157: Wilted Chard and Bulgar with Mustard

There are nights you have the best of intentions of going home early, making some dinner, and getting a lot of sleep. Of course that doesn't happen though, you have an event then go to a second location (not with a hippie, but still not the best idea), and then don't get home til 1am. I still needed to make lunch, I still had chard from last week's share, so I cooked up something the in morning before work.

This probably wouldn't have happened if I didn't already have leftover diced onions from the pate. Part of me always wants to have those on hand now, as I was able to put this together in about 15 minutes.

I sauteed the onions in a pan with some oil and salt. Let them go a little too long as I didn't have the rest of my mise set up. Added some grated garlic and chopped chard. Stirred until the greens wilted. Meanwhile, mixed some mustard and olive oil and tossed the greens in that as soon as they came out of the pan. I kept the dressing to a minimum, as I wanted the flavor of the chard to come through. Made use of some bulgur leftover from my stuffed squash to accompany.

It was another case of not tasting the final product and paying for it a bit. The mustard was a fine level for just the greens, but got lost when everything was mixed with the bulgar. Still very good though!

155: Catchall Soup

So I still had a ton of stuff left from the last delivery, and honestly I'm worn out. I started an internship at a local brunchy place on the weekends- so I do my normal 9-5 during the week, then head down to work on prep Friday afternoons, and then work from 8-6 Saturday and Sunday. Line cooking. Standing, making toast and potatoes, doing the particular dance required of four people moving around each other in a space smaller than my apartment's kitchen. I'm loving the hell out of the work, just not the lack of time off. And I'm going through a bout of insomnia. Meh. Grumpy McComplainerson.

I felt/feel a cold coming on: soup was in order. Just to warn you, a have a feeling soup will be my new salad. Simple seeming but totally baffling for me. This was fine but largely meh. I used leftover veggie broth (supplimented with some turkey stock I had in the freezer), shallots, garlic, zucchini, potatoes, chard, sage, parsley and a little thyme. Tasted, it was pretty bland.

Added lots of pepper, more salt some smoked paprika. Still, I wasn't feeling it. There was a decent improvement with some of my basil vinegar and some liquid aminos, but overall it's not worth my posting a recipe.

My standard soup for feeling sick is simple: chicken broth, lots of onion, rosemary, and either zucchini or butternut squash. This was missing something, and I'm pretty sure it was copious amounts of onion. But next time I'll actually look up a recipe before embarking on a soup adventure.

149: Swiss Chard Tzatziki

So this may not deserve another number, as it's the exact same recipe I've done before, but hey- this time there's a picture! Not a pretty one, but as I was cooking all day for an event I was going to, wasn't much time. Was surprised how quickly this came together. Blanching the greens took the most time, but beyond that it assembles in a few minutes.

147: Herb Scrambled Eggs and 148: Smoky Chard Stems

It's hard for me to make a simple breakfast, or I can, but need bread. Without it I'm a little lost. Also the daylight situation in my kitchen in the mornings is throwing off my photos.

Eggs were easy- wanted to use up herbage, so I chopped up some sage and thyme. Eggs in a pan with (too much health-wise, enough delicious-wise) oil and butter, started the eggs, then tossed in the herbs soon after. My scrambles tend to be on the stove for less than a minute, product of a love of soft eggs and a super hot burner.

Accompaniment was a little harder. I decided on a quick saute of chard stems. Started some onion petals in a pan with oil, cooked until they were getting soft, then turned up the heat and threw in the chard stems (thick part had been cut in half). Kept stirring so they wouldn't stick, then tossed in a little smoked paprika towards the end for good measure.

The eggs were delicious. Not completely sold on the stems. They're fibrous and a little hard to eat. Flavors were good though.

Delivery 15

Bright Lights Swiss Chard - 1 bunch

Winter Squash - 2

Orient Express Eggplant - 2

Sage-1 bunch

Mustard Greens - 1 bunch

Bok Choy - 1 bunch

Shallots - 4

Cabbage - 1

Potatoes - 2 pounds

Peppers - 2

Hot Peppers - take if you like

Bok Choy

Not my favorite, but happy to have greens again. May give this away (I know one of my roommates is a fan) or will do something simple. Like a stir fry or roast. Here's a little roundup.

