The Visitors

The challenge when having house guests is making food that everyone will eat. Last night was a surprising success in that department. The goal was to use as much of my share as possible. I started with the Swiss chard. Never having made it before, I checked on line and in some cookbooks I have. In what is turning out to be a treasure trove of excellent recipes, I found a simple, yet interesting one in Olive Trees and Honey, a collection of vegetarian recipes from Jewish communities around the world. It is called Tunisian Braised Chard. As I was cooking for children, I left out the hot pepper.

2 pounds chard
1/4 cup olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 to 2 cloves garlic - I used the cloves from the fresh head I got last week.
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped. Again, I used the tomatoes from the share.
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Separate chard leaves from the stems. Cut the stems into 1/2 inch pieces and the leaves into 1 inch strips.

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, then the garlic and saute for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add the card stems, cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes.

Add the leaves, red pepper if using and tomatoes and saute for 1 minute. Cover and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in lemon juice and salt.

With that done, I started on the pasta. I was planning on using the garlic scape pesto again and it didn't disappoint. Just excellent.

Finally, the fish. I made sole, using a basic onion, garlic, white wine base. Once done, I again tried the sorrel sauce. The sauce turned out more of a pesto consistency, but tasted good.

Everyone enjoyed.

Today our guests saw the Garden of Ideas for themselves. We spent a relaxing couple of hours there, first walking around and then just relaxing on a bench while the kids played in the sandbox, creating an entire ice cream factory out of sand. We went into the gallery there where we ran into Joe. After I told him about the sorrel, he suggested just sauteing it with oil and putting over pasta. Sounds good to me........