Swiss Chard Gratin, Broiled Leeks, Flank Steak

Yesterday went like this, a typical veggie-box-delivery-day thursday: get up, drink coffee, have half a breakfast, go to workout class, do stretch class (okay so that is new), go to farmers' market for more eggs, get home and eat another half of breakfast (yes i am related to ron swanson), figure out what the heck to do with the giant box of veggies that was delivered to my doorstep earlier in the morning, and then get to prepping it all.

My giant box of work.

Got all my supplies ready - recipes bookmarked, gameplan mapped out, coffee, and phone (fyi even though it looks pretty i do not recommend a white phone if you cook a lot and your partner tends to call you while you are cooking, practically as soon as your hands are covered in junk.)

 Closer-up of the gameplan, and a grocery list.

Written down to-do list which is basically a meal plan too.

So you already know the gist of how i prep for the upcoming week and that is what i did today with the other ingredients that i wasn't also going to use for dinner.

The recipe for the swiss chard gratin i based my dish from is found here.  I chopped and then boiled the swiss chard in salt water, ice bathed it, drained it, and then chopped it some more as you see above.  Also pictured is the cheese that i grated for the gratin.  Since i did not follow the recipe exactly and i did my own lazy ghetto way of cooking (prep work is hard work) i will post my own "recipe," as follows:

Swiss Chard Gratin - serves however many people you need to feed who like cheese and swiss chard but probably not more than 6

2 bunches swiss chard, does not matter what color, boiled until tender in salted water and then dunked in ice bath and then drained and then as much of the water squeezed out as you can
2 garlic cloves
4 ounces swiss-y kind of cheese of your choice, shredded (i used 2 oz raclette and 2 oz Landaff)
1 ounce cream cheese
at least 1/4 cup half and half/cream/milk or more if needed for sauce consistency
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
onion powder, if you want
Parmesan cheese for topping 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and then spray an 8 by 8 glass baking dish/casserole dish with cooking spray or butter. 

Garlic press the garlic into a bowl or you can mince it if you don't have a press.  Add the cheese, the cream cheese, and the cream to the bowl and then microwave on medium power until everything is soft enough to stir together, checking the contents often so that you don't over-microwave it.  When it is stirrable into a smooth yet thick consistency (it will thin out some when baking) add the seasonings and stir together, then add the swiss chard.

Here is where if you had extraordinarily large bunches of swiss chard you could easily make more sauce if you need to, a light coating usually works fine though. I do realize this is yet another creamy pink vegetable side dish i have prepared but i did not choose the chard color! 

Put the swiss chard and sauce mix into the prepared glass dish and spread out evenly, then top with however much parmesan cheese you like.  I gave mine a fairly generous coating.  Place in preheated oven and bake until heated through and cheese on top is bubbly/melted, about 20 mins.

While that was baking I had another dish to prepare with one of last week's leftover leeks and the mega huge ones they sent me this week.  I cut the dark green tops off and then quartered the large ones and halved the small one, then rinsed them thoroughly, and trimmed the white part just barely--enough to get those little squiggly roots off.

Then I poured some flavored olive oil in a dish to brush them with, because that is easier than trying to pour oil from a bottle onto a pastry brush.

I put foil down on a sheet pan and since i was using oil already i used the cheap foil and not the nice nonstick foil so i also brushed the foil with the olive oil before sprinkling salt and pepper on the sheet.  Then I lightly brushed the leeks all over with a small amount of oil before arranging them one cut side down on the pan and  then sprinkling more salt and pepper on them.  I stuck them under the broiler on low to cook while i got the flank steak ready, with the chard gratin on the bottom rack of the oven still to stay warm.  When one side started to look softened and slightly charred i flipped them to the other cut side and fanned the stalks out slightly.  I took them out when they looked softened all over. (below is before they went in)

This here is the flank steak i got at the thursday farmers' market, from 5 Bar Beef.  They supposedly take really good care of their animals, and they sell their stuff in smaller quantities than the Da-Le Ranch from lake elsinore does so I got some meat.  It is shown thawed out below.

I just used some Emeril's original essence to season the meat before i put it under the broiler for a few minutes on each side.

Tah dah! the leeks come out and the beef goes in under the broiler, this time on high, for just a few minutes each side to desired doneness.  Flank steak is kind of thin so it doesn't need that long.

