White bean and Swiss chard pot pies

Smitten Kitchen is my very favorite food blog, and I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook for many, many months. SK's recipes fit in well with my style of cooking, and I have always found the recipes to be reliable and very delicious - they're the kind of recipes that I'm comfortable cooking for guests without testing in advance. I finally got a copy of the cookbook a few weeks ago, and it is a delight. I know I'll be cooking out of this book for years to come. This pot pie recipe is the first one I tried from the book (it is also on the blog). These pot pies take some time to make, but it is worth it - this is some seriously tasty vegetarian comfort food. The pastry is tender and incredibly flaky and the filling is flavorful and hearty. Given the time it takes to make these and the amount of butter in each serving, I'd say this is a once-in-a-while kind of recipe, but it is definitely worth trying. It's the perfect meal for a snowy weekend day like today.

p.s. Sorry there's no picture of the filling - once we dug in, we were too busy eating to think about taking a photo!

Braised greens with bacon and white beans

Andrew and I are heading to my parents' house in Indiana tomorrow, and I still have to pack, so this is going to be a quick post. As I've mentioned in the past, greens are a bit of a challenge for me, although I'm starting to get a handle on how to cook them well. Recently I've discovered that braising is a great technique for some of the tougher greens that are popping up at the markets this time of year - the greens get tender but not at all mushy. This dish is simple enough for a weeknight dinner, but still very flavorful, mostly because of the cheese rind in the braising liquid.

One warning - wash your greens well! The dish isn't quite so enjoyable if you find yourself chewing grit...   

Pasta with greens, beans, and garlic bread crumbs

I had such fun going through the Summer Fest recipes last week! I found lots of creative ideas for cooking corn and also came across a bunch of great blogs I hadn't seen before. And now it's already time for the next Summer Fest post - this week's theme is herbs, beans, and greens. It didn't take me long to decide what to make for this one. This recipe is one of our favorites, and I'm excited to share it with you. The pasta here is tossed with beans and greens in a light cheesy sauce (with bacon!), and there are some completely delicious garlic bread crumbs to top it all off. No need for side dishes here - this is a complete meal in itself.

This recipe is from The Best 30-Minute Recipe, which is a cookbook by America's Test Kitchen. As the title suggests, this book focuses on quick recipes, and includes lots of handy shortcuts and tips for saving time, without sacrificing flavor or quality ingredients. The recipes are really good, although they sometimes take a bit longer than 30 minutes (unless you are very efficient in the kitchen, which I'm not).

I made several substitutions to the ingredients here - I used a whole wheat blend rotini instead of spaghetti, red Swiss chard instead of kale, fresh cranberry beans instead of canned cannellini (might as well celebrate the fresh shell beans of summer!), and Swiss cheese instead of fontina (I just realized that I used two "Swiss" ingredients...how random). The Swiss cheese caused a bit of a problem - it got really stringy as it melted and clumped together with the greens, rather than blending smoothly with the sauce. I've made this recipe previously with fontina and parmesan cheese, and didn't have a problem with either of those. If you use Swiss, you might want to try melting it into the broth mixture before tossing with pasta, rather than stirring it in at the end. I'm including the original ingredients as well as with my substitutions in the recipe below, so you can make it however you want.

You can find links the other Summer Fest entries over at Pinch My Salt.

White beans and sausage

We made this with some leftover sausage and tomato sauce from a pizza night - it's easy to throw together and makes a good weeknight meal. The sausage was from a local farm and was really tasty. The tomato sauce was homemade, and I'll post a recipe at some point. We at this with soft polenta - yum.

White beans and sausage
Serves 4-6, depending on portion size

One 28 oz. can cannellini beans, or other white beans
2 hot Italian sausages, cut into small pieces (sweet Italian would be fine, and turkey sausage would also work)
1 small onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 - 3/4 cup red wine
2 cups tomato sauce (this is approximate - feel free to adjust to your taste)
Basil, roughly chopped
Parsley, chopped
Olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Parmagiano Reggiano cheese, for serving

Add some olive oil to a heavy saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. Add sausage and saute until browned and almost cooked through (but not quite fully cooked). Add onions and garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup wine and stir, scraping up brown bits from bottom of pan. Continue to saute until onion is tender. If the mixture begins to dry out and stick to the bottom of the pan before the onion is done, add the additional 1/4 cup wine and continue as before. When this step is done, you want the mixture to be kind of glazed and sticky, but there should be no liquid at the bottom of the pan. After onions are cooked, add tomato sauce and beans and heat through. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Top with herbs. Serve hot, with grated Parmagiano Reggiano cheese.