Chard

Have a dinner, so may remake that dip I forgot to take pics of. Also this comic is lovely and has a few ways of cooking the veg (and I'm starting to get a little obsessed with Dirt Candy). It'd also be a good mix with the squash and sage. Here it is creamed from smitten kitchen- a preparation I haven't tried yet.

Sage

Excited, as it means I get to buy chicken liver again. Liking the looks of this recipe, especially that it includes a recipe for shallot jam! I may have a little thyme in the fridge as well. Beyond that: a huuge roundup of recipe ideas. Also: biscuits.

Shallots

The aforementioned shallot jam, but otherwise using in everything, as shallots are so tasty.

Orient Express Eggplant

I'm considering something beyond Baynan Bharta. I think it's time for a longer break until I can taste the original. I have a cool recipe for jam from the Dirt Candy cookbook, or maybe babaganoush. Here's a stir fry, and a few from Macheesmo. More roasty from Bon Appetit.

Cabbage

Peanut Slaw from Cook's Illustrated (via Martha). I'm continuing to run low on ideas haha. Also the swap table was ENTIRELY cabbage, which was fairly hilarious. Here's a roundup (these are my favs, skimming). Also: fritters.

Potatoes

I have a ton of recipes from potato's earlier appearances in deliveries. Here's some bread (tired Kelly is a carb-craving Kelly)

Squash

Roasty toasty. These are most likely carnival squash. These would be good stuffed. Oh hey here's a pinterest board of recipes! Fav, skimmin: stuffed with spaghetti (sucker for an egg yolk!). Here's a preparation for acorn that I'd totally try out with this.

Peppers

Happy I remembered spicy peppers this time- not 100% sure what the big peppers are, but will probably just dice them and throw them into something.

Mustard Greens

Yay! So happy to see this guy again. I love this spicy green, may just do a raw salad. Here are a few from Martha. Here's an Indian dish! Salad with bulgur, another with garlic mayo, and another Indian preparation to round out the ideas.

115: Chard Gratin

Keeping food in the work fridge is never an ideal situation, thankfully the only semi-casualties were the cherry tomatoes (which weren't in the fridge, but as I said in the Delivery 12 post didn't make it home) and the chard. Being in the back meant it got a little icy.

I'm not sure what to do in that situation. My logic was that as long as it hadn't been thawed/refrozen it was still good, just not crisp in those. I thought it best to just use it all up asap on something where crispness didn't matter as much, and settled on one of the gratins. I used that recipe as a base and did my own thing:

Ingredients:

1 bunch swiss chard leaves roughly chopped, stems thinly sliced

1 onion, diced

2 gloves of garlic, grated

1 rounded tsp flour

1/3 cup milk

~ 1/3 cup breadcrumbs

~ butter/oil, salt pepper

I didn't do it in this order, but I'll write it the way I'd do it next time.

Preheat your oven to 350. I semi-toasted my breadcrumbs per the recipe but not well. Do better than me. 

Start some butter or oil in a large-ish pan, when melted add the onion, some salt, and let it sweat. Add the chard stems and continue to cook until they're tender but have a little bite. 

Add the greens, continue to saute, add a little more salt to taste and a bunch of pepper. 

The original recipe has you blanch the greens first, I'd imagine to make the greens less unwieldy, but I just went in there with my tongs and did my best to handle. Had a lid on for a bit to help it along. 

Once the greens were almost there I added my flour, stirred to coat, then my milk. I recognized the semi-bechamel from my other gratin, and next time I might make it separately. It was hard to tell how thick the sauce actually got.

Towards the end I added my grated garlic. Why the end? I was still in the mood for that raw bite. Earlier if you're not a crazy person, or don't need to ward off vampires.

