Swiss Chard and Chickpea Sauté

With just 5 days left before the baby's predicted due date, I find myself growing more restless and indecisive. Concentration is at an all time low, I can't remember anything and my patience, which I normally have a lot of, (compared to most), is in very short supply. I keep reading about and people keep telling me that I'm supposed to be "nesting" right now, but what I feel like I've been doing is more like "perching," just sitting around biding my time until the baby arrives, and my free time is no longer my own. (I can’t wait) Cooking, once again, has been helping to keep my mind off things, and with such lovely Swiss chard I wanted to make something that would focus on the vegetable rather than have it as the background in a bigger more elaborate dish. I ended up just winging it and I’m happy to say the results were quite lovely.

First, I sliced off about a half inch from the ends of 2 bunches of chard, discarding the ugly bottoms*. I then cut the chard into large chunks and left it to soak in a sink full of ice cold water, swishing it around to loosen any dirt or critters that might still be hanging on. I placed a large stock pot on the stove over medium heat and added about 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil**, 3 cloves of crushed garlic, a nice healthy pinch of red pepper flakes and salt and pepper and let that sauté until the garlic just started to brown and become really fragrant. With the water still clinging to the leaves I dumped all the chard into the pot and placed the lid on leaving the chard to reduce itself down, about 15 minutes. This method released a lot of water especially because I didn't dry the chard first, but that was okay, I wanted to use the "pot liquor" to make a sauce. I turned off the heat and removed the chard from the pot setting it aside.

In a large frying pan over medium heat I added 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a large shallot that I had minced, 2 large cloves of crushed garlic, a teaspoon of drained capers and a 15 ounce can of chickpeas that I had rinsed and drained, sautéing everything until the chickpeas were just heated through. I added the pre-cooked chard and tossed everything to combine, then, added about a teaspoon of lemon zest, and salt and pepper to taste, turned off the heat and set that aside.

Turning the flame under the stock pot to high, I let the "pot liquor" come to a boil, then added about a 1/4 cup of white balsamic vinegar*** and 2 tablespoons of butter and let that reduce until only about 1/3 of the liquid was left and it became all syrupy. I then added it to the chard/chickpea mixture, sprinkled some sesame seeds on top and dug in. OH MY! It was good, I think I over cooked the chard just a bit, but the combo of chard and chickpeas was right on. The sauce, oh the sauce was good, and was great for dipping hunks of crusty bread into and sopping up all the juices. A really good meal and not a lot of effort required, and except for the butter, practically all vegetarian.

*I've been thinking a lot about freezing our unwanted vegetable matter and taking it up to the house to compost. I feel like even though its stuff we don't eat, like onion skins and outer leaves, carrot peel and potato skins, it still seems so wasteful to me to just dump it in the garbage.

**What are some of your favorite brands of extra virgin olive oils? I was using a very expensive brand from a gourmet shop for many years and then recently, on an 11th hour trip to the supermarket for much needed olive oil to complete a recipe, I found a more moderate priced brand that I'm really starting to like. I'm torn between continuing with the expensive brand, which was really good and very fruity (which I like) or just using this new more moderately priced oil which is good but not as fruity. sigh Olive oil, like wine, confuses the hell out of me.

***This is a recent find from the supermarket and while it's not the expensive true balsamic vinegars of Modena, I have found that it adds a nice balsamic style flavor to things without adding the signature darkness of the usual balsamic or balsamic style vinegars, something I don’t always want when cooking.

Written by Deb on January 14, 2004 12:14 AM