CSA week 18 - Chard and turnip gratin

Not the most complicated or unusual recipe to start the week with, but I encountered some trouble getting the ingredients I need for the other recipes I've got planned so it's the only one I've got ready to go. Also, the only other chard and turnip gratin recipe Google finds is a substandard one I made last year. As far as I can tell nobody's been looking for such a thing, but if anyone does, I want them to find something better.

I started by putting together the mise en place for the gratin assembly and preheating the oven to 375 degrees. And finding an 8-inch cast iron pan.

The chard needs to be blanched a bit. Our small bunch was particularly young and tender so I simmered the stems for a minute, added the leaves, and simmered for one minute more. Then I rinsed them in cold water to stop the cooking, squeezed out the liquid and chopped them fairly finely. I mixed that with chopped parsley and shallots, thyme and salt.

For the cheese, I mixed about even amounts of Kilaree, a young Irish cheddar and Havarti.

And I sliced, paper thin, three medium turnips.

Here's the first layer; Isn't it pretty?

That's a slightly overlapping single layer of turnip, a scattering of the chard mixture, a scattering of cheese and two Tablespoons of chicken stock and two Tablespoons of cream.

I think I got four layers before running out of chard. I topped with the last of the turnip and a layer of mixed Parmesan and bread crumbs and then covered it with foil.

40 minutes at 375 degrees foil on, 20 minutes foil off and a few minutes under the broiler and here it is:


The cooking brings out the turnip's sweetness which balances with the slight bitterness of the chard and the rich salty cheese for a nicely balanced combination of flavors. There's even a little toastiness from the topping. The turnip still has a little firmness to it, the chard a little chew and the top crisped up nicely. I went a little heavy on the stock so it's a little watery, but otherwise it's really very nice indeed.

CSA week 12 - Gumbo z'herbes

I'm not entirely certain about this. There are lots of recipes out there but they all agree on simmering the greens two hours or longer. Collards, OK maybe they can handle that. But chard and turnip greens? And what about the dandelion greens? Most of the recipes put them on the list of greens to include but nobody prepares them to deal with the bitterness.

I'm going to try it, but I dunno.

First step, clean and prep 2-3 pounds of greens--whatever you've got, the more variety the better. For those who haven't read the previous post, I had 1 bunch collards, 1 bunch chard, 1 bunch dandelion greens, 1 bunch turnip greens and 1 bunch radish greens. I did this prep the night before to avoid having dinner too very late.

Next step, get a gallon of water and/or stock (I used two cups of shrimp stock and the rest water) to a boil in a large pot and add the greens. Simmer for at least an hour.

Meanwhile,make a roux. I used the in-oven method. Mix equal parts fat and flour (I used 2 Tablespoons bacon drippings, 3 Tablespoons canola oil and 5 Tablespoons flour) in a big cast iron pot and put it in a 350 degree oven for at least an hour. No stirring necessary. The recipes that specify call for a peanut-butter colored roux, but they all also call for filé powder added at the end too. I don't have any filé so I'm not going to get that thickening. And, as you probably know, the darker the roux, the more flavor, but the less thickening power. So I pulled it out of the oven at around 1 hour 20 minutes. It looks peanut butter colored, but it started a little dark from the bacon drippings so I think I'm in good shape.

After that time, the greens have wilted considerably. Here they are along with half a cabbage, 1 bunch scallions and 1 bunch parsley that are going back into the pot with them later.

But before that, the pot with the roux goes up on the stove and in goes 1 large white onion, 1 green bell pepper and 3 stalks celery, chopped. I cooked that for 10 minutes over medium-high heat before adding the reserved stock and greens which I've roughly chopped, the cabbage, scallion and parsley (although what good scallion and parsley added this early will do I dunno), a ham hock, 2 bay leaves, 4 stalks thyme, 1 stalk rosemary, 4 allspice berries and a generous amount pre-mixed Cajun spice blend because I'm lazy.

It's at this point that I finally understand exactly how huge this batch of gumbo is. I'm going to be eating this for a month; it better be good.

