Recipe: Every meal a miracle: Rhubarb Red Swiss Chard with lots of Garlic

Some nights I just can’t stand the though of making dinner.  Since I am a sucker for punishment (actually its that pesky soy intolerance) we don’t have any real instant options.

This is one of my favourite “instant” side dishes that really saves dinner. It must originally be from Jamie Oliver's Italy, now it's just in my head.

Tonight we served it with pizza (really a manchouer flat bread with cheese and garlic), it also goes really well with left over pizza as well as fish.

1 bunch of Swiss Chard (we used Rhubarb Red)

A hand full or two of spinach (optional, we are iron starved so we put spinach in everything)

Garlic to taste (we used 5 cloves)

A few glugs of olive oil

Either the juice of a whole lemon or 3 tablespoons of lemon juice

Salt and Pepper

Even the future compost looks good.

Wash the chard and spinach, paying special attention to get rid of any sand. 

Trim the ends off the chard.  

Blanche it for 2 minutes in boiling water.

While it’s boiling, pour 2 big glugs of olive oil into your wok or sauce pan. 

Turn it on to medium heat.  

Finely chop your garlic and toss it in the oil.  

Should be time to drain the greens.  

As soon as the garlic starts changing colour, toss in those greens.  

Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper. 

Mix it up every once and a while for about 5 minutes and volia! Italian greens! So fancy.  Looks like you have been slaving away over the stove all day, not that you could barely face the thought of making dinner.  

As my mother would say, “Every meal a miracle”.  Now call it a day.

Recipe: Perfect Pesto

The last pesto of the season is always delicious but also a little sad.  I suppose not having fresh pesto all winter just makes it more delicious in the spring.  I’ll try to make this quick and painless so I don’t miss it too much.  Pesto is so, so, so simple to make and absolutely one of my favorite foods.

You’ll need:

4 cups of washed basil with stems and flowers removed

1 cup of pine nuts

¼ - ½ cup of olive oil

4 cloves of garlic

1/8 teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon of salt

garlic scapes

¼ cup of parsley

We typically pick basil right into the salad spinner, then we can collect it, wash and dry it really easily.

Its important to sample your ingredients.

In your food processor, combine pine nuts and garlic and pulse a few times to start your chopping.  Add the basil, parsley and scapes, probably in two batches.  Add the olive oil to keep things moving as you continue chopping with the food processor.  Last but not least, add the salt and pepper.

We used to use a blender, but after two were destroyed by making this recipe, we invested in a real food processor.  Blenders are for smoothies, not nuts.

It will keep for up to a week in a tightly sealed container in the fridge, but we've never been able to last that long with out eating it all.

Our favourite way to eat it is on pasta with tomatoes from the garden. Beyond pasta, it is essential on tomato sandwiches, wonderful on pizza and our old roommate even used to eat spoonfuls straight out of the fridge in the middle of the night.     

Stayed tuned for a post on BBQed pesto pizza by the end of the week.