Lunch

Sweet potato mash with ruby chard.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

These sweet potatoes were recently harvested from the garden, roasted in a 325-degree oven, then mashed and seasoned with orange juice, maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg.

I have enough leftover mashed sweet potatoes to last the week. I am just finishing the last of this chard, also harvested from the garden and braised with garlic and lemon. Both a little on the sweet side, these two go wonderfully well together, especially the red chard juices mixing with the mash.

Swiss Chard with Lemon and Garlic

Swiss chard is such an underrated vegetable, yet it has emerged as one of our favorites. Few vegetables are as constant as chard--always thriving, always ready to give. Chard seems to have hardly any season at all. It grows all year 'round, though it does seem to be especially happy in these cooler months of early autumn. It will survive straight through the winter and be ready for harvesting again first thing in spring.

This is what our chard looks like this morning--bursting with life. I have to admit, we've neglected it. We haven't been eating much chard the last few months, for no particular reason. But the plants don't mind. They just get bigger and sturdier.

I harvested some chard this week, which couldn't be simpler. You just break off the thick stems at the base, or cut them off with a sharp knife. For some reason Americans are fixated on the leafy part of the chard, but I find the stems have more flavor to go with an extra bit of texture. I feel we are at a bit of disadvantage where chard is concerned because we only grow the ruby type, with dark red stems. It has a sweet flavor like its cousin, the beet. The green variety of chard is more savory.

My go-to recipe for chard involves seasoning with pomegranate molasses. But in the interest of diversity, I wanted to try something different. So here's another method of cooking chard that's less sweet but does just as good job of showing off everything chard has to offer, which includes lots of good nutrition.

Take several large stalks of chard and wash them well. Tear off the leaves and cut the stems into bite-size pieces. Over moderate heat, pour some extra-virgin olive oil into the bottom of a heavy pot or Dutch oven. Add the chard stems, season generously with coarse salt and add a couple tablespoons of water. Cover the pot and let the stems cook.

Meanwhile, chop a few garlic cloves and add those to the pot. Chop the zest from 1/2 lemon, add that and the juice from the lemon to the pot.

Roll the chard leaves into a tight cigar shape and cut them cross-wise into a thick chiffonade. Drop these into the pot--they should be a bit damp from the washing. They may make a big pile in your pot, but not to worry. They cook down quickly.

Reduce heat and continue cooking gently until the stems are very tender, about 30 minutes. The chard leaves will have completely wilted. Adjust salt and season with freshly ground black pepper. Serve hot as a side dish with your favorite roast, or over rice as a simple meal.

Chard can be cooked like this ahead of time and frozen, or stored in the refrigerator for use another day.

Helluva Burger

South Mountain Creamery, where we subscribe for weekly dairy deliveries, also sells meat products from its own grass-fed cattle. We couldn't resist putting burgers on the menu for the 4th of July, especially my wife's special stuffed burgers.

The stuffing starts with creamed cheese--just the thing to add a little unctuousness to that lean, grass-fed beef, right? Season the creamed cheese with freshly minced garlic, chopped fresh thyme, salt and black pepper. For assembly, lay down a layer of ground beef on some waxed paper, add a big dollop of the cheese mix, then cover with more ground beef, pressing the patty together around the edges.

The burgers can even be made the day ahead and sealed in plastic wrap. Just remove from the fridge a couple of hours before cooking to bring the meat up to room temperature (or not, if you like your burgers especially rare).

We grilled the burgers over mesquite charcoal and served them with our famous sweet potato salad with toasted pecans and orange-maple vinaigrette, as well as a pot of Swiss chard from the garden braised with red onion and pomegranate molasses.

Needless to say, the burgers didn't last long....

Quick-Braised Swiss Chard with Pomegranate Molasses

Regular readers are probably tired of hearing me prattle on about Swiss Chard. But Charlotte and Freddie at The Great Big Vegetable Challenge are looking for some quick recipes, and the first thing that sprang to mind is my favorite way of preparing chard.

That would be braised in a skillet and finished with pomegranate molasses.

You have to understand that Swiss Chard represents something very special to the vegetable gardener. Chard grows like a champ through all kinds of weather. When other plants are wilting in the heat, chard is standing tall. When other leafy vegetables have crumped from the cold, chard is itching for some action.

Best of all, chard is a cut-and-come-again vegetable, meaning you can harvest it--cutting the whole bunch of stems and leaves close to the ground--and it just sends up more stems and leaves. After being cut once or twice, the leaves seem to remain a deep red--like poinsettias but muskier--rather than turning green. So right now after the first big chill and snowfall, we have a natural Christmas display in our kitchen garden out front with all those Swiss chard plants, right here in the District of Columbia one mile from the White House.

Most often when you see recipes for chard they call for cutting the leaves off the stems, cooking the leaves and discarding the stems. This is something I cannot fathom. The stems are the best part. The stems are succulent and flavorful. They are screaming with flavor like big juicy beets--and guess why? Because they are related to beets. So expect that kind of flavor when you cook the stems. When I prepare chard, I just chop everything--stems and leaves--into 1-inch pieces.

Now, for this quick recipe. I had never timed the braising of the chard before. The idea is to cook it, covered, in a heavy skilled until the stems are tender, then mix in some pomegranate molasses (readily available at Whole Foods and Middle Eastern markets here in the States) at the end for the added flavor.