Gratin still on the bottom while beef is under the broiler.

Behold the finished gratin!

I let the beef cool slightly and then sliced it across the grain.

It was very tender even though it was previously frozen.

dinner is served

There are such things as Super Jumbo Eggs

Basically i had only ever known of medium, large, extra large, and jumbo eggs and i only just last week tried some jumbo eggs from La Bahn egg ranch in Temecula, who have a booth at the thursday farmers' market which is at the orange county fairgrounds.  I always have liked their eggs and i just became comfortable branching away from my extra-large-only egg purchasing when i bought the jumbo ones last week.  I ran out of those pretty fast because the yolks are just so good  i was eating at least a couple every day. So when i went to get more i noticed they had a WHOLE FLAT which is 20 eggs, of SUPER JUMBO eggs available.  i bought those plus a flat of 20 extra large eggs and now i have 56 eggs in my house as we speak.

Left to right: Large, Extra Large, SUPER JUMBO

 This is a super jumbo cracked into the pan.  The lady said that unless they have double yolks, which i guess they sometimes do but there weren't any in the two that i have eaten so far, the only difference between these and the jumbo eggs are that they have more white.  I think unless i were going to be making something that needed more whites like macarons or other meringue-based things i would stick to jumbo or smaller for regular eating because there is not enough of the creamy tasty yolk to egg white ratio for me in these giant monsters.  Since there is no nutritional or taste difference between white-shelled and brown-shelled eggs there is no real reason that i buy the more expensive brown-shelled eggs except that i think deep in my subconscious it is ingrained that white = wonder bread (cheap and not so nutritious) and brown = split top wheat (bread of my childhood, heartier than white).  Ultimately as long as they are cage free/free range i am happy no matter what the color of their shell is.

Some collard greens and bacon y'all.  I got some in last week's Farm Fresh To You box and i sliced it into ribbons and sauteed it with some bacon, shallots and garlic, butter, salt,  a splash of apple cider vinegar, and a dash of splenda.  That is not flash glare that you normally see in my pictures, that is steam from the pan.

These are super delicious almonds from Hopkins AG and while they are in Bakersfield they are at all the farmers' markets i go to.  The almonds are sweet and creamy and crunchy, and they sell a bunch of different flavors and even raw unpasteurized almonds which they seem to think makes their stuff superior to other raw  probably pasteurized almonds sold in stores and they are pretty good so maybe there is something to it.  These are my favorite snacking flavors.  I bought some fresh, raw, unpasteurized almond meal from them that i plan to make some bread with and it feels so nice and soft even though it is almond meal.

These i picked up from Mother's Market because they look and sound weird and i am sort of into trying stuff like that so long as it's not bizarre animal body parts or has been made in a bathtub or something.  These are from peru, as you can see from the box, and the packing is fancy all-biodegradable which i seriously do not know why everyone doesn't do that already in this day and age?  These are good in an interesting way.  I sort of expected them to taste like nuts because of their size but they are definitely seedy tasting.  Kind of like a mix of toasted hemp seed and sesame seed with a little sunflower seed?  They are crunchy in the way that peanuts are crunchy and each seed varies in taste just a little bit, like one might be more roasted that the other.  There is that sort of dry suck-the-moisture-out of your mouth feel after a few of them and you need to drink water with them.  I like them and will probably keep buying them unless some new other superfood from south america appears and i get distracted by that shiny new thing.

Here is a glimpse into what i do all day.  I melt cheese in a pan and then eat it with my fingers off a spatula.  This is raclette from trader joes and actually is supposed to be all melted and then eaten but i also melt and eat other cheeses such as mozzarella and sliced dutch goats milk cheese.  Some people say that raclette is smelly but this wasn't and it melts into a creamy mild, sort of swiss-cheesy cheese.

annd into my mouth it goes.

I FOUND MY NEW FAVORITE CHEESE.  Whole foods had this "on sale" which meant like a dollar off its normal per pound price and i was actually looking for the cheese next to it where there was a sign but no cheese so i just grabbed this for the hell of it.  It is so amazing.   It is slightly crumbly and i have only eaten this mostly straight from the fridge, not warm, so these are the flavors when it is cold: sweet and creamy and very caramel with slight nuttiness and a tangy salty taste too. It is like cheese candy.  I could eat this for dessert and be a happy camper since normally my desserts have to be some overly decadent treat and this fits the bill in my opinion.  I must buy more and then i can share it with david.  I don't think i will be buying many more new cheeses to try for a while now that i have found the holy grail of my cheese heaven.

