Swiss Chard with Eggs and Bacon

Last Saturday, J. and I finally made it out to the farmers’ market for the first time this season.  With all the various weddings and birthday festivities occupying our weekends, we haven’t had much time to ourselves. Which also means we haven’t had much time to go food shopping, so a lot of meals have been either eating out or cobbling together what I have in the pantry and freezer.  Which has been taking a toll on our wallets and waistlines!  So I was pretty excited to finally get to buy fresh produce from the farmers market.

In an effort to get more vegetables in my diet, I decided I wanted to experiment with a vegetable I had never cooked with before.  J. and I eat a lot of bell peppers, zucchini, broccoli, and the occasional Brussels sprouts here and here.  But I wanted to try something new.

Enter this Swiss chard from the farmers market. 

I have never cooked with Swiss chard before.  In fact, when I got home I had to google how best to store it. (Wrap it tightly in plastic and store it in the fridge.  Don’t wash it before storing it because it will wilt and get moldy).  So I polled the audience on Facebook on how best to cook it.  My sister’s good friend M. had made a beautiful suggestion, which she got from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver:

“Saute some onions and carrots in a large skillet, add the Chard. When it wilts, make depressions in the Chard, crack eggs in the depressions, cover and cook until the eggs are done. Yummy!”

I was pysched to try it! I had to wait until Sunday to try it though, since we already had dinner plans for a friend’s birthday. I had read that swiss chard, like corn, is best when eaten the same day, so I was a bit bummed that I had to wait.  But it was well worth the wait!

I wanted to add a little something more to M.’s original suggestion.  And since swiss chard was a leafy green like spinach, and spinach goes great with bacon, bacon would be the perfect accent for this dish.

But Cheryl, you ask, isn’t this supposed to be your “healthy” post for the week?

Well, bacon is delicious and makes everything better.  And when used as in moderation as an accent, and most of the fat is drained, it’s really not that bad for you.  I believe it was Mark Bittman who even encouraged the use of moderate amounts of bacon to be used to season or accent food. 

Still not convinced?  Have a religious or dietary restriction on pork products?  Well, I’m sure this is still great without the bacon.  But the bacon adds a richness that makes it “soul-foody” as J. described it.  So unless you have a religious or dietary restriction, then I say go for it, eat the bacon.

Special Thanks to M. for the excellent suggestion!

Swiss Chard with Eggs and Bacon

Adapted from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch swiss chard, thoroughly washed, ribs removed and chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup carrots, chopped (I used a handful of baby carrots, and thinly sliced them at an angle)
• 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 slices of bacon
• 2 eggs (can cook more, but we only had two left in the fridge)
• salt and pepper, to taste
• cayenne pepper, to taste

Method:

In a large skillet, cook bacon to desired doneness.  Remove bacon strips from pan and drain on paper towels.  Set bacon aside.  Drain most of the bacon fat from the pan, leaving about one tablespoon in the pan to cook the vegetables in.   Reserve the bacon fat.  Cook carrots and onions in 1 tablespoon of bacon fat over medium-low heat for about 8 minutes, or until the onion is translucent and soft.  Add Swiss chard to the pan.  (You may have to add them in handfuls, allow it to wilt a bit, and then add more, to get it to fit in the pan.)  When the chard has wilted, push it to the sides of the pan, creating a “well.”  Add about 1/2 tsp of bacon fat (or you could use olive oil if you forget to reserve the fat).  Add minced garlic to the fat and cook for about 30 seconds before stirring it into the vegetables.  Make two little “wells” in the chard for the eggs.  Crack the eggs in to the “wells” and cover the pan.  Cook for another 4-5 minutes or until done.  Add seasonings to taste.   Crumble reserved bacon strips and sprinkle on top of the chard.  Serve immediately.

Other accompaniments I would add for next time would be to serve with a slice of good crusty bread, or perhaps with some parmesan or gruyere cheese on top.