Normally, that's the dish. Just simmer an hour more and serve, but I wanted it a little heartier so I added a couple links of andouille sausage and, 5 minutes before the end, a quarter pound of shrimp.

And here it is served over rice:


Hmmm...no real thickening at all. Or roux flavor, either, disappointingly. This is basically a huge mess of greens in a bucket of pot liquor. Lacking the filé powder, maybe I'll make up a slurry and bring it back up to a boil to thicken it up. It'll probably add a little raw flour flavor, but I'll trade that off for making this sauce into gravy. The greens still have a tiny bit of texture to them--the cabbage a little more--but mainly it's just soft. It's not falling apart like I expected though, so it's still in a pleasant neighborhood.

The flavors of the greens have all melded together to just a generic tasty green. No notable bitterness, or skunkiness from the boiled cabbage either. The herbs and spices round out the flavor a little and there's a hint of smokiness there. The sausage and shrimp weren't in long enough to swap flavors with the greens so they've retained all their flavor. The shrimp are a nice match, the sausage a bit less so. That'll probably change as everything melds in the refrigerator over night, though. I'll have some for lunch tomorrow and report back in a comment.

CSA week seven - Not quite banh pho xao he

This is a pretty straightforward vietnamese noodle dish modified from using a pound of garlic chives to using everything leafy and green within reach. The recipe I modified was from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen cookbook.

I cut the recipe down by about a quarter to adjust for the amount of noodles I had on hand. I'm going to use the original amounts to avoid weird numbers.

Ingredients:
1 pound banh pho flat rice noodles
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar, divided
3 Tablespoons fish sauce
3 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons cooking oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and cleaned
1/3 pound ground pork, broken up into bits
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 pound assorted leafy green vegetables [I used 1 bunch each of garlic chives, mizuna, swiss chard and cilantro], chopped or torn into 3- to 4-inch-wide pieces.
1 lime

1. Put the noodles in a large bowl and cover with hot tap water. Let them soak until pliable and opaque, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain. Cut into short lengths. The original recipe called for 3 to 4 inches, but I liked them a little longer.

2. Coarsely grind the shrimp into pea-sized pieces. Break up the pork into similarly sized pieces and mix with the shrimp.

3. Mix the fish sauce, water and 1 1/4 teaspoon of the sugar in a small bowl.

4. Heat oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. If it took less time and/or the garlic started to brown, turn the heat down; this isn't real stir-frying. Add the shrimp and pork. Break up the meat and add the salt and remaining sugar. Cook, stirring and breaking up clumps, until shrimp and pork have turned opaque, about 2 minutes.

5. Add the greens. Stir and fold to mix in the shrimp and pork and get different bits of the greens on the bottom. When the greens have wilted down by a third, add there's room in the wok, add the noodles. Mix well and add the fish sauce mixture. Turn the heat up until the sauce starts to sizzle and continue stirring 2 to 3 minutes longer, until the noodles and greens are soft and the noodles have absorbed a bit of sauce and darkened in color.

6. Remove from heat and squeeze in the juice from the lime. Mix once again and serve.


Hmm. Not bad. The shrimp and pork are, of course, great together and enhanced by the fish sauce. [When genetically modified lab-grown meat improves (right now they can just do a meat paste suitable for hot dogs and not much else and they have to use cells from animals that actually exist), they really ought to work on shrimp-pig.]

The chard goes pretty well with the other flavors and adds a substantially different flavor and texture than the garlic chives which I think is an improvement in the dish. The mizuna and cilantro seem to have wilted away to nothing, though, which is a shame.

I used the milder Vietnamese fish sauce so it's a low key dish that could do with some nuoc cham (or at least a little more fish sauce and lime juice) and sriracha to perk it up and maybe some fried garlic or shallots for crunch. Most Vietnamese recipes, I think, assume you've got your condiments and garnishes on hand to finish the seasoning of the dish. I added ground peanuts to my first serving, but the flavor isn't quite right. Fried garlic is a much better choice.

CSA week three - Morshan

This recipe is all over the web, cut and pasted on recipe sites and blogs (usually minus attribution and copyright information. This seems to be the origin.), but I can't find any indication that anyone's actually made it.