Leek, Chicken, Mushroom, and Comte Cheese Bake in Hazelnut Crust with Bacon Topping

I know the title is kind of long but when i make up recipes i don't know what to call it and i just go with "as descriptive as possible."

We have been rotisserie-chicken-obsessed forever with the garlic herb ones from previously known as Henry's but now known as Sprouts because they are super moist and flavorful and, if i don't eat an entire one in a single sitting, they can be used for lots of things.  Some things like a chicken and green onion scramble with hot sauce, or this amazing recipe for dill and yogurt chicken salad (which is fantastic on celery sticks!), or i just make stuff up with it usually, like today.

In our veggie shipment from Farm Fresh To You we got several leeks and i love leeks!  They remind me of fancy french food and they are great in a soup or awesome caramelized with goat cheese etc. I wanted to try something different with them than what i normally do which is saute them up and put them in omelettes or soup or on burgers so i googled leeks and browsed some of the recipes.  There were several variations of a leek and cheese pie but i wanted to make it amazing so i took that idea and another flavor combo of toasted hazelnuts and bacon with leeks and mashed them together in my head.  I came up with the thing below and thankfully i had the foresight to measure and jot down the stuff i put in it:

Leek, Chicken, Mushroom, and Comte Cheese Bake in Hazelnut Crust with Bacon Topping 

Crust -
2 oz hazelnut meal/flour (or food processor 2 oz hazelnuts just enough to make it mealy but not too much to make hazelnut butter.  i got my meal from nuts.com)
1 Tblsp softened butter
couple pinches salt 

Middle -
1 Tblsp butter
2 medium leeks, light green and white parts, sliced in half-moons
5 oz mushrooms, diced/chopped small to medium pieces (there were white button mushrooms on sale so i used those but baby bellas would work too!)
2 Tblsp minced garlic/onion/shallot mix (this is from trader joes and i just had it to use up but just garlic would work well if you don't have this)
a few generous pinches of salt (sorry, i need to work on measuring this)
2 generous pinches of dried herbs de provence (just dried thyme could work also)
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 large egg
2 Tblsp half and half or cream or milk
5 oz shredded/chopped cooked chicken
4 oz shredded comte cheese (gruyere or swiss can be subbed in)
2-3 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and dump the crust ingredients into an 8x8 glass baking dish.  Mash it all together with your hands until it is well mixed and just sticks together enough to press it to the bottom only of the dish.  Bake it on the center rack of your oven for about ten minutes or until golden.  Take it out and set aside until you're done making the middle. Leave the oven on. 

For the middle - on medium heat, melt the butter in at least a 10" nonstick pan, i just used an omelette pan.  When it's heated add the leek slices and saute until very tender and starting to brown, stirring often.  The crust will probably be done for a while before the leeks are tender.  Add the salt and the mushrooms and cook a few minutes, until the mushrooms begin to become tender, then add the garlic(/shallot/onion mix).  Cook, stirring occasionally until everything is nice and soft and then stir in the herbs de provence and remove from the heat.  Stir in the chopped chicken and let cool while you mix the cheese base. 

In a medium bowl blend the ricotta cheese, egg, and half and half together until well mixed.  You can toss some freshly ground pepper in here if you want.  Stir in about half of the shredded comte, reserving the other half for later.  Add the somewhat cooled chicken/leek/mushroom mix to the cheese base and stir it all up and then spoon it into your prepared hazelnut crust, patting it down and making it even.  It's going to be thick, not pourable.  You could always add extra eggs for more of a breakfasty bake, if you like.  Once it's spread into the crust, top with remaining comte shreds and if you plan to eat it right away you can sprinkle the bacon on top before you put it in the oven.  I put in on top afterwards because i knew there would be leftovers and i didn't want rubbery bacon should we microwave it so it's up to you. 

Bake on center rack at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until the cheese on top is fully melted and browning along the edges.  Wait for it to stop being scalding before you stick your face in it.

