie with lots of chard.

I used this crust recipe, which has become my favorite for both savory and sweet uses. It's pretty rich, but if you're going to go to the bother of making crust, why mess around?

I used the food processor this time, and it worked fine. I rolled out the dough, pressed it into a tart ring, brushed it with plenty of egg white, and put it in the fridge to chill.

For the filling, I sauteed in olive oil:

1 very small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 big bunch Swiss chard (1 lb?), including stems, chopped

I let that cool slightly, then added it to a bowl in which I had beaten together:

3 whole eggs + the leftover white (the other leftover white was used to brush the dough)
3 oz cream cheese (I had no Parmesan, which is what I would have used; this gave it a nice mild smoothness.)
1/2 cup half and half, roughly
salt
pinch of nutmeg
lots of black pepper

I poured the filling into the tart shell -- it was very wet, another reason to make a rich crust -- and sprinkled the top with a handful of pine nuts. I baked it for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

As with most egg dishes, it was much better once it had cooled to room temperature. It was mild and clean-tasting, and the pine nuts seemed impossibly sweet, almost candied, against the dark green chard flavor.

Cooking Habit Live and In Person: Plating

I liked this sequence of photos from when we made dinner together earlier this week, Mom.

First, roasted tomato vinaigrette.

Then polenta -- just coarse cornmeal and water simmered for a few hours and finished with butter and parmesan -- and pan-grilled grouper.

And finally swiss chard, grown and harvested by Dad and sauteed by you with some garlic.

Salmon, Red Potatoes, Chard--and Aioli

I took the shortcut tonight and made an aioli-type sauce based on mayonnaise, mixed with yogurt to make it lighter--after all, farmed salmon is fatty enough already, no point in adding an extra cup or two of olive oil. The menu tonight was roasted salmon with basil aioli, roasted red potatoes, swiss chard with onions and garlic, and fresh raspberries.

Over the last couple of days we've had red chile enchiladas with chorizo, guacamole salad; tofu with red curry sauce on a bed of cabbage; and many beautiful cherry tomatoes from the garden.

Basil Aioli Sauce for Salmon

Chop finely, or use food processor:

2 tablespoons fresh basil

2 cloves garlic

2 anchovy fillets

Juice and rind of 1/2 lemon

Several dashes hot pepper sauce

Stir into:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Salt and pepper to taste

Spiced Lamb Meatballs and Yellow Chard

It was hard to get a pretty picture of this meal, but boy did it taste good. I bought ground lamb and made a Claudia Roden recipe in which the lamb was mixed with allspice, cumin, and coriander, and then formed into meatballs. I sauteed the meatballs with some onions and garlic, and added tomato paste to make the whole thing into a stew. We ate it over rice. It was a great recipe for a busy night in which I wandered in and out of the kitchen a lot -- sort of time-consuming, but easy and spread out.

The chard was actually the tops of some golden beets I bought over the weekend. It looked kind of tough, but ended up being tender and really mild -- Lawson said it tasted like turnip greens, and he was right. I sauteed the stems in olive oil first, then added the leaves and some red chile and garlic and a bit too much salt.

I'll be going on about greens a lot over the next several days, as I am working on a piece about collards for the Free Times. I even interviewed a local organic farmer yesterday about them. Oh, I love collards.

Yes, Hot Dogs

We're still trying to use up the leftovers from a party we had several weeks ago, which is why I'm eating hot dogs for dinner. Although the party involved homemade pizza and fresh fruit, it also involved slaw dogs...and people ate all the dogs but left a bunch of leftover buns. So we bought more hot dogs. This was a totally logical thing to do.

Slaw dogs are one of the more bizarre Southern foods I've encountered. I'd heard of them and figured they were just hot dogs topped with coleslaw, until I found myself in a hot dog restaurant near the beach earlier this year and ordered one on a whim. It turns out a slaw dog is a hot dog topped with mustard, meat chili, and coleslaw. And I swear, it's completely delicious. Unreal.



For our home experiments I bought the all-beef, less sketchy hot dogs, and they're good. We have no more chili or coleslaw, so we're eating them plain. These were the last of them, grilled, served plain on whole wheat buns with ketchup and mustard. With them we had sauteed beet greens with garlic (on the left). My favorite thing about buying beets is that you can get two separate vegetable dishes out of one bunch -- the beets one night and the greens another. We also had the first garden eggplant of the year, grilled and tossed with olive oil and garden basil (on the right).

Mom, are you totally horrified that I eat hot dogs now? In my defense, it was probably you who fed me my first hot dog. It was probably cut into small slices with a toothpick in each one.

Essential Kitchen Implements

My friend Kerry pointed out this story about the bare minimum equipment needed for a kitchen. You would think a list of basic kitchen items would be uncontentious, but no: I disagree with at least a third of these suggestions. He has things on that list that Lawson and I, with our merged and overflowing kitchen, don't have. Tell me how a salad spinner is essential. And a mandoline? Minimalist? My knife skills suck, too, but come on.

An instant-read thermometer would have been nice when I was learning to cook, but I didn't have one until last year, and we only use it for barbecue (and, lately, for measuring the temperature of the compost heap).

The more I think about it, every cook's minimal list would likely be quite different -- not just a sharp knife and a saucepan, as you might expect. Cookbooks with lists of "essential" equipment always contain some truly puzzling items, right? My theory: unless you grow up insanely privileged, you probably first cook on your own under somewhat financially distressed conditions, and what you do and don't have during that time shapes what you consider essential. I cannot imagine dealing with the plastic cutting board recommended in the article, but I could happily do without a food processor, a skimmer, or a slotted spoon. Oddly, I have never owned a slotted spoon. But I've always owned a big heavy chunk of wood on which to chop.

I guess I should balance that rant out with a picture and a recipe. Here are chard stems:


And here is my favorite way to cook chard:

Saute in 2 tablespoons olive oil:

- 2 cloves garlic, sliced
- one small dried red chile (de arbol, Thai, whatever), deseeded

Turn heat to medium high and add:

-1 big bunch chard, washed, stems separated and cut into 1/2" pieces

(Add the stems first, then the leaves a few minutes later. Chard stems are soooo tasty and should not be thrown away unless they are horrendously tough.)

Saute for a few minutes until stems are soft and leaves are wilty. Remove from heat and sprinkle with:

- 2 or so ounces feta (think of it as seasoning, not topping -- this is in lieu of salt)

I like it best after about fifteen minutes, just above room temperature.

I leave for the beach tomorrow. I will cook some good food there and post about it.