For the salad, I wanted something healthy but also relatively inexpensive, and of course it needed to be tasty! I had a ton of elbow pasta hanging around, so I boiled that, rinsed it and let it cool. I grated a couple cloves of garlic, chopped up some kalamata olives and seeded cukes, crumbled some feta cheese, minced a little bit of red onion, and mixed it all with some plain greek yogurt. I mixed it into the pasta, then took half a bunch of really nice swiss chard, cut the stems out, roughly chopped it and mixed it in. The chard gave it a nice tangy sweet hit to balance out the salty olives and feta and the slightly sour yogurt. Not bad for an off-the-cuff stodge.
The dessert I made was a rhubarb blueberry trifle. Again, I was trying to stay in a relatively healthy realm, so I used angelfood cake, sugar-free vanilla pudding, light Cool Whip, and I added very little sugar to my stewed rhubarb and blueberry mixture. In fact, the stewed fruit was REALLY sour straight up...nearly inedible. BUT...the combination of the fruit along with all the layers of other sweeter stuff worked absolutely perfectly. So, so yummy. And pretty!
Did you not need to blanch the chard first? Is it tasty to eat raw? I'm always tempted to buy swiss chard or kale, but I don't really know any way to eat it.
ReplyDeleteThe trifle looks awesome- I love tangy + sweet desserts. I would make a joke about "where's the layer of beef sauteed with peas and onions" but I won't. Or did I?
Nope, you can eat it raw if you get the young tender leaves. It's good in salads. It tastes like a stronger, slightly sweeter version of spinach. Almost dandelion-green-ish, if you've ever had those? I just rinsed mine, patted dry with paper towel, cut the tough parts of the stalks out (basically zipped the point of my knife down either side of the center stalk in each leave and lifted it out), then roughly chopped it and mixed it in.
ReplyDeleteChard can be cooked / used just like beet greens or spinach. Typically the kind with the red veining and stalks will be sweeter than the lighter-colored varieties, but I like them all.
Kale is more rugged than chard. It's tougher, and needs to be cooked longer. My dad likes to chop it up and saute it with other veggies. I've only ever had it in soup, which was really nice. My parents have a bunch growing, so I'm going to try it out eventually...just haven't gotten to it yet.
Quick kale recipe from Bittman I made this week: chop a head of kale into pretty small pieces, mince 1 tbsp. garlic, cook kale and garlic in olive oil over high heat (the pan should be smoking hot first) until the kale is wilted -- took about 5 mins -- and then toss in s&p to taste and add about 1/4 c. of either lemon juice, white or red wine vinegar (we did both red wine vinegar and some fresh lemon juice). So tasty!
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