I cut it into 9 pieces and figured out the stats for that. Based on my general estimates the entire dish (sans bacon, because ours are 90 cals per thick slice and some people get that skinny bacon that is like 50 cals per slice) is 1935 calories which makes each slice 215 cals.  You can always adjust whatever lightness you want, for instance use reduced fat ricotta instead of the mega-amazing fresh full-fat ricotta that i used, and two egg whites instead of an egg to save a measly 50 cals per entire dish etc, it's a pretty flexible dish.

The crust was more like a toasty, nutty, soft breading than a crunchy one you might expect from a nut crust, fyi.  Comte cheese has a nutty, slightly sweet taste if you haven't had it before.  I got mine at trader joes.  About .3 lbs is enough for the recipe in case where you buy it isn't by the ounce.

The only thing that could have made this dish better was to pair it with a nice white wine!

cheese and pie

Today was pretty eventful for david and myself, not just because we traipsed around the LA fabric and flower district but because we brought dairy back into our diet. We've been on a pretty restrictive allergy-reducing diet for the past month or so and we finally got to eat cheese again! A little cheese to start, but any at all was good enough for me.

We had a livingsocial deal for Vin Goat that we had to use by March 1st which was a week or two away from when we were allowed dairy again so we made the trip in and crossed our fingers that it would keep. I love Vin Goat. Their staff is friendly and helpful and while they have a good selection of cheeses to choose from it isn't overwhelmingly large. Plus if you don't know what you're looking for you can just ask and someone will recommend something. I think we usually get the owner when we go in, or at least he is the head cheese guy there. If you have never had Cowgirl Creamery's fresh cottage cheese then i suggest heading in here and getting about a quarter-pound which will only set you back about $3 and it is very very good.

I wanted to try something very different than what i probably would have picked for myself so i asked the gentleman helping us if he could get me a small slab of three cheeses of his choice: one creamy, one salty, one tangy, and i was up for anything so long as it wasn't blue/bleu cheese. He asked if i minded smelly cheese or not and i said i didn't have a preference, but i was suddenly worried just how smelly the cheese might be and if it would contaminate my nice, pretty, nonsmelly fridge. Thankfully none of the cheeses were so strongly scented that they permeated the special cheese paper they use to wrap your picks in, which actually does a very nice job of keeping everything fresh, in my opinion! I must buy some for when i make my own cheeses.

The long-awaited tasting began at breakfast, which is another amazing creation i will show you:

These eggs are from the SoCo Farmer's market and they have the richest, orangest yolks ever. They are really good. On the right is a piece of peppered turkey bacon from Trader Joes that i am reheating.

Then I added a piece of the Black Pig Meat Co. pieces of bacon to reheat. I just wanted variety.

This is the resulting orangey goodness from those farm fresh free range eggs.

Below are the cheeses. I have no idea what was written on the top package but the other ones are Humboldt Fog and Landaff.

My breakfast plate. The cheese from top to bottomish is the Unknown one right below the eggs, then the wedge is the Landaff, and the crumbly white pile below it is the Humboldt Fog.

First i tasted the Landaff. It was ... interesting. A firm, slightly crumbly dry cheese like a manchego, and kind of dull green-yellow in color. It wasn't a cheese i'd had before and it had a flavor i couldn't quite put my finger on, despite it feeling like a very familiar flavor--one i'd tasted but not in cheese form. It was kind of earthy, and at one point i thought maybe a hint of celery came through? But overall i think the best thing i could liken it to was raw potato with skins attached. I even had david try it and he said similar: that it was earthy, maybe herby, and it was sort of like a root vegetable, with a familiar but can't-quite-discern taste. I will have to try this melted and see if the taste alters at all. Maybe it's really good in a frittata, but it's not something i'd snack on by itself again. Lucky me i have half a pound of it still. When I compare this to the other cheeses and my list of desires, i think this was supposed to be the salty cheese but it wasn't hardly salty at all in my opinion. ETA: the cheese definitely loses some of its earthiness while it is melted, but it comes back immediately upon hardening again. i actually really enjoyed it melted on the pork tenderloin!

