Swiss chard red wine risotto

We had a partial bottle of undrinkable red wine (it was drinkable at one time, but we did not drink it quickly enough), a bunch of red-veined Swiss chard, and plans for making some sort of rice dish. What else could happen but a Swiss chard red wine risotto? I have a history of being fussy about purple non-dessert foods. They just look unnatural to me. (Except beets. I'm down with beets.) There was a red wine cream sauce incident: Jon made a red wine cream sauce for pasta, and I just couldn't get past the weird (to me) mauve color and eat it. I'm sure it was very good, but I eat with my eyes too, and they were having none of it. I was reluctant to try a red risotto, but after googling and seeing that both Giada and Mario have recipes for red wine risottos, and noticing that the red stems of the chard would likely pinken the risotto anyway, I threw caution to the wind and decided to go for it. The dish did have more of a purple cast than the photo above reflects, but it was not too off-putting.I decided just to use my basic risotto recipe, adding the chard stems with the onion and the leaves about 3/4 of the way through cooking. I guess I should have used red onion in the recipe, but I don't usually keep those around because I don't like raw onions and I don't like the color of cooked red onions.

Anyway, this was a great risotto! The wine gives such a nice depth of flavor, and the chard and lemon zest were very yummy. I have been neglecting chard for its cheaper and heartier cousin kale, but I really do enjoy it. We've got half a bunch left, so I might try making chard-wrapped risotto balls out of the leftovers. We have tried it before with some success, but we don't quite have the cheese-melting right yet.

Swiss chard red wine risotto

2 tbsp butter

1/2 large onion, diced

3 large Swiss chard leaves, stems separated, both stems and leaves chopped

1/2 cup red (or white) wine

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

5 cups vegetable broth

Zest of 1/2 lemon

Asiago or parmesan cheese

Melt butter in large pot over medium heat. Add onion and chard stems and cook until onion is translucent. Add rice and stir to coat with butter. Add red wine and cook until it is basically absorbed. Add broth 1/2 to 1 cup at a time, stirring after each addition and waiting until broth is absorbed to make next addition, until rice is done. When rice is nearly al dente, but still too hard, add chard leaves and stir. The leaves will cook and wilt as the rice cooks the rest of the way. When rice is done, stir in lemon zest and cheese.

Keeping out of a salad rut

Ev and I have a standard salad that we really like. Lettuce (usually red leaf), cucumber, grape tomatoes, red pepper, croutons, avocado, olives, feta with either balsamic and oil or Ev's lemon sesame dressing. We have this probably 4 times a week. But we love variety, and we've been trying to keep from getting in a rut by changing things up a bit. We have had a lettuce, roasted red pepper, goat cheese and olive salad with a mayonaise and balsamic dressing (next time leave out the olives); and a lettuce, cucumber, grapefruit, avocado salad with strawberry balsamic (thanks Rochelle) for our post-party brunch. This post is about a third experimental salad. The idea was to showcase zatar.

Lettuce

peeled cucumber cut into cubes

red pepper

grape tomatoes

feta

sliced almonds

zatar

Squeeze lemon over the top

Drizzle with olive oil

This was a nice fresh salad. It seemed very spring-y to me. For a more complete meal you could add chickpeas, limas or lentils.

Inductive citrus peels

We also served these candied citrus peels at our anniversary party, and they were a hit, at least with one partygoer. I am nothing if not devoted to my fans, so by her request, here's the recipe. I must confess that I got this recipe from the internet somewhere, but it was so long ago that I don't remember the source. Sorry for plagiarising!

Our anniversary happens to be Texas independence day, which I didn't know until our wedding day, but our anniversary party was vaguely Texas-themed. OK, it wasn't very Texas-themed at all, but we did receive a bottle of Tito's vodka as a gift (thanks!), and the citrus fruits whose peels I candied were all Texan. The grapefruits were from the produce market here, but they were definitely Rio Star grapefruits (I don't bother with that junk from Florida), and the lemons, Meyer lemons, blood oranges, and tangerines were grown by my aunt, who lives between Houston and Galveston. Go Texas!

Anyway, I'm a big fan of making food out of stuff that would be thrown away, and these peels are delicious, if a little labor-intensive. When done right, they are slightly juicy, sweet, and a little bitter. I find that the grapefruit peels makes your mouth feel slightly numb if you eat a lot of them. Grapefruit is kind of a scary food, what with its interactions with medications and all, so I'm not surprised that it has some sort of weird nerve chemical in it. Despite all that, I sure can't quit grapefruit.

How to make candied citrus peels

1a) To prep grapefruit peels, just peel a grapefruit and cut the peel into strips, pith and all. I will allow myself to go on a tangent about how I think there's a vast media conspiracy, funded by the powerful grapefruit spoon/knife lobby, to suppress the idea that you can just peel a grapefruit like an orange and eat it. It's true! That's how we always do it, and it's much easier to harvest the peel if you eat it that way. Tangent over.

