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!

Dal with Swiss chard

My mom is an amazing cook. Over the years, she has perfected her versions of classic Indian dishes and has also developed her own twists on traditional recipes. Recently she has started writing up some of her recipes so that my sister and I can learn them. I'm very excited to share one of these recipes today!

Dal refers to any number of Indian dishes featuring lentils. I think of dal as comfort food, sort of like the Indian version of chicken soup. This version uses moong dal (split green lentils aka mung beans) and Swiss chard, spiced with ginger, cumin, coriander, and garam masala. You can definitely play with different lentils or greens - my mom recommends using masoor dal (red lentils) or black-eyed peas, and spinach. This dal makes a great healthy vegetarian meal, paired with whole wheat flatbreads (chapatis) or rice.

p.s. You may have noticed that I'm revamping the site a bit. I've moved the favorite cookbooks list to a tab at the top of the page, and I'm working on adding descriptions of the cookbooks. I've also added a tab with links to the absolute best recipes that I've posted. Finally, I've added a "Fitness" tab, which is still a work in progress. I'm trying to make exercise a bigger part of my life, so I'll talk a bit about how I'm doing that. Feedback on any of this will be appreciated!

Swiss chard with tomato sauce and chickpeas

Swiss chard is one of the first vegetables to appear in the markets around here in the spring. Chard is always appealing to me because of its brightly colored stems, and the fact that it is easy to prepare, with big wide leaves that make removing the stems easy. Chard works well in all kinds of dishes, with its relatively mild flavor that has a slight earthiness reminiscent of beets (which are closely related to chard). I bought a bunch of chard at the market last week, and decided that I wanted to make a main dish with it, using both the stems and leaves. I thought about combining it with garlicky bread crumbs and cheese, or raisins, nuts, and olives...but none of those ideas seemed quite right. Then I remembered the tomato sauce in the fridge that needed to be used, and decided to combine the chard with chickpeas for protein. I thought some smoked paprika would be a nice flavor addition, and decided at the last minute to add some fennel. I loved the way the dish came out -  it had a nice mix of textures and the flavors of the seasonings really came through. It was delicious served on top of some brown rice.