Passionate: Bright Lights Chard Gratin

As obsessive as I clearly am when I find something I like (please see Exhibit A: Blackberries), I can’t believe I haven’t shared with you my current obsession. I know this may sound a little strange at first, but hear me out. My current love, the food with which I am so taken that I actually planted it in my own garden to ensure an immediate and almost unending supply thereof, is Rainbow Chard.

Right, I know.

Tracy, chard? It looks like some weird weed and it has a name that sounds like the discarded by-product of the cheese making process. What you say is true, but I can’t help it. I’ve fallen and I’ve fallen hard. And work with me here: for once my insatiable love is for something healthy. Oh yes, at this point I’m still in the smother-it-with-white-sauce-and-buttered-crumbs stage of the relationship, but at least I’m not deep frying it. I maintain that the American public can be gently guided to love any food provided that it’s either breaded and deep fried, or smothered in a cheesy white sauce. I mean, really: calamari. I rest my case.

But back to my newfound passion. It started turning up in my CSA share each week, and I thought, what do I do with this? Enter Deborah Madison’s “Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets.” She has a recipe for Bright Lights Chard Gratin. In her introduction she says this recipe is just as good if you use some spinach or other green, plus the chard. Well there you go: I have no fear of spinach. Spinach and I are great pals. If I could get spinach, along with my old friends goat cheese, cream sauce, and bread crumbs, to introduce me to chard, why, I’d be at a party with a whole lot of folks I knew, and only one stranger in the mix. I could ease out of my comfort zone only slightly, and maybe make a new friend.

Since then I’ve eased further and further, and chard and I are now joined at the hip. I bought a packet of seeds and planted it in my garden, and the other night I made an all chard gratin with a combination of my CSA bunch and a fistful plucked from my own crop. It was still slathered in béchamel sauce, but it was all chard, no spinach invited (no offense, spinach; I still love you). I figure one of these days I’ll be brave enough to try a simple sauté, with the stems cooked first, and the leaves added after, all in just a touch of butter with some garlic, salt and pepper. But baby steps for baby feet, and I think my next experiment will be crisp chard cakes on a bed of creamy spinach (recipe in one of my new acquisitions, the Food + Wine 2008 cookbook). Still a chard/spinach combo, and still with the cream sauce and crumbs, but the cream sauce isn't in with the chard, and the spinach is a separate entity altogether. I can hardly wait.

Bright Lights Chard Gratin

from Deborah Madison’s “Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets.”
serves 4 as a main dish; 6 as a side dish; or, if you're me, two days in a row for lunch

2 pounds chard, including half the stems (or an equal amount of greens, such as spinach, nettles or sorrel)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, finely chopped
sea salt, and freshly ground pepper
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tablespoons chopped dill or parsley
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk, cream, or a mixture of cream and stock
1 cup crumbled fresh goat cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and lightly oil a 2-quart gratin dish.

Separate the leaves and chard stems. Wash the leaves well, then coarsely chop them. Trim the ragged edges off the stems, wash them well, and dice them into small pieces.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and chard stems and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion has begun to brown, about 20 minutes. (Note: I found this took about 5-7 minutes, not 20; maybe my heat was higher. In any event, it shouldn’t be left unattended, because you may find this goes faster than the original recipe says it will.) Add the chard leaves (and any other greens you may be using), sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt, and cook until they’re wilted and tender, about 10 minutes (interestingly, this was about the correct amount of time).

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a small skillet and add the bread crumbs, garlic and dill or parsley. Cook, stirring for about a minute, then scrape the crumbs into a bowl and return the pan to the heat.

Melt the last tablespoon of butter, stir in the flour, then whisk in the milk (I used plain old 2%). Simmer for 5 minutes, season with 1/2 teaspoons salt, and add to the chard mixture. Add the cheese, then taste the mixture, correct for salt, and season with pepper. (Note: I actually added the goat cheese to the white sauce in the pan and whisked it until the cheese was melted, then poured it over the chard mixture. This was successful also.)

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and cover with the bread crumbs. Bake until heated through and golden on the surface, about 25 minutes. (The sauce will also be bubbling a bit.) Let settle a few minutes before serving.

Eat, and vow to make again as soon as humanly possible!

Perplexed: Cream Peas with Pancetta

I found myself in an interestingly conflicted situation today. I, a life long, devout, card-carrying pea hater, found myself standing in front of the cart at my grocery store that held local fresh English peas in the pod, dropping handfuls of them into a brown paper sack. No doubt you ask yourself what I asked myself: "Why is a pea hater buying peas? Isn't that kind of...stupid?" It wasn’t unlike my experience with the Braised Carrots with Crisp Capers. At some point in the recent past an idea had been planted in my brain and (no pun intended) the sprout had now emerged and here I was, stuffing peas in a sack like an amateur jewel thief.