That's not right; somebody needs to step up, cook it and find out if it's any good and it may as well be me. I want to make this post easy to find for anyone who finds all the other copies so I'm not going to modify or rewrite it at all, just cut and paste like everyone else.

Chickpeas and Swiss Chard in the Style Tunisian Sahel (Morshan)


Recipe from: Mediterranean Cooking, Revised Edition, Copyright ©1994 by Paula Wolfert

Makes 4 servings

3/4 pound Swiss chard leaves, stemmed, rinsed and torn into large pieces [My CSA bunch yielded a half pound of leaves so I added in the thinner stems.]
2 large cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 small dried red chile
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup minced onion
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1 cup cooked chickpeas with 3/4 cup cooking liquid [There's about 3/4 cup liquid in a can of chickpeas so that worked out fine.]
1 lemon, cut in wedges, optional

1. In pot steam, parboil or microwave chard leaves until tender, about 5 minutes. [Our chard started out pretty tender so I cut this down to 2 minutes]

2. Set leaves in colander to drain.

3. Squeeze out excess moisture and shred coarsely.

4. Crush garlic in mortar with salt, coriander and chile until thick, crumbly paste forms.

5. Heat olive oil in 10-inch skillet and saute onion until pale-golden.

6. Add garlic paste and tomato paste and stir into oil until sizzling.

7. Add chard, cooked chickpeas and cooking liquid and cook, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes.

8. Remove from heat and let stand until ready to serve. (Contents of skillet should be very moist but not soupy. For looser texture, stir in more chick pea cooking liquid.)

9. Serve warm, at room temperature or cold with lemon wedges.


It's not bad, but not really inspired either. Maybe its because I haven't had a bowl of greens that wasn't callaloo in a while, but the chard seems really blah. The subtle spice and lemon are nice, but there's nothing much else going on here. I expect bigger flavors from Tunisian cooking. Judging from the other recipes on Ms. Wolfert's site, I think this has been wimped out for the Western palate and probably chard has been substituted in for another, more flavorful, green. It's a shame I couldn't find any other recipes for the dish for comparison.

CSA week 15 - Swiss chard meatloaf

Meatloaf was on special in the cafeteria today but I didn't like the looks of it (and I'm suspicious of "Jamaican-style" meatloaf although now that I've looked it up I find that a) it's a real thing and b) it uses coconut milk, pineapple and scallions which doesn't sound half bad). On the other hand, meatloaf would be a fine way to use up some more of the chard, so I stopped and picked up some meat on the way home and set to work.

I figure meatloaf is a recipe designed to use leftover scraps of meat and vegetables, but unlike other recipes of that ilk--fried rice, omelets and such--everyone argues about the perfect meatloaf recipe. I don't get that. Clearly, if there is such a thing it's however your mother made it but you still get cookbooks full of variations. What I wanted were general guidelines to improvise within. The closest I found were on the How to Cook Like Your Grandmother blog.

Start with a cup and a half or so of finely chopped starch--I used half bread crumbs and half oatmeal




Add around a cup of somewhat less finely chopped vegetables, generally raw--for the chard I decided to cook them a little to soften. I used just stems and quite a high heat to get a char on them for a little more flavor. I had hoped to use up more chard but I also wanted to include onion, mushrooms and some of last week's green pepper so I still have a whole lot of chard left. I may just blanch and freeze it as I really don't want to deal with it any more. (I used it in some tacos on Sunday too so this is the fourth dish including it this week.)


Then two eggs, 1/4 cup of dairy of one sort or another--I just used plain milk--and plenty of salt, pepper, spices and sauces--I used Worcestershire and a vinegar-less pepper sauce plus a teaspoon of a smokey paprika based spice mix.


All that gets mixed before adding two pounds of ground meat--I used half beef chuck and half pork. Mixing the rest beforehand helps avoid overworking the meat.

Lightly pack the mixture into a loaf pan and upend it into a baking dish or high-walled baking sheet. Room for runoff is important, particularly if you like the dried out end bits.

