Food Simply Simple

We gathered our final CSA collection of veggies yesterday, and as usual, we ran out of time to do anything but cook fast.  What do you cook, though, when there’s pretty much just a hodge podge of things, some needing to be used now, and some more flexible?

I started to aim for putting a lot of veggies – turnips and potatoes and beets and fennel – into a nice sauce and cooking on low for an hour or so, and then I remembered I had chard stems, lots of gorgeous rainbow chard stems.  It’s gloomy lately, and they tend to be excellent.  How to make a dinner of chard stems?

The approach was quick and satisfying.  I will do this again with lots of variations:  hot peppers, or not; more varieties of vegetables such as daikon or regular radishes sliced; cabbage; radicchio.  Herbs would add a lot, as would some nice pesto mixed with plain yogurt to dollop on top.

Chard Stems Dinner

Chop coarsely a lot of onions and garlic, about 6 small to medium onions and half a head of garlic.  Sauté in olive oil while chopping chard stems (1”), fennel bulb (thinly, thinly sliced), 3 medium potatoes (thinly sliced but not peeled ), 3-4 red and green peppers (thinly sliced).   Once the onions have wilted a bit, add the potatoes and stir well to coat them with the oil already in the sauté pan.  Put the lid on and keep on low heat 10-15 minutes.   Add everything else and stir well, again distributing the oil.  Cover and cook on low 15-20 minutes until chard stems are tender.

Serve with grated cheese.  We used aged provolone, and it would work well with goat’s cheese, mild blue cheese, romano, or parmesan. 

Now, the challenge is to select from many options what to do with the gorgeous turnips, the last of the collard greens, and the thick bundle of curly kale.  There are probably some mustard-y stews and soy-saucy mixes just ahead.

LinK