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.

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...   

Curried lentil soup with tomato and greens

I just watched an episode of Project Runway, and it had me bawling. What's up with that? This never happened when PR was on Bravo. But anyway,  it seemed like a good time to blog about something comforting, namely soup. This one comes together quickly, and makes a satisfying meal, perfect for these autumn days.

The original recipe (from The Gourmet Cookbook) calls for spinach, but I used radish and turnip greens. Next time I would pick one or the other - both was a bit too much. I also added carrots and potatoes to make the soup a bit heartier, and made a few other minor changes. The final product was reminiscent of an Indian dish that my mom makes often, and was nice to have around for weekday lunches. With a hunk of crusty bread, it makes a great dinner as well.

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.

Quiche with summer greens

I buy a lot of vegetables that have greens attached, like turnips, beets, radishes...these greens are all edible and have interesting flavors, and I try hard not to waste them. But I'm really not that good at cooking greens and often struggle with finding ways to use them. Well, I have officially found one really, really good (albeit time-consuming) way - I ended up using last week's turnip and radish greens in a variation of Julia Child's spinach quiche recipe, and it was so good. This preparation took the bitter edge off the greens, embedding them in a creamy custard baked in buttery pastry - it's hard to go wrong when cheese, cream, and butter are involved.

I'm pretty new to Julia Child's recipes, and to French cooking in general. I received Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a wedding gift a few months ago and so far have only made the quiche recipe. That recipe alone is enough to convince me that this book will be a great addition to my cookbook collection - not so much for everyday cooking, but definitely for guests and weekend cooking projects. I made the blue cheese quiche a couple months ago, and had made some extra pastry dough which I stored in the freezer. I thawed it in the fridge for this quiche, and it tasted every bit as good as the freshly made version. I also used 50% whole wheat pastry flour for this dough, which worked really well. This pastry dough requires blind baking (pre-baking, weighted down with dried beans, so that it doesn't get too soggy when you add the filling), which is a bit of a pain - make sure you budget enough time for everything.