I can even pinpoint the event that triggered this: last week my friendly local produce lady Shannon (the one who gives me beautiful specimens of newly arrived heirloom tomatoes, and other treats) offered me a few peas fresh out of the shell. She remarked that one customer had told her they were amazing when sautéed with pancetta and served over pasta. That was the start.

This week when I went back, Shannon wasn’t there, but the peas were. And something about them took hold of me; their little voices whispering, “Pancetta, pancetta, pancetta.” It was just too much. I know now how Odysseus felt when trying to escape the lure of the Siren’s song. I had no crew to lash me to my mast, however. I brought them home and decided that they were lunch.

Shelling peas is a very cathartic, soothing kind of chore. After all, it’s the activity of Aunt Bea-like characters in rocking chairs on front porches, bowl on lap, calling greetings to the strolling neighbors as they wend their way down Maple Avenue. It smacks of small town middle America at the height of summer. As you’re doing it, you keep expecting to hear screen doors slam, and the tinkling of the bells as the Good Humor truck rolls up.

It’s an exercise that’s repetitive, but not mind-numbingly so. There’s enough variation in the way each pea pod opens, in the actual contents, in the ease with which the peas pop from their tether inside the pod to make it even mildly diverting in a micro kind of way. I’m not saying I’d want to make a career of it, but for fifteen minutes or half an hour now and again, it’s a nice break from the buzz.

Once I had my little pile of peas (somewhere between ¾ and one cup), I set to work with pancetta and cream. I crisped up the pancetta in a little butter (some lily gilding now and then never hurts anyone), and sautéed the peas until they were just starting to color. Then I poured a third of a cup of heavy cream over them and let it cook down, down, down into a thick ivory colored sauce.

I scattered the crisp pancetta over the top, and consumed the whole bowl in half the time it had taken me to shell the peas in the first place. Perhaps that’s the way to measure how many peas you need: for a serving for one person, shell peas for 15 minutes; for two people, shell for half an hour. Be sure you have all the accessories: bowl for the peas, paper sack for the empty pods, one rocking chair, one wide front porch, strolling neighbors, banging screen doors. If it’s not possible for you to acquire all of those things, then maybe just the bowl and sack, and a willingness to imagine, will do. As I’ve proven, you don’t even have to like peas very much. But when you finish, you'll be hooked.

Cream Peas with Pancetta
serves one and only one

¾ - 1 cup of shelled peas (from ¾ of a pound of peas in the pod)
1 teaspoon butter
3 slices pancetta
1/3 cup heavy cream

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until crisp and fat is rendered. Remove pancetta from the pan and reserve. Add shelled peas and sauté until the peas are just starting to color, about 8 minutes. Add cream, and cook until reduced down by two-thirds, another 5 or so minutes. The cream should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Then give it another minute after that. Season with a timid grind of black pepper; any more than that will overpower the delicate flavors of the peas and sauce. And mercy, don’t add any salt! Pancetta is salty enough. There’s no need to add any at all.

Serve with reserve pancetta crumbled over the top. This recipe could probably be doubled, possibly even quadrupled. You might have to fiddle with the ratio of cream to peas; start out adding a little, maybe a cup or so, then add more if you need it. Otherwise the peas might turn to mush before you could reduce the cream sufficiently. You want the peas to still have a little crunch to them; better to sacrifice a little sauce than have mushy peas.

The World's Most Interesting Vegetable

I wrote about what I think the world’s most boring vegetable is, and one of my friends asked me, then what's the most interesting vegetable? I replied that that would depend on your definition of “interesting” and that I’d give it some thought. So I did.

The first point to address is, what’s the definition of interesting that we’re using. For the most boring vegetable, it was the one with the greatest limitation in terms of preparation. I think it’s fair to say that for the most interesting vegetable, it ought to just be the reverse: the vegetable with the greatest number of possible preparations. Personally, I think that’s a no-brainer, and the potato wins. Breakfast, lunch, dinner; baked, fried, mashed, boiled, steamed; salad, soup, side dish, main dish…they’re a dream come true.

But what if you want to eliminate potatoes from the running and ask what non-potato vegetable (since potatoes are sort of considered a starch these days) is the most interesting? I still feel that the criteria should be the most versatile vegetable, the one that can be served at any time of the day, and can be prepared many ways.

I could be a smart ass and say that the most versatile vegetable in the world is the sugar beet. Since the sugar beet accounts for about 30% of the sugar produced in the world, and sugar is an endlessly useful product, the sugar beet could be considered the most useful vegetable in the world. However, it’s not like the sugar beet in its raw state could be eaten in any variety of ways. Pretty much the sugar beet can be used to make sugar, and that’s it. So I’ll eliminate the sugar beet and consider only vegetables that can themselves be prepared and eaten in a variety of ways.

In thinking of various vegetables, four sprang to mind as the most useful, but they could be divided into two categories—those that can stand alone, and those that tend to be more in a supporting role. So let me review my list.