At the end I stirred in the grated gruyere and topped with the breadcrumbs. In the oven for ~20 minutes. Under the broiler a little longer to brown the crumbs. 

As I said I could've used more sauce, or thicker sauce. I'd imagine in addition to taming the greens, blanching would've helped them turn to a nice bubbly mass but this was still nice and comforting. Definitely a do again.

Delivery 12

Tomatoes - 4 plum, 4 slicers

Sungold Cherry Tomatoes - 1 basket

Peppers - 1 large bell

Bright Lights Swiss Chard - 1 bunch

Thyme - 1 bunch

Cabbage - 1 head

Collards - 1 bunch

Celery - 1 head

Shallots - 4

Hot Peppers - Serrano - 4

This is a tough one. Not so much the ingredients, but the fact that I was booked solid Tuesday after work so I took a late late lunch and picked it up myself as soon as they opened. It lived (as well it could) in the work fridge until I could take it home Wednesday. Hence the lateness.

Tomatoes

Someone once fortold I'd get tired of tomatoes. Clearly this person didn't know what they were talking about. I'd be happy eating them like handfruit, but as I'd like to push myself, here are some new things: roasty cherry, frittata, stuffed.


The cherries have been going bad very quickly (I actually remade that candied cherry tomato dish for the party, but ended up having to use tomatoes from the store, so haven't posted), so those were eaten up before I got them back to my place for pics.

Peppers

Ok, so the leftover pepper from 2 weeks ago was just a snack. I still have a few serranos from last week and a bell. Promise promise I'll try to make the jam this week. The vinegar certainly has had enough time by now to infuse.

Chard

Yay for some leafy. I guess I'm on a smitten recipe kick: white bean stew (bonus for shallots and thyme). Or that gratin all the kids are talking about. Or a different one.

Thyme  

Useful with tomato, and a few other dishes I have linked here. A little miffed as I'd actually bought thyme last week and still have some in my fridge. Womp womp.

Cabbage

It's been a bit, cabbage. Should I retry that curry? Or hey, there's an onion marmalade, pepper tart, or onion tart.

Collards

While the standard southern collard is tempting, as I've never made it, I know from experience I don't like it. Here's a veggie one, and one with farro. I think I'd like to try the first, as well as something that cooks it less, to get that flavor variation.

Celery

These are skinny, leafy celery. Pan cooked with tomatoes, risotto, braised with tomato and pancetta, chunky soup (and pesto!), simple braise, crunchy topped braise (bonus for thyme, shallot).
 
 

Shallots

Left these at work, whoops! Most likely will just integrate into other dishes (like the celery and tomato above). Not enough to do something super special. Or! scrambled eggs. Of course.

114: Sauteed Swiss Chard

Grand designs: after giving up a bit on the idea of a chard gratin, I thought I might actually attempt. Then I got sidetracked and did a saute. Lotsa onion, lotsa garlic. If anything it's like "caramelized onions and garlic with some swiss chard in it" but totally not complaining. It's nice and mellowly sweet.

Busy week = simple food, short posts

110: Swiss Chard Tzatziki

So I don't have pictures for this, whoops. It went out for the party in a less than pretty container and I forgot before I tossed the (meager) leftovers at the end of the night. I do have an actual recipe for you instead :)


Smoky Swiss Chard Tzatziki
(Slightly) adapted from this recipe from Martha Stewart:

- 1 cup stemmed, finely chopped rainbow chard
- 1 cup greek yogurt
- 1 clove garlic, made into a paste with 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp lemon juice

Take the above and mix it all together. So simple. I added the lemon juice right before I put it out, just so it didn't overwhelm everything. Tasted really lovely with a veggie tray, like it should be terrible for you, but isn't, really. Would (and may) do it again!

109: Chard and Basil Scrambled Eggs

This batch of eggs ended up being rather greens-heavy, but the end product turned out well.

Started a small onion (diced) in the pan with a little oil and salt. The heat was on a little too high so the onions browned kinda quickly. This pan isn't the best, so everything kept sticking. Still tasted fine, though.