Other useful links on Swiss chard:

• Nutritional information, storage, cooking, and preparation tips from The World’s Healthiest Foods
• Sautéed Swiss Chard recipe from Simply Recipes
• How to stem Swiss chard from About.com – wish I read this before I tried stemming them!
• Don’t throw out the stems! I plan on using them to make this roasted Swiss chard stems or this Swiss chard stem au gratin.

Homemade Vanilla Pudding and a trip to the dentist

Two nights ago, I came home with half my face numb. I was not a happy camper. It was a prescheduled trip to the dentist. I knew what I was getting myself into. I even made a crockpot full of crab and corn soup to eat when I got home. (Which by the way, I forgot that corn, even when slow-cooked for eight hours, still involves chewing!) So after I slurped as much as I could with the functional side of my mouth, I was still hungry. My sister, with whom I was chatting with online since I couldn't really talk, suggested yogurt or pudding. I wasn't in the mood for yogurt, but pudding sounded amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't plan for a pudding craving, so I didn't have any pudding packs in the fridge, or instant pudding mixes in the pantry. So I did a little searching on the internet, and it turned out that I had the makings of homemade yogurt right in my cabinet. I picked this recipe from Allrecipes, because it seemed the least complicated to make. After doing a little more digging in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, I learned that this recipe, which does not contain eggs, is more like a blancmange. Whatever you call it, it was tasty.

So the next time you find yourself craving pudding (or half your face is numb), you may have the makings of a nice homemade pudding right in your kitchen cabinets.

Impatience and Roast Chicken

Roasting a whole chicken always seems like one of those “grown-up” things to do. Most of the time when I cook chicken, I use packaged, boneless, skinless chicken breasts that cook quickly and can be easily divided for a weeknight dinner for one. A whole roast chicken is more social dish, for feeding a family of four, or for dinner parties with a group of good friends. But I’ve always have been a bit intimidated by any meat with bones, since I normally do not have the patience to allow them to cook long enough and fear food poisoning. Usually past attempts to make chicken drumsticks, bone-in pork chops, or anything with bones ended up with some parts tough and overcooked and some parts still raw. But since roasting a chicken is one of those grown-up things to do, right up there with filing your own taxes, and balancing your checkbook, I endeavored to learn to roast a good chicken. A chicken that will not give my future houseguests food poisoning. After all, I made a 13 lb turkey before, how hard can roasting a 4 lb chicken be?

Sadly though, despite my previous handsome rewards of patience, this time I was not so patient. I prepared the chicken and potatoes from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything exactly from the recipe. Except for this step:

“[...] roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 160 to 165 F. Total roasting time will be 50 to 70 minutes.”

I don’t have an instant-read thermometer, so I stuck my regular probe thermometer into the chicken. I had no idea where the “thickest part of the thigh” was so I stuck it somewhere in the middle of what I thought was the thigh. And since my oven door does not have a window, the only way for me to check the temperature was to keep opening and closing the oven, losing some of the precious heat. This probably slowed down the cooking time, and any ounce patience that I had left. After nearly 80 minutes of cooking time, ten minutes more than the suggested time, I saw that the thermometer hit exactly 160 degrees. Hungry and excited to take a bite of the fruits of my labor, I pulled the bird out of the oven. I let the chicken rest for a few minutes and poked it with a knife to make sure the juices ran clear. I’ve finally done it, I thought, I’ve finally made a roast chicken. I am now a grown-up.

Until I actually tried to carve the bird and found that the juices inside were still painfully red.

I put the chicken back into the oven for another fifteen minutes.

I pulled the bird out again, let it rest for a couple minutes, and attempted to cut it again. Chicken breast was plump and juicy, but the legs and thighs were still a bit raw.

So I hacked up the chicken into the pieces and nuked the legs and thighs in the microwave for two minutes, until the juices were no longer red, but the meat was rubbery and dry.

Roast chicken, you have eluded me once again.

Next time, I will roast until the temperature is a bit higher, maybe to 165 degrees to ensure doneness. But all is not lost, after I salvaged the still juicy parts of the bird, I used the carcass to make chicken stock in my crock-pot, which is now simmering away. More on that later this week.