Tomatoes
Tomatoes were the first very useful vegetable I thought of. They can be eaten raw or cooked, and are used in countless dishes like pizza and pasta sauce. They can be served for breakfast, as the British do, or they can be served at any other meal or snack. They can be made into a drink, as in tomato juice or V-8. They can be their own thing, like stuffed tomatoes or roasted tomatoes, or they can be part of another thing, like tomato and onion tart, or tomato and mozzarella salad. They can be a garnish, like tomatoes on a salad or the tomato on a sandwich, or they can be a condiment, like ketchup or chili sauce. The tomato is the overall winner for most useful vegetable ever.

Squash
Squash, interestingly, also came to mind as a very versatile vegetable. When I say squash, I’m really speaking of winter squashes, not zucchini and summer squash. If you add those two into the mix, then it’s really a tough call between squash and tomatoes. I think tomatoes would still win, because squash (even summer squash) can’t really be eaten raw. However, unlike tomatoes, squash can be made into desserts, such as pumpkin pie or pudding. It can also be roasted, stir fried, baked, or used in muffin batter.

Mushrooms
I started thinking about mushrooms, and how many ways there are to use them. They’re fine raw in salads (not my favorite, but I’m trying to keep personal bias out of this decision), cooked in stir fries or casseroles, used in sauces, stuffed as an appetizer, or used as a substitute for meat (such as a portobello burger). The mushroom is flexible and can go many places, either on its own or as a supporting player. It’s still not quite the superstar that tomatoes or squash are, because it doesn’t get check marks in either the dessert or condiment column, unless you count mushroom flavored condiments, such as soy sauce (which, for the purposes of this exercise, I did not).

Onions
Onions are probably the most ubiquitous vegetable going. I can’t think of a cuisine that doesn’t use onions in some way or other. Mostly they’re lending a hand on flavor, rather than carrying the show, but in baked stuffed onions, or something like a caramelized onion tart, they do an outstanding job. As Nora Ephron said in her book Heartburn, “You really can’t cook without onions.”

So there you are, a sort of four way tie. Tomatoes and squash take the prize for Most Useful Vegetable, and mushrooms and onions walk away with Most Useful Vegetable in a Supporting Role. If we’re mixing our award show metaphors and giving a Best in Show prize, I’d have to say it’s the tomato that will wake up tomorrow wondering if it was all a dream until it sees the headlines in the newspaper.

The World's Most Boring Vegetable

Last week a friend and I were debating which is the most boring vegetable. This is not the vegetable that we like least, but the one that is just plain dull, regardless of how palatable it may or may not be. We discussed what it was that made a vegetable boring, and I opined that a boring vegetable is one that can really be prepared only one way. Fruit was not considered in this discussion.

We considered pretty nearly every vegetable, with the possible exception of salsify (probably because neither of us has really ever eaten salsify). I find, on further research, that salsify can be roasted, braised, or sautéed. That eliminates it from the running.

On further reflection, I’ve decided (independent of my friend) that making a vegetable into soup must also be taken out of the list of possible preparations. Soup can be made of just about any vegetable. It’s questionable how appealing soups made out of some choices may be: avocado soup (which always seems to be served chilled, something I find personally distasteful in any soup), cream of green bean (OK, I’ve never seen a recipe for this, but I’m sure someone somewhere has tried it). Practically any vegetable can be tossed into a soup, and almost all of them can be made into a cream-of variety.

Therefore, a vegetable must lend itself to roasting, sautéing, pureeing or mashing, steaming, broiling, braising, and/or baking to eliminate itself from the Most Boring Vegetable Ever competition.

After considering a long list of candidates, we narrowed it down to two: celery and peas.

Celery, to me, can be eaten raw (possibly with peanut butter or cream cheese, or dipped in some kind of dressing or dip), cut up and added for “crunch” in things like tuna or chicken salad. I know it can be made into cream of celery soup, but soup was eliminated from the possible preparations, and I also know the French braise it, but that idea sounds fairly revolting. Celery turns to mush when you cook it and stringy mush is not the sort of thing I really go for.

So celery is a prime candidate.

The other choice, peas, seem always to be an afterthought in things like potpies, risottos, and soups. They have an unpleasant tendency to squish when you bit into them, rather in the way cherry tomatoes do (which makes them also unappetizing to me). Peas as a vegetable side dish can pretty much just be kind of blanched, so it’s not like they have a ton of preparation options. I mean, just go ahead and try to grill them. And they roll off your fork, which makes them not only unpleasant, but maddening. They do, of course, go into various pea soup concoctions, but soup is out, so that leaves just the blanching way to cook them.

Peas can give celery a run for its money.

And when it all comes down, I have to vote for peas. I admit that the fact that I don’t like them much does sway my vote a little. However, celery, even as a “filler” in things like tuna or chicken salad, seems more useful. Peas don’t really add any flavor, or an interesting texture (in fact, with that whole squish thing, just the opposite), and they just clutter things up. Celery at least adds a little zing, a little snap. I find celery to be more useful than peas, even if it’s only useful in one way (raw). Peas aren’t very useful either raw or cooked.