Chopped up some chard and added that to the pan, once it wilted threw in some finely chopped basil, garlic and almost immediately after, the eggs. It was a nice change of pace, the garlic still had a lot of the raw bite, and with the decent grocery store brand "rustic" bread I picked up to make breadcrumbs (probably not happening), was getting a flavor flashback to the garlic bread we'd always buy at shoprite growing up.

A little lame but totally comforting. Lovely little breakfast.

108: Potato and Chard Stem Gratin

I made bechamel! Yay! Used this recipe from the NY Times. Despite being carb heavy it actually doesn't seem to be that bad for you. The plan was actually to make two gratins, one with the stems and one the greens, but I ended up being too lazy to do that. Or I forgot how much greens cook down, and most of the recipes I saw called for a few bunches of chard.

The most interesting part of this recipe was making the bechamel, which wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Just a lot of whisking, and keeping an eye on it (a little hard for me being a crazy multitasker when I'm cooking). I was pleasantly surprised how the whole thing came together, though, so warm and comforting and delicious.

I ended up with a few extra servings, which I froze in small ramekins lined with plastic wrap to get the sizing right. Hopefully they reheat well, it'll be nice to have them once it gets a little cooler.

Next time I'd probably throw some greens in there, even if the recipe didn't necessarily call for them.

Delivery 11

My birthday is Sunday, some people are coming over this weekend to hang out and see my new place. I don't usually do anything too special for my birthday, so I'm freaking out a little. While I should probably make meals for myself with these veggies, I'm keeping an eye out for party food.

Green Beans - 1 pound

Red Onions - 2

Peppers: 1 Bell, 1 Lipstick

Bright Lights Swiss Chard - 1 bunch

Eggplant - 1

Basil - 1 bunch

Tomatoes - 2 slicers and 4 plum tomatoes

Sungold Cherry Tomatoes - 1 basket

Serrano Hot Peppers - 4 if you like

My favorite part of this is the "if you like" for the hot peppers. There is a swap table, people.

Chard 

I'm feeling something warm and savory. Here are few gratins that look tasty. Though here are some dips that use chard: healthy and not so much. I could probably use chard in spinach dips as well.

Eggplant

Do you need to ask? Baignan Bharta! I wish these had been purple, the white ones are so sweet.

Tomatoes

I said I'd make more candied tomatoes for a party and I probably will, though I'll most likely need to buy more to get a reasonable amount for people. Bruchetta topping would work well again as finger foods...or maybe I can make a salsa? Here are some a few sources: Alton Brown, Martha, Macheesmo, The Kitchn (cooked), The Kitchn (pico).

Green Beans

I've never made a green bean caserole, is it bad that I really want to? Beyond that the trend seems to be to roast them: honey mustard glaze, balsamic glaze, lebanese, with parmesan, with onions and nuts, oh hey- a slaw!

My habit is to eat them raw, maybe with a little hummus. It's tempting to just use them in a crudite platter.




Red Onions

A few recipes I have so far use red onions. I'm generally not a fan, as they have such a strong flavor, but I think cooking the hell out of them helps. We'll see.

Peppers 

I still have a pepper left from last week- gonna make that jam, I promise. Also still haven't used up those hot peppers from last week, so anything not put in a salsa will most likely be sprinkled throughout recipes for heat.

Basil

I say this every week, but pesto. Promise. I'm storing it better, so hopefully it'll last longer, too.

64: Barley and Chard Salad

Barley and chard google searches lead to this recipe from the kitchn. Unfortunately I'd used up my roasted beets on other projects, so I tried to go simple. Diced a few small onions and minced up some garlic. Started that in a pan. Took the leaves off my chard, cut those into strips and diced the stems. 

Once the onions were getting soft added the chard stems and let that keep going a bit before adding the leaves, salt, and a little vinegar. Let that wilt down. 

Grabbed my barley from the fridge, and mixed up a little more vinegar and some of a second batch of green sauce (cilantro, basil, rosemary, something else). Mixed everything together. 