That goes into a 350 degree oven until the inside reaches 140 degrees. Or something like that. There's lots of disagreement on temperatures. This quite low final temperature makes sense to me since there's going to be a lot of residual heat and carryover cooking in something like this. And undercooked is easier to fix than overcooked. Unfortunately, I haven't got a probe thermometer so I'm going to have to poke in my baking thermometer after a while and hope I don't let it go to long. I'm guessing 45 minutes at least. ... More like an hour, it turns out. And there was no carryover heating or any runoff for that matter so I'm putting it back in the oven until it gets to at least 150. ... And another 20 minutes gets it to 180. Swell. No runoff, though, so all that moisture is still inside. Maybe the overcooking isn't too bad.


Here it is after resting. Lame presentation, but I finished my mizuna and grape tomato salad a good half hour before this was ready to serve. I was hoping to use pan drippings to make gravy, which would have looked nice drizzled over top, but no pan drippings. It's not really dry so no big deal. You can see that I didn't mix it as well as I should have, but I like I said earlier I didn't want to overwork the meat. The texture seems fine anyway: a bit crumbly, a bit meaty, a bit mushy. Meatloafy. It doesn't seem overcooked at all. I shouldn't be surprised that the recipe is so forgiving. That's the nature of these throw-together dishes. , The texture could use a little variation. The firmer and slightly crunchy edges are nice but I find I want a little sauce just for interest even if the meatloaf isn't so dry it needs it.


The flavor is classic meatloaf and a pretty good example of the form. I think maybe you can tell that I used oatmeal and good quality homemade bread crumbs; there seems to be a bit of depth to the starchy flavors. I'm a little disappointed not to have an identifiable chard note; I should have left out the pepper and doubled the chard. There's some slight variation from the meat-marbling so that's kind of interesting. It is missing sweetness; that's what I get for being lazy and not glazing it. But that's easily fixed with any number of sauces so maybe I'm better off with the choice of flavors to pair each slice with.

Right, so your takeaway here is: if you're looking for a way to use up leftover chard stems, meatloaf is a viable choice. OK, time to make the ice cream.

CSA week 15 - A couple things to do with chard

I had chard for both lunch and dinner today (Saturday that is. I'm setting this post to go up tomorrow while I'm at work. Best to pace these things out, don't you think?)

First off, I had some Portuguese chorizo I had bought for kale soup before I decided to go with an Italian recipe instead. I looked around for a Portuguese chard recipe, didn't find one, but found something close enough to adapt. This is chard and beans:


INGREDIENTS

1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
1 spring thyme
1 bay leaf
1/4 pound Spanish or Portuguese cured sausage
1/4 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
smoked paprika to taste
1 (15-ounce) cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 pound Swiss chard, mostly leaves, thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
salt and pepper
1/4 tablespoon white wine vinegar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oil in a medium pot with a tightly fitting lid over medium-high heat. When oil shimmers, add sausage and cook until crispy on both sides. (I didn't think of this until afterwards and added my sausage later. Crispy would have been better.) Remove sausage from pan.

2. Add onion, garlic and herbs to pan, season with freshly ground black pepper and smoked paprika. Stir to combine and turn heat down a little if the onion starts to brown too quickly. Cook until onion and garlic are soft and golden, about 4 minutes.

3. Reduce heat to medium low and add beans, chard, and broth. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes. Remove lid and continue cooking until chard is tender and broth is thick, about 5 minutes more.

4. Remove from heat and stir in parsley, salt, vinegar and sausage. Remove bay leaf and thyme sprig and serve with toast.


Tasty, but not really a very chard-centric dish as most of the flavor comes from the sausage and the herbs and spices, but the chard's inclusion does elevate it over a basic bowl of beans and weenies.


And for dinner I made a chard pesto:

I found a few recipes for such a thing on-line and they all disagreed about the ratios of the ingredients so I just winged it. They did, however, agree, that you had to cook the chard first. I used mostly stems since I had used mostly leaves earlier. I think I ended up with somewhere between a third and a half pound total. I chopped them up, melted some butter in a pan and cooked the stems for five minutes and added the leaves for three minutes more.

