Culinary Concoctions Week Four: The Ingredient

Hello Swiss chard. Silverbeet. Perpetual spinach. Spinach beet. Crab beet. Seakale beet.

Mangold.

I like that last one the best I think.

However you call it, chard is one of the vegetables synonymous with wintry comfort foods, even if its peak season is between July and August. That's just one of the great things about Portland -- it's freaky deaky  growing climate allows for thick, luscious vegetation to grow year round. And I love it.

Of course, chard isn't native to Portland. Nor is it native to Switzerland, despite the name, which simply comes from the fact that it needed to be differentiated from French chard. Why someone decided with Swiss is unbeknown to me still (Let's face it; sometimes I'm lazy with my research). It is, in fact, native to the Mediterranean region, first traced back to Sicily (Like all good things -- heck, it's called God's Kitchen for crying out loud!) and it's been around for freaking ever. Aristotle actually wrote about it during the fourth century BC.

Yeah; it's that bad ass of a vegetable. But here's how I came upon it for this week's ingredient:

Sunday's farmer's market gander left me with a slew of goodies. While the carrots, carrot honey (Yes! Carrot honey!!), farm fresh eggs, sunchoke (More on that baby next week) and slew of baked goods (Darn you Baker and Spice; my waist line is not enjoying the pies, lemon tarts and slices of garden bread and crumb cake) were awesome grabs, I was mostly excited about the gorgeous rainbow chard I picked up: A thick fan of NBA-basketball-palm-sized leaves of dark green held together with stalks of bright reds and oranges.

The richness of the colors just blow my mind. And it's no wonder; they're so vivid and bright because chard is freaking chock full of vitamins and nutrients; just one serving has over 700% of your recommended daily value (RDV) of Vitamin K, over 200% of your RDV of Vitamin A and just a hair over 50% of your RDV of Vitamin C.  It's no wonder it ranks second only to spinach as one of the healthiest and most nutrient-rich vegetables.

Oddly enough, water starts breaking chard down almost immediately. That's why, when storing it, you want it to be nice and dry and in a cool place. You also don't want to wash it until cooking as, like I said before, exposure to water encourages spoiling. And I think anyone who has been forced to muck out the vegetable drawer in desperate need of cleaning knows that there are few things as disgusting as rotten leafy greens (I think a rotten tomato just barely trumps the foul odor and brown vomit-inducing sliminess of rotten greens).

That said, when it does come time to cooking chard, it's typically best to remove the stems and center ribs of the leaves as they can be super hard to eat and thus super hard to digest. Braising is the best. Sauteeing chopped chard is another option. Eating it raw? Goooooood luck. You'll be chewing for days.

Bacon Caramel: Boozy Dessert Style

Boy oh boy.

While I may have been more lax and lazy last week with cooking, I think I more than made up for it over the weekend with baking.

The weekend, for those of you who didn't know, Sunday was National Pie Day which coupled oh-so-nicely with Baker and Spice bakery's sixth anniversary (And I apologize for not actually informing everyone before hand; in retrospect, telling you after the fact seems a bit cruel considering you've got to wait 364 more days until the next National Pie Day). They held a pie baking contest which, after I casually dropped that factoid during trivia, Jason immediately averred that I should enter it.

Which I so totally did.

Apple Pie with Oat Streusel and
Bourbon Bacon Caramel Drizzle

I recreated Thanksgiving's apple pie: Apple Pie with Oat Streusel (Thanks Bon Appetit) but topped it off with lavish drizzle of bourbon bacon caramel.

The pie looked...oh, fantastic. And smelled like comfort food heaven, sweet with cinnamon sugar warmth that played harmoniously with the melody of apples which...oh baby, oh baby mingled with the smoky kick of the bourbon and bacon grease. Poor Jason. (Well I say 'poor' but don't really mean it -- let's remember that entering the pie contest WAS HIS idea after all)  I've never seen a grown man so unbelievably distraught while maintaining such iron-willed resistance than Jason, holding the still-warm, unbelievably aromatic apple pie for the entire 18 minute drive up to Hillsdale.

Without eating it.

Sure, his nose was never less than half an inch away from its crumbly, caramely top and, if I recall correctly, he verbalized no fewer than five scenarios that inadvertently put that pie into his mouth, without requiring him to take blame.

Unfortunately, my little pie didn't win. However, I do get to pick up a Thanks-for-playing $10 gift card to Sweet Wares (Which I think I'm going to drop on a pastry cutter I keep always wishing I had). And, while I didn't have crust to make a second pie, I did make a crumble-crust, using flour, sugar, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon and...of course, bacon grease in lieu of butter, for a crumbly, crispy apple pie that really, regardless of what the professionals think, is a winner in my book.

Butter. Nice, fatty cold creamy butter.

And for your viewing pleasure: I also made (For my friend Meghann who FREAKISHLY, at least in my eyes, doesn't like pork) a dark chocolate caramel, SANS bacon grease, which apparently made one the best caramel latte/mochas ever.

Yes Megs, it's officially in the mail and on its way to you.

Dark Chocolate Caramel Sauce

Culinary Concoctions Week Two: The Ingredient

Since I want to write more than just once or twice a week, I'm going to begin blogging three times a week during  this year-long cooking project of mine:

1. To introduce next week's ingredient (You know, for educational purposes)
2. To share the recipe (Also for educational and sharing purposes)
3. To lay out the play-by-play of cooking, with photos taken by Jason (For sharing and narrative purposes)

So next week's ingredient, as long as I'm able to find it at the farmer's market this weekend, is going to be black radishes.

Allow me to geek out:

Part of the brassicaceae or cruciferae family -- which takes its name from the New Latin word Cruciferae which, as my UP alumnus might have guessed, means cross-bearing for their criss-crossing leaves -- black radishes typically come in two varieties; the Black Spanish Long and the Noir Gros de Paris. Go figure I'm using a root plant native to Spain and France.  They grow best in winter, after sowing during June through September, because their white, firm and compact flesh will keep fresh most of the winter without entering a state of vegetation (Ha -- vegetables vegetating; seems like some kind of Buddhist practice, huh?) or becoming hollow.

I mean, who really likes a hollow radish, right?

Exactly.

The black radish is rich in vitamin c, which is why they're fantastic for winter time consumption, especially when you're living in the Pacific Northwest where the common head cold is just lurking around the corner of your favorite non-Starbucks coffee shop, waiting to latch onto you. They're also high in vitamin B and sulfur, which is the culprit for it's strong flavor. Furthermore, black radishes carry a serious punch of fiber and water which aids in digestion (Which, after three weeks of Vicodin and OTC cold head meds, could be of use).

To eat them,  you have to peel the skin because that's the most pungent part of it all; I'm assuming the strength of the sulfur would be akin to eating the skin of ginger root...not the same flavor profile but packing the same, "WOAH MAN!" reaction.

Not that I've eaten ginger root peel out of sheer curiosity or anything.

Okay fine. I'll give you a full Amie-palate review of black radish skin (By the way if that doesn't sound like a solid emo band name, I don't know what does.)

That said, let's hope Sunday's venture finds me buying black radish from the farmer's market.

Wish me luck in the Portland January rain! (Caveat: Even if my black radish pursuit IS a total wash, at least I get to A) Drag the boyfriend along with me after a two day hiatus and B) Savor my favorite treat at my favorite Portland bakery: The garden bread at Baker and Spice. As my mother would say, yum-a-dum-dum.)

PS -- On a side note, I never really thought I'd get to tag a blog with 'Vicodin' more than once. Shows how much I know.