Recipe: Swiss chard tian (CSA Day 1!)

Today was a pretty successful cooking day for me, which is nice, since it's been an unsuccessful week in the exercise department. At least I'm doing something good!

I'm determined to use up all the food in my fridge and not go grocery shopping for a while.  Especially because I received my first delivery of food from the CSA I joined today!

Today's haul of food included lettuce, squash, zucchini, beets, chard, corn, cucumber, fennel and scallions.  Yeehaw, what a challenge this will be.

I decided to get to work cooking up some of this food right away and started first cooking a "Swiss chard tian."  Now, let me tell you first off, that I had no idea what a tian was.  Although reading how to make the recipe I would have called it something like an egg frittata or egg bake.  But hey, I'll be fancy and go ahead and say I made a tian.  That IS what the recipe was called after all.

The recipe was sent over by the organizer of the Community Supported Agriculture group I joined and I had heard from a friend that the recipes are pretty good.  I am determined to try all the new vegetables and I had all of the other ingredients in my fridge to use up so I figured I would just go for it.  I tried a bite and it is really yummy so I am looking forward to eating this recipe throughout the next few days!

Recipe: Swiss chard tian

4-6 Servings

Ingredients:
1 generous bunch of swiss chard, trimmed
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 eggs
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
4 teaspoons of water
Bread crumbs (I used panko)

1.  Wash the chard, then chop into 1/2 inch size pieces (both the leaves and the stems.)  Then boil the chard in slightly salted water for about 20 minutes.

2.  While the chard was boiling I preheated the oven to 350 degrees (I know, I know... using the over in this weather sort of sucked.)  Put a bit of olive oil into a large skillet and saute the chopped onion over medium heat for 3-4 minutes.  Add the garlic and then saute for another minute.  Garlic burns easily so be careful.

3.  Drain the swiss chard and then add to the saute pan with the onion and garlic and continue to heat, mixing well for 2-3 minutes.

4.  In another bowl, beat 3 eggs mixed with a bit of salt and pepper and the water.

5.  Thoroughly butter a rectangular shaped baking dish.  The one I used was 13x9 but I actually think that was a bit bigger.  I would say probably use something like 11x9 dish.  Place the chard mixture in and spread evenly.  Sprinkle some bread crumbs over the top surface then bake for 30 minutes.  Serve hot!

Mine came out really thin and really yummy.  As a side note though.  I just now Google image searched a tian and I'm sorry but this recipe should not be called a tian.  I guess I'm not that fancy.  But at least I can pretend with this mislabeled recipe I got from the farmer guy...

In addition to making the non-tian, I also did something else I've never done before.  I GRILLED.  Last year one of my summer goals was to learn to grill and I never did.  Today, I really wanted to use up some chicken breast I had in the fridge and didn't feel like doing anything in the kitchen with it.  I actually called up one of my good friends (who managed the grill at my BBQ on Saturday... yes, I hosted a BBQ and didn't know how to work the grill or do any of the grilling...) to ask how to start the grill.  He told me over the phone and recommended I put the grill on low and cook each side for 12 minutes.  I marinated the chicken and then tried this out and the chicken came out PERFECT.  It was the most delicious piece of chicken I've ever eaten.  It may partly have been part of the excitement of grilling it myself.  But, it was delicious.

I have lots left over for the rest of the week and weekend too!  As a side to the perfect chicken, I had a salad with the fresh greens from the CSA.  I topped it with some goat cheese and chili lime almonds.  Yummo.

One little challenge I had tonight was how to dry the greens.  I haven't ever received salad like this before... fresh from the farm with dirt still on it.  I washed it but then wasn't sure how to dry it because I don't have a salad spinner.  I first wasted a ton of paper towels trying to pat try the lettuce and then googled what I could do and a lot of search results said to put the greens in a pillow case and shake it.  I couldn't find a pillow case (besides the ones on my pillows) so I took a clean thin towel and made a makeshift pillow case.  It worked pretty well.

So, for the future.  I recommend these recipes and this trick!  Now, I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my food from the CSA.  Anyone have any ideas for beets?  I've never been a fan so I need some not-so-beety beet recipes!

Note: In full disclosure, I also ate an unspeakable amount of vanilla frozen yogurt tonight that was topped with chocolate raspberry peanut butter.  I had the froyo in my freezer leftover from the weekend and it is all gone now, so at least that is a plus.  However, there was way more than one serving left when I polished it off.  Ooph.