Meanwhile, I toasted an ounce of pinenuts in another pan, and grated out a half cup or so of Parmesan cheese.

Those all went into the food processor along with a handful of parsley and a few splashes of olive oil. After processing I ended up with a tan paste so I don't think I got the ratios right. I thinned it out with a little water, added some salt and, upon consideration, a little basil and oregano. I thinned it out with some pasta water later, too.

Then I boiled up some pasta, fried the squash, ladled the pesto on top and there you go.

Not bad, but it mainly tasted of toasty pinenuts and a bit of cheese. The chard didn't stand up. Also, I don't know if a thick sauce is what it's supposed to look like. Pesto I've seen is usually thin with green flecks, but when I ended up with a base of pinenut butter. Maybe I should have used a lot more olive oil? It wasn't bad mind you, just nothing like the parsley pesto from week nine that I was hoping for.

Still plenty of chard left. I should make something that actually tastes like it next time.

CSA week 11 - garlicky shrimp and greens tacos

Just a quick post here since this is a close variation of the steak and greens tacos I made back in week seven. The only changes were that I used the swiss chard and radish tops for the greens (and saved the chard stems for later), added a jalapeño and a dash of red pepper flakes in with the onion, put in four chopped extra-large shrimp with the garlic for the last two minutes of cooking, added a little water with the greens to deglaze the pan and replaced the queso fresco with slices of avocado and breakfast radish.

Normally, I'd save this for the weekly wrap up, but it turned out so well and it's such a quick and easy weekday dish I wanted to suggest it before you used your swiss chard for something else. The flavors of the browned onions, garlic, greens and shrimp blend beautifully. The textural contrasts of the creamy avocado and crisp radishes add an elevating aspect that was lacking in the steak and greens version. And I think just adding the step of deglazing the pan added a lot since the greens hold on to pan sauce so you get a nice burst of flavor with each bite. It makes things a little drippy but well worth it.

CSA week seven - Garlicky steak and greens tacos

This is my modified version of a Rick Bayless recipe for a taco he had at a market stall in Toluca, Mexico. It's pretty simple even after I added the steak so I think it's mainly meant as a vehicle for Bayless' rather more complicated roasted tomatillo chipotle salsa. It looks really good, but even if I could get all of the specific peppers he calls for I'm in no mood to deal with all that soaking and toasting and roasting and scraping and all so salsa from a bottle it is. I'm sure it does the recipe some harm, but there are good bottled salsas out there, right?

Ingredients

Makes 8 to 10 soft tacos.

• 8 to 10 corn tortillas (plus a few extra, in case some break)
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more for blanching
• 6 cups loosely packed sliced green or red chard leaves (one 12-ounce bunch) [I used the Asian braising greens minus the stems on the purple flowery stuff. I think that was more like 4 cups all told]
  
• 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
• 1 medium white onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 1/4 pound quick-fry suitable steak. [I used thin sliced top round]
  
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1/4 cup finely crumbled Mexican queso fresco; queso anejo; dry feta; pressed, salted farmer's cheese; or Parmesan cheese
• 3/4 cup Rick's Essential Roasted Tomatillo Chipotle Salsa
• Cilantro sprigs, for garnish

Directions

1. Warm the tortillas: Place a vegetable steamer in a large saucepan filled with 1/2 inch of water. Bring to a boil. Wrap tortillas in a heavy kitchen towel, lay them in the steamer, and cover with a tight lid. Boil 1 minute, turn off the heat, and let stand without opening for about 15 minutes.
2. Prepare the filling: While tortillas are steaming, bring 3 quarts salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add greens, and cook until barely tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain in a colander, and spread out on a large plate or baking sheet to cool. When cool enough to handle, roughly chop.
3. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add steak, cook for 5 minutes more. Add garlic, stir for 1 minute, then add greens, and stir for about 1 minute, just long enough to heat them through. Season with salt.
4. Prepare the tacos: Scoop the filling into a deep, warm serving dish, and sprinkle with cheese. Serve with the warm tortillas, salsa, and cilantro sprigs.