I wasn't super thrilled with the result. There was a weird pervasive bitterness I don't remember from past chard dishes. A bit more seasoning helped. I also thought without beets I needed something else a little sweet, so I added honey which helped as well...but I may have added to much. Fiddling a bit here. Luckily I only did this dressing with a small portion of the greens though, so leftovers were just the base greens and barley with a little extra salt and pepper. Oh and an egg. 

Surprisingly good drunk food. A lot of pepper was added to that before it went in my face.

Notes for improvement: 

- Green sauce may not have been the best choice with this. At least with everything else going on. 

- I was having issues with the size of the greens vs the barley, it didn't want to mix.

- The leftovers seemed fine proportion wise, so it looks like less barley/better mixing was the answer. 

Delivery 6

Delivery 6! By far the smallest of the bunch- though I guess the greens the past few weeks added a ton of volume. Super excited for everything I have though! 

Bright Lights Swiss Chard - 1 bunch

Summer Squash - 2 
Marketmore Slicing Cucumbers - 2
Eggplant - 1
Scallions - 1 bunch
Caraflex Cabbage - 1 head **these were crazy tiny so I used the swap table to get another container of currants
Currants - 1 box
Dill - 1 bunch
Boothby Blonde/Poona Kheera Cucumbers - 2

Cucumbers

Debating just eating all of these guys raw, or maybe in a little salad with basil and tomato. There are a few recipes for some of the heirloom pickles- this sandwich with the poona kheera looks lovely. There are (of course) also pickles. I do want to try lacto-fermentation of these days. Bittman has a recipe.

I guess the Marketmores are for salads/slicing/etc, while the poona kheera/boothby (not sure which I got) are more pickle-ready.

Dill

Obviously, pickles come to mind, but if I don't mind turning on the oven, there are biscuits. (It is a heat wave now. I do kind of mind turning on that oven. But, you know, biscuits...). Another zucchini dip, though I still have a bunch of the last one in the fridge. May use the flavors of this recipe with quinoa or barley. Ooh tzatziki  or this (actual) barley salad- also bonus for cucumbers. Also grilled carrots, have a bunch of those in the fridge from other recipes. 

 

Currant

Super excited about having a fruit in this veg share- especially fresh currants. If I want to be all clever and resourceful I could use zucchini too and make mini-breads or muffins. I've made jams and curd in the past if I feel like getting out my canning kit (here's a scalable recipe).

There's also this recipe for a salad that uses green onions, zucchini, currants AND dill. So, kinda tempting. Even if I could really go for some shortbread and curd right about now.

Eggplant

Skinny japanese eggplant. May do another Moroccan stew- with more zucchini this time- with amped up spices. I think I still have a jar of tomatoes. Or just roasted with some kind of dip/sauce. I'm feeling simple cooking this week.

Chard

Chard + Dill: crepes or frittata. Or just sauteed. I don't have a lot of greens this week so will try and stretch these.

Dish 36: Tuna Mini Open Faced Sandwiches

I would call this crostini but I didn't toast the bread. If I'd had a larger loaf this would've been a sandwich anyway.

Here's the whole spread. Pretty.

A can of chunk lite tuna in water, drained, with a little olive oil, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, feta, and mint.

The front two fellas there are zucchini and summer squash- leftovers from the great tart debacle reheated in a little butter. And some swiss chard pickles.

The bread is Walnut Levain from Runner and Stone. A good bread, but not amazing. I want to toast it next time to get more walnut flavor. It just seemed a little bland.

The basic spread was just the tuna. The feta wasn't especially present- probably not even needed. The mint was a pleasant note, but I felt something was missing.

The pickles were it. The sweetness of the pickles went amazingly well with the mint. And I'm a fan of a vinegary tuna salad. So total winner here.

The zucchini was delicious on its own but didn't do much with the other two components. After the failed attempt above (you can see it on the bottom right a bit) I just ate them separately. No complaints.

Notes for Improvement:
- Toast your bread
- Maybe integrate the pickles into the tuna salad?
- Maybe make a mint pickle?