Next I tried the Unknown one. It had a rind and gooeyness like Brie does (i don't eat the rinds of cheeses if i can help it). If you tried to chew it it sort of balled up in your mouth so i kind of sucked on it to get the flavor out instead. It was extremely mild--very faintly like brie, milky and buttery. Close to the rind was a more firm cheese compared to the middle, but not totally firm, so i ate it off the rind like watermelon because my fork had trouble cutting it without also catching the rind pieces. This for sure was the creamy cheese. Because the flavor was so delicate i had a hard time imagining what to eat it with/on instead of just by itself, so that it wouldn't be lost entirely.

Humboldt Fog. How I dream of thee. By far my favorite out of the three. This was the tangy cheese, i think it's goat's milk. It was not like regular thick chevre, it was downright silky and decadent and it just melted away in my mouth. There was a little bit of rind on either end with a tiny blue-grey vein just underneath as well as through the middle of the slice, horizontally. I peeled off the rind of course and most of that blue-grey stuff went with it. I thought it was maybe ash and i didn't taste anything different when i ate the slim little vein of blue-grey in the middle. But one end, unfortunately the very last bite end for me, had quite a bit of blue-grey under the rind and when i put it in my mouth i had to spit it out. It is blue cheese mold. Ugh, i was so enjoying it and then wham! i was assaulted with terrible, gross, moldy blue cheese flavor and even in its small amount just overwhelmed my tastebuds. I had to eat another nibble of the Landaff to rid my tongue of the taste. So now, i make sure the blue on both ends is cut off, even though the vein in the middle is alright. I will certainly buy again though.

Later in the day, after dinner, I was craving sweet, marzipany goodness. So i figured why not make a frangipane, something i'd never made before, but in my head had looked like a marzipan pie. I made it low carb too, since we're doing that as well. Normally it looks like it's made with a regular pastry crust but i really don't like those so i think the almond crust is better anyway. The recipe i used is adapted from theurbanpocketknife

Low carb sugar free Frangipane Tart - servings vary, if you are me it makes only one serving.

Almond Pie Crust
2 1/4 cups almond meal/flour
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar or substitute
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Frangipane
1 cup almond meal/flour
1/2 cup sugar or substitue
pinch of salt
1 large egg
1 egg white
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla
6 tbsp room temp butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your pie/tart/cake dish. Mix the dry ingredients for the crust and then add the extract and cut in the shortening. If it's too dry to decently stick together you can add a teaspoon or two of water but it will appear more crumbly than it actually is so i'd test it by pinching some together and see if it at least just barely holds. Pat into the greased pan and bake 15-20 minutes or until just starting to get golden brown. (Splenda browns things pretty fast and plus the edges are going to be cooked yet again after you add the filling so depending on how dark you like crusts i'd keep this in mind) Cool pretty much completely.

For the filling, mix all the dry ingredients and then mix in the butter completely. Add the egg and egg white and the extracts and mix until totally incorporated. Pour into crust and then spread out evenly. Pop it into the oven for 25-35 mins or until set (doesn't jiggle) and lightly browned. Let cool and serve with whipped cream or whatever you want.

If you like fruit with almonds/marzipan then by all means top it with that. The original recipe adds pears before you bake it, but i just love almond paste/marzipan so much i didn't feel like adding anything today and just topped with some nonfat sugar-free whipped cream i get in a can from Whole Foods. It is nice when i am too lazy to whip up whipping cream each and every time i want some, which is sometimes several nights in a row and my homemade whipped cream doesn't stay whipped more than a couple of days.

I calculated the stats for mine but i don't count splenda cals or carbs so if you do just factor that in. Mine might vary from yours since my shortening said 110 per Tblsp (8 in half a cup) and i used Trader Joes almond meal for the crust and Bob's Red Mill almond meal/flour for the filling, just to mix things up, and they have different stats from each other. If I cut this into 10 slices, each slice would have 385 calories and 3 net carbs. That is what you get for eating a big pile of nuts and fats but boy is it delicious and worth it. I think next time i could even make less crust and underbake the center just a tad to keep it gooey.

In our greedy gluttonous desire for dessert I didn't let it cool entirely and i think that contributed to the crust sort of falling apart as i took the slice from the pan. It was still fabulous and the cinnamon in the crust plus the texture difference totally made the dish.

David didn't want any tart, just whipped cream lol.

ETA yes the crust stayed together better after it was cooled completely. i mean it's held together with just shortening so what did i expect? and the center was a little gooeier the next day too which was awesome. i have just kept it on the counter in the pan, covered with foil.