When I lived in Queens, New York, there was a Mexico City-style taqueria a few blocks away. I'm not going to say that this recipe turns out something I might have bought there, but the flavors definitely took me back. The properly steamed corn tortilla did half the work there, but the rest was in the right neighborhood, too.

I didn't expect the greens to wilt away quite so much. I wanted the filling to be mostly greens with a bit of beef but they're more equal partners which gave unfortunate prominence to the fact that the beef wasn't cooked in a big bubbling vat of meat juices the way real taquerias do it.

The greens, on the other hand, I think were cooked nicely: just a little al dente so they've still got some character both in texture and flavor. It would have been easy for the salsa to walk all over the other flavors, which were rather more subtle than you'd expect with all that garlic, but the lightly cooked greens helped the filling hold its own against it. Unfortunately, while I could find a quality tomatillo salsa, that left out the chipotles whose smokiness wouldn't have been a bad addition. Maybe I'll add some in with the onions if I make this again.

I'm thinking about variations and tweaks but I find I don't want to over-complicate it with a bunch of extra flavors. Simple is best for tacos. I do think I'd like to take out the steak and add shrimp for a baja-style greens taco. I think I'd want a red salsa with that, but no need to change the seasonings otherwise : shrimp, garlic and olive oil is a classic no matter the cuisine.

CSA week five - Swiss chard and turnip gratin

The lentil soup I made yesterday only used half my chard--most of my leaves and none of the stems--so I had enough to try out Sandrine's suggestion of a gratin. Well, not quite enough, but I planted one of the turnips we got back in week one and its leaves have grown so large it's been blocking light to other plants in my herb garden. A quick look on-line found turnip gratin recipes that were close cousins to the chard gratin recipes I found so it was easy enough to split the difference. I used as my base a chard gratin recipe from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters and a turnip gratin by chef Alain Passard as plagiarized and lightly modified by Joe DeSalazar on his blog here.

I didn't measure anything or pay close attention to the time so here's kind of a sketchy description of what I did.

Ingredients:
1/2 bunch chard, mostly stems
1 large turnip with half it's leaves (the rest having been previously sautéed in butter and olive oil with anchovies and capers and served over papparadelle), peeled
fresh breadcrumbs
melted butter
more butter
2 ounces pancetta
1/2 large onion, chopped
2 teaspoons flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
2 to 4 ounces finely grated melty cheese (I used an edam-esque cheese called Amadeus)
seasonings to match your cheese (I used fresh thyme, pimenton and nutmeg. I've never used pimenton and nutmeg together before but it works. Thanks Joe.)

0. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Separate the chard and turnip stems from the leaves. Wash everything and roughly chop. Chop the turnip bulb too.

2. Heat a big pot of water to a boil. Salt as if you were cooking pasta. Add stems and turnip bulb. Return to boil and simmer two minutes. Add leaves. Simmer three minutes more. Drain, cool and gently squeeze out any extra liquid.

3. Meanwhile, prepare a cup or two of fresh breadcrumbs, toss with melted butter, salt and other appropriate seasonings. Bake in 350 degree oven until golden and crisp, tossing regularly. Five to ten minutes.

4. Melt some more butter in that big pot. Add onion, pancetta and spices and cook over medium heat 5 minutes until onion turns translucent. Stir in green and heat through. Add flour and stir until it's all moistened. Add milk, cream and cheese. Stir until cheese is melted and cook for 5 more minutes. The sauce should be enough to coat but not excessive beyond that. After five minutes it should be slightly thickened. Check for seasoning.

5. Butter a medium baking dish and add the chard/turnip mixture. Dot with a bit more butter and cover with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. There isn't enough sauce to visibly bubble when it's done, but you should be able to hear it.

Serve hot as it clots when it cools. This would probably make a good side dish with red meat as it's got a creamed spinach sort of vibe going, but I found it a little unsatisfying on its own. No big flavors here, but the flavorings I chose nicely compliment the mild vegetables without overpowering them. I can see how this could be easily jazzed up into a full-fledged casserole, but the chard and turnips would get lost so better to leave it as is and let it be a supporting player.