To speed things up a little, I heated the skillet (my largest iron skillet) on the stove top over high heat and added about 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. I let that get smoking hot while I first cut half a red onion into thin slices. I placed those in the skillet, then chopped a whole bunch of Swiss Chard (wash it first, of course). Put the chopped chard into the skillet with the onion, then add about 1/3 cup red wine (the alcohol will cook off) and a splash or two of red wine vinegar. Season everything with coarse salt and cover tightly. (You might have quite a pile of greens if your skillet isn't as large as mine. They will cook down, of course. But if things don't look right to you, try doing this in a big, heavy pot or Dutch oven.)

When you hear the liquid boiling, reduce heat and continue cooking at a brisk pace. After five minutes, lift the cover and stir the vegetables. Cook another seven or eight minutes, covered, or until the chard stems are tender. If the skillet should run dry in the meantime, add a splash of wine or water. After everything has cooked enough, stir in about 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses. (The molasses can be heated in the microwave if it's slow coming out of the bottle.)

I found the total cooking time to be about 13 minutes. There will still be a little toothsomeness to the chard stems and the onion. The color will remain a deep, unctuous magenta. Serve this with a roasted chicken and a brown rice pilaf of some sort, maybe with caramelized mushrooms and toasted walnuts. Don't tell anyone how easy it was, just bask in the praise.

Potato Harvest

My garden journal tells me it was May 1 that I planted my bed of cucumbers, onions and Italian "striata" squash. I also planted edamame, or soy beans, for the first time. We pulled those plants weeks ago and blanched the beans, freezing most of them for later.



Yesterday was time to dig up the rest of the bed and start thinking about a fall or winter crop. I sank the forked spade into the soil and started lifting around the weeds. Up came onions I had not seen--set those aside. Out came the squash plants--they are sprouting new leaves and blossoms, but really they've done their job. The cucumbers are looking tired as well. I've trained them to grow up strands of butcher's twine hung from a PVC frame. I'll let the few remaining fruits grow a few more days. Then it will be their turn to contribute to the compost pile.



As I turn the soil, I see the remnants of the layer of straw I laid down three months ago to hold back weeds. The straw is half-rotted, telling me I'm not alone here. The soil is teeming with micro-organisms munching away on the organic matter. They give the soil that fresh, fecund aroma that can only be described as "earthy." That is a sign of a healthy soil that is getting healthier all the time. The bacteria and fungi and nematodes and other creatures--all too small to be visible, but numbering in the billions--are the real workers here, breaking down matter into molecular bits, releasing nutrients and feeding my plants in the process. I am just a walk-on player, the guy who comes along and stage-manages.



In the end, this is where food comes from, that part of an endless cycle of birth, death and decay where we get to interject, gathering what the good earth offers so that we, too, can play in the cycle.



This is the second day of full-on harvest from our front yard garden here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House. I am not trying to invent anything new by way of cuisine, not trotting out any fancy recipes. We are just eating from what we have sown, food simply and efficiently prepared in all its freshness and fullness of flavor.



In another bed we planted more than two dozen potato sets. The plants have since faded. You'd be hard-pressed to know they were ever here. But when I turn the earth something magical occurs--along with the clods of soil perfectly formed red and purple potatoes appear. There's a bit of searching that goes on. Did the first spade-full turn up all the potatoes? Or are there more down there--deeper, deeper--waiting to be discovered? I sift through the soil with my hands, breaking clods apart, and quickly have a bowl full or potatoes. We wash and scrub them, cut them into pieces, toss them with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and roast them in a 325 degree oven until tender.


We love Swiss chard and it thrives in our garden. Do we have the perfect conditions for Swiss chard here, or is it really so easy to grow? I don't know. I am always tempted to plant more and more of it. We even had a couple of volunteers this year. They came up in the flower bed, where I'd sown tansy and coreopsis. So it was the volunteers I harvested first, gathering the stalks in one hand, then cutting them close to the soil with a serrated knife.



Most recipes focus on the leaves of the chard, something I don't quite understand. The tastiest parts are the stems. After washing them, I roll the stems and leaves on a cutting board and chop everything roughly into pieces. This will make a large pile. I toss these into a heavy skilled where I've been sauteeing sweet onion in extra-virgin olive oil, a bit of chard at a time, since all of it would never fit in the skillet. Place a handful of leafy chard into the skillet with a bit of water, cover the skillet for a minute to let the chard cook down and reduce in size. Then add more chard until the whole pile is in the skillet, simmering.


Season with salt and pepper and continue cooking gently until the stem parts are tender, about 30 minutes. If you are using red chard, the stems will be much paler now. When they are cooked, I like to add about a tablespoon of pomegranate molasses (available in Middle Eastern groceries), a sprinkle of sugar and a splash of red wine vinegar. All of these flavors mingle well with the earthy tartness of the chard.


Finally we had some cucumber to make a salad. I planted cucumbers mostly for pickling. But when you leave your garden to go on vacation, cucumbers will grow out of control. Some of the cuckes grow to the size of small torpedoes. They turn a light orange color at that point--like a squash--but they are still perfectly edible. I peel them, cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Then I slice the two halves thinly on the mandoline.


Place the half-moon slices in a colander set over a large bowl. Season the cucumber generously with kosher salt and refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight. The salt will draw out much of the water. I now dress the cucumber slices very simply with white vinegar and finely chopped dill. You could also add a bit of heavy cream to make a finished salad.


When everything was finished--prepared simply, mind you, no fussing--we sat down for another dinner out of the garden. The flavors were bright and strong, the food could hardly be fresher. And of course we were feeling proud and satisfied, having grown it all right outside our front door.