Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts

Spinach with raisins and pine nuts is a classic Catalan dish that I’ve made several times as a side, with great results. I saw some great looking swiss chard at the store last weekend and thought the chard/pine nut/raisin combination would make a great side dish with the rest of our Spanish feast that night: a quick vegetable Fideau, roasted red peppers, and garlic shrimp.

I mostly followed a recipe in The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas. The recipe calls for boiling the chard prior to sautéing, a step I found kind of unnecessary and think I would omit next time. I also tweaked a couple of things such as toasting the pine nuts prior to adding them to the dish.

Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts
Adapted from The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas

Ingredients

1/3 lb swiss chard (weight after stems removed)
Olive oil
1 large clove of garlic
1/4 c. chopped onion
1 Tbsp. raisins
1 Tbsp. pine nuts
Salt and pepper

Instructions

The recipe calls for dropping the leaves (with stems removed) into boiling water and cooking for 5 minutes. Then, she says to drain the leaves, put them back in the pot covered with cold water, bring them up to a boil, and let boil for an additional 10 minutes. Again, I would omit this and just sauté the chard for a little longer. This step might apply, though, if you’re using a heartier green, such as collards.

Meanwhile, I sautéed the onion and garlic in some olive oil. In a separate, dry skillet I toasted the pine nuts until just golden.

As the items on the stove were cooking, I poured some hot water over the raisins to soften them.

When the chard was cooked and the onion/garlic mixture soft, I added the chard to the skillet along with the toasted pine nuts and softened (drained) raisins. After seasoning with salt and pepper and sautéing for just a few minutes, it was ready to go.

As with the spinach, the bitter chard goes perfectly with the sweet raisins and the crunchy pine nuts. I’m not sure if the pictures does it justice (still working on my photography skills), but it is one tasty dish.

Restaurants: Pizzeria Posto

I have finally found a place to get my Neopolitan pizza fix in the Boston area. Pizzaria Posto, located in Davis Square, is right up there with a lot of the great Neopolitan pizzas I’ve had in New York. (Ok, it’s not as good as Motorino, but what is?)

Because the pizza is so top notch, I haven’t actually tried anything off of the rest of the menu. It all looks delicious, but it’s hard to go there and not order the pizza. In our latest visit, Matt and I split the Margherita and Eggplant pizzas.

Their Margherita has the standard toppings: San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella (which they actually make), and basil. They also add parmesan, which is not traditional, but I can’t argue with it. The crust is nice and puffy around the edges, has the right amount of chew, and has that charred flavor from the super hot oven.

The eggplant pizza is pretty simple as well: San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, grilled eggplant, and fresh oregano. It’s similar to the Margherita, but the oregano gives it a nice twist. The grilled eggplant also gives it more of a charred flavor.

I try to sit at the bar when I go. The wait staff and seating area can be a little bit stuffy, but the bartenders are great. Either way, though, I highly recommend eating at Posto.

Pizzeria Posto
187 Elm St., Davis Square
Somerville, MA 02144

Barrel Aged Negronis

When Matt and I first moved to the Boston area, we spent a lot of time at Temple Bar drinking their barrel aged negronis. They simply mixed up a large batch of negronis – equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari – and aged them for 3 months in whiskey barrels. When Matt’s birthday rolled around, I found smaller barrels on Barrels Online that can be used for aging cocktails. It was the perfect gift! They even personalize them, so I got his initials engraved on the front.

Unlike the whiskey barrels that Temple Bar uses, these barrels are new, so we first filled it with some Rittenhouse Rye and let it flavor the barrel for a couple of months. The rye was also good for drinking afterwards, of course. After emptying the rye, we immediately mixed a two liter batch of negronis and poured it into the top of the barrel with a funnel. We marked it in the back with the date and waited…

For some reason we originally thought that Temple Bar aged their negronis for 3 months, so that’s what we did with ours. We poured our first aged negronis last weekend.

Our negronis definitely tasted more oaky than the ones at Temple Bar, but not in a bad way. I think that Temple Bar actually tops their barrels off with fresh mixed negronis as they serve the aged ones, so they will naturally be less oaky. Overall, they were absolutely delicious. They tasted like a richer version of the classic negroni with a hint of oak. We could also taste a little bit of the rye flavor, making them a lot more interesting than the standard negroni.

Negronis are traditionally served with an orange peel that is put under a flame and squeezed into the drink, but we were too much in a hurry to finally try the final product to even remember that.

Now we just need to pick a next drink to try out in the barrel. We’ll have to decide soon, because I’m pretty sure this batch won’t last very long.

Here are a few links to articles/websites on barrel aged cocktails that we used when trying to figure out how to use our barrel. It has become quite a trend, apparently.

• New York Times: Six-Week-Old Martinis, Anyone?
• Serious Eats: Uncorking the Negroni at Temple Bar in Cambridge, MA
• Jeffrey Morgenthaler: Writes About Bartending and Mixology from Portland, Oregon

Provençal White Bean Dip

I feel like I’ve kind of OD’d on hummus, so the white bean dip recipe on Serious Eats last week caught my eye. The addition of roasted garlic really takes this recipe to a whole new level. I also added a little bit of lemon juice to brighten the flavor a little bit. Aside from the time it took to roast the garlic, it was really fast and easy to put together.

We had it as an appetizer on Sunday with some endive leaves and toasted baguette slices. I think it will also replace hummus as my go-to snack from now on!

Ingredients

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 head roasted garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
The leaves of 1 stem of fresh rosemary
The leaves of 3 stems of fresh thyme

Instructions

Puree everything and season with salt. I served it with some fresh thyme leaves and a drizzle of olive oil.

Grilled Pizza

Ok, so I know the picture isn’t great, and my first attempt at grilled pizza was far from perfect, but it was still pretty delicious.

We just bought one of those little Weber charcoal kettle grills and I naively thought it would be as easy to use as a gas grill. Turns out I have a lot to learn. Once we finally got the coals lit and the grill going, the heat didn’t last very long. We were able to barely grill this pizza, but didn’t get to make the second pizza I had in the works.

Anyways, I had planned on making this pizza according to the instructions on Serious Eats. I had all of the ingredients prepared in advance – caramelized shallots, sautéed cremini and shitake mushrooms, grated pecorino, and chopped chives. We took a shortcut and used some pizza dough from whole foods that I cut in half, stretched out (in an odd shape as you can see above), and brushed with olive oil. Once we put it on the grill, oiled side down, it just didn’t seem hot enough. Instead of the recommended 1 – 1 ½ minutes on the first side, I had to let it cook for over five minutes. Once I flipped it, I added the mushrooms, onions, and cheese. Since we didn’t use a lot of cheese and the rest of the toppings were still warm, I left the grill uncovered for most of the time.

Thankfully, it eventually did get crisp at the bottom. I added some chopped chives and some flaky sea salt at the end. Despite the hiccups with the grill, it was actually VERY delicious. I plan on making many more attempts this summer.

If anyone is actually reading this, I would love some tips on how to get (and keep) charcoal grills hot!