Swiss Chard Happiness

 I love Wednesdays because that is when my organic produce is delivered, and this week I received a beautiful bunch of Swiss Chard. Additionally, I have been having a wicked beet craving, so naturally I thought about goat cheese, and knew what I wanted. This recipe is an adaptation from Epicurious (which by the way, I do miss when it was just Bon Appetit recipes).

3 Beets
1 Bunch of Swiss Chard
1/2 a small onion
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 bunch of scallions, sliced
Soft Chevre
Pinenuts (Toasted)

First, preheat oven to 400°F. Wrap the beets (after cutting the green off first) in foil and roast for about an hour, until soft and peelable. Peel, then dice into bit size pieces. Put your beet bits in a bowl in the fridge. Be wary of beet juice in this process.

 Next stage, de-stem the swiss chard. To do this, fold Swiss chard leaves in half lengthwise and cut stalks away from leaves. Then coarsely chop the leaves (about one inch), and slice the stems thinly across their bow (crosswise). Keep them in seperate piles. 

To begin the cooking, boil a large pot of water and salt, bring to a boil. Add leaves and blanch for about a minute. Heat oil in heavy large pot over high heat, I used my DeBuyer monster. Add your stalks and saute until tender, about 8 minutes. Add the onion, scallions, and garlic. Keep sauteing.  Turn the burner down and simmer until it's all nice and saucy, probably 10 minutes...ish...Add your chard leaves and stir. Season with salt and pepper. 

Now you can plate from here, by putting your leaf conncoction on a platter and decoratively sprinkle the beets, pine nuts and chevre about. Or you can add it all to the pot and put it on your plate next to a hunk of crusty bread. Your call.

Rustic Pear Galette

I know this is dreadfully early for me to be posting, you'll survive I'm sure. On the bright side, I do have pictures. So I was rumaging around in my freezer and found some pie crust that I made not long ago. Pie crusts freeze beautifully by the way. So I thawed it out when my produce box from Door to Door Organics showed up (Love!). This left me with a disturbing number of pears, red, bosc, d'anjou...it was excessive. Solution? Rustic Galette (aka lazy pie).

You will need:
- 2-3 pears, firmer is better
- 1 home made pie crust (like for one side)
- Sugar
- Cinnamon
- Flour (for dusting)

 Let's Begin! Preheat over to 350. So we take our room temperature pie crust, put it on a floured surface and roll into a rough round.

 Then we flip the round into our baking vessel. I am using a metal pie tin. You can do this on a baking sheet too.

Now we are going to slice up the pears. After using the slicer/corer, I then halfed or third'ed the slices so they are thinner. You will notice I did not peel my pears. I like the color and frankly was just being lazy. It's your call.

I arranged my pears in a pretty overlaping pattern. No real point besides presentation, but it does help if you have the round edges to the edge of your crust for the next part.

We then fold the edges over the pears, creating the side wall crust. Sprinkle the pears with sugar and cinnamon.

Then you slide it in the oven and walk away for say....20 - 30 minutes, keep a weather eye on it. The crust should be golden and firm, the pears soft and juicy. And it should smell excellent.
Let it cool for a moment, this is important.