CSA week five - Lentil soup with swiss chard

I found a good number of regional variations on lentil soup with swiss chard--a kind of Italian version that includes sausage; a South Indian version that includes coconut milk, and rishta, the Middle Eastern version that I settled on.

I found a handful of rishta recipes on the web. I cobbled together my own version based primarily on this one but tweaked with some improvements and fixed so it actually works.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups green or brown lentils
6 cups cold water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon ground coriander
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Approximately 2 cups broth of your choice (I used beef)
2 1/2 cups swiss chard leaves and tender stems, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup uncooked egg noodles or small pasta. (I used ditalini)
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg per serving (not traditional as far as I saw, but really good)

Garnish:
lemon
Scallion, chopped
bread


Directions:

1. Wash lentils and place in dutch oven with the cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming if necessary, cover, lower heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil on medium heat in an 8-inch cast iron pan (or some approximation). When oil is shimmery add onions. Cook on medium heat until caramelized to a deep brown. [I'm not very good at this, but the key seems to be a) not adding salt and b) not stirring too frequently.] When it's about ready, stir in garlic, cumin and coriander, cook for 30 seconds more and remove from heat. The cast iron will retain enough heat to burn the onions so don't wait too long and be ready to move on to the next step.

3. Transfer onions (along with the garlic and olive oil) to a blender. Add 1/2 to 1 cup of the lentil cooking liquid. Blend smooth and add to pot with lentils.

4. Also add the swiss chard, the broth and half of the parsley and cilantro. [The lentils should have absorbed around two cups of water so this will bring the total liquid back up to six cups.] Return to a gentle simmer and cook for another ten minutes.

5. Check lentils for doneness. If they're completely done add noodles, lemon juice and salt and pepper. [Any acid will severely slow lentils' absorption of water so they need to be at the texture you want before you add the lemon juice (or, if you decide to try the Italian recipe, the tomatoes). I know salt has the same effect on beans and whole grains. I don't know if it does it to lentils but I'm not taking any chances.] Cook for the recommended cooking time of your pasta plus a couple minutes because the soup is at a gentle simmer which is a bit low for cooking pasta.

6. When there is five minutes cooking time left, crack your eggs into the soup, turn the heat up a little, put the lid back on and cook for five minutes or until the eggs are poached to your liking. Or you could poach your eggs separately if you want.

7. Serve each bowl topped with parsley, cilantro and scallion and an egg along with a lemon wedge and some bread.



This is an earthy soup (particularly if you use beef broth) but the hints of spice give that deep flavor form and keep that earthiness from being muddy or am I taking the analogy too far? It's enriched by the addition of the egg and lightened by the chard and the bright herbal and citrus notes. It's homey but it's got a lot of layers to it. There's a lot of different textures going on too with the soft lentils, chewy pasta, not-quite-mushy-if-you-timed-things-right chard and crisp scallion. Maybe it could use a little hot pepper, but otherwise very nice indeed.

CSA week six - sausage, chard and fennel soup

I'm still not quite recovered from the sniffles I caught during the cold snap so some soup sounded like just the thing. I used this recipe. I came across some more complicated ones, but I liked the use of the pasta water and the Parmesan rind in this one since I happened to have a rind around and I know they add a lot of flavor to soup. I halved the recipe, but added in the fennel bulb as the bunch of chard was on the small side. And I used orzo for the pasta. Here's my whole mis-en-place minus the fennel which I only remembered when I smelled the fennel seed in the cooking sausage. You can see that it took a bit of chopping, but it wasn't a lot of trouble otherwise.

In retrospect, I think I'd remove the vegetables before the half hour of simmering and put them back in near the end. They were already tender from the sweat and steaming; a half hour more in the pot left them on the verge of mushiness. Also, I'd be a bit more careful with the salt. I added some to help with sweating the vegetables, but there was plenty from the pasta water and the cheese so it ended up a little oversalted. Otherwise it turned out just fine with plenty of leftovers.