1b) To prep non-grapefruits, you'll need to remove the pith. I don't know why grapefruit pith is different from the other stuff, but it is, and the other stuff has yucky pith. I take a small, sharp paring knife, put the peel on the counter, zest side down, and, with the knife parallel to the counter, try to get it between the skin and pith. It's imperfect, but you don't have to get it all.

2) I prep the peels immediately after eating the fruit and then store them in jars in the fridge until I have enough to candy. At that point, I dump the peels in a saucepan, cover them with water, and bring to a boil. Then drain and repeat this process until you've boiled and drained 5 times. This removes a lot of the bitterness. Then cover with water and a bunch of sugar. I just kind of guess at the amount of sugar, but I'd say a 3:1 or 5:2 ratio of water:sugar is probably about right. Bring this all to a boil and boil uncovered for about two hours. This gets the peels nice and soft and sweet. The liquid gets syrupy, and it makes a nice citrus-flavored simple syrup to use in cocktails.

3) Now put the peels into glass jars and cover with syrup. Store in the fridge until you're ready to use them. When that time comes, you'll want to drain the peels on cooling racks for a while to get them dry enough to roll in sugar. The time varies based on the humidity of your apartment. In Houston, I would usually leave them for 18-24 hours, but here, I've found that as little as 8 hours will work. You want them to be tacky but not wet for optimal sugar-coating. Dry them zest side up to prevent them from getting overly dry on the pith side. You can also roll them in a combination of sugar and "sour salt" (citric acid powder) for sour-sweet peels. I'm not as fond of those, but Jon and some of our friends really like them. I'd say about a 4:1 ratio of sugar:citric acid is a good starting point.

A note on limes: I have a dickens of a time getting the pith off of the lime zest, so I just skip the limes most of the time. Candied lime peel is really good, though, and I used to go to the trouble for my lime-loving friend Carolyn, but now we don't live in the same city, so I don't.

Lemon-ricotta-chard pizza

This post has been featured in the 38th Grow Your Own roundup! Thanks, Nate and Annie, for hosting! There's a lot of delicious and impressive stuff over there.

I made a big batch of ricotta last weekend because I had wanted to try several ricotta recipes. I made some ricotta gnocchi and some cute lemon-ricotta pancakes.
Both were nice but not anything really special, but this pizza was amazing. I knew that I wanted a ricotta-based pizza topping and that I didn't want it to be too complicated. My aunt gave me a bunch of home-grown Meyer lemons, which are big and sweet and juicy, and in a brilliant stroke of inspiration, I decided that they would be the perfect accompaniment to the ricotta on the pizza. Fiesta had some gorgeous bunches of Swiss chard, so I added that too. It worked nearly perfectly. Cooking sweetened the lemons even more, and the greens got a little crispy without burning. Next time I will peel the lemons because the white pith is a little too bitter. That change is reflected in the recipe.

Lemon-ricotta-chard pizza
Vegetable oil for sauteeing chard
Lemon zest, optional
1 bunch Swiss chard, stems removed for another use (if you're into that kind of thing), leaves cleaned well and coarsely torn
1/2 recipe pizza dough made with whole wheat in place of half the white flour
Olive oil for brushing
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 Meyer lemon, sliced into thin rounds, peel and pith removed
Coarse salt for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 400 F with pizza stone in it.
Heat oil in saute pan over medium heat. Grate a little lemon zest into the oil if you want. When the oil is hot, add the chard leaves and saute until wilted. You might cover them briefly to get some nice steaming action going. Remove from heat and set aside.
Roll pizza dough out into 12-inch round. Brush with olive oil. Top with ricotta, chard, and lemon slices. I added the ricotta in little spoonfuls, but you could also spread it thinly over the whole pie. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Carefully transfer to pizza stone and bake for 12-14 minutes or until the crust is done.

Lemon-sesame salad dressing

I have been in love with this dressing since the first batch. This was actually the first salad dressing recipe I ever tried. I had picked out several recipes to try and haven't tried any other ones because I like this one so well. Prior to this, we usually just dressed our own salads with oil and vinegar at the table, but since then I have almost always had a jar of this going. It's salty, citrusy, and thick. Plus, it's quite cheap, and you can adjust it to your preferences. This dressing is great on any kind of standard green salad, but it is also good on asparagus, broccoli, noodles, or a spoon. (Just kidding. Kind of.) I was initially reluctant to use it in a salad that had a strong cheese since I associate cheese with Europe and the dressing flavors with Asia and thought that they wouldn't mesh together. I was wrong.

Lemon-sesame salad dressing (adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home):

You should taste as you go along and adjust the amount of soy sauce and lemon to your tastes. And believe it or not, generic vegetable oil is the way to go here. The lemon and soy sauce are so powerful that you don't want a strong oil interfering.

Juice of two lemons, about 1/3 cup
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp or more dark sesame oil
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted

Whisk the ingredients together. That's all.