Raise your hand if you spent an hour soaking greens and herbs last night, all the while worrying a little about eating salad every day, three meals a day all week. Fret no more!
First of all, I just want to give a nod to Meg’s post of a Clotilde recipe and say there are so many vegetables that make tasty and interesting pestos. Radish greens, while excellent simply sauteed with salt and oil, are certainly an excellent choice for pesto. If you have already used up the radish greens, try your green or red chard from the share this week as the results will be very similar. I’ve had a broccoli rabe pesto with fish that was pretty mind blowing and I’ve made pesto from sage (use pecans), artichoke hearts, asparagus and many other veggies and herbs successfully. You can also use the proportions in the recipe Meg posted and make pesto with your cilantro putting it over steamed mussels or clams and pasta. You can do the same with the cress and spread that pesto on slices of toasted bread for a very unique bruschetta. The latter would be a perfect appetizer for a July 4th gathering.
Another really reliable recipe source, the blog Smitten Kitchen, speaks of the “Costco effect” where one all of a sudden finds a freezer filled with many varieties of nuts and then has to find things to actually DO with them! But this can be a fun thing and pesto is most certainly an easy, cheap use for nuts you already have on hand. You can put a little lemon juice or other citrus in the pesto, to preserve the green and freeze in small containers or ice trays (for freezing, then pop out the “ice” cubes into a plastic bag for longer storage). Do not be afraid to see how a spritz of orange or lime works in some of these. For instance, lime is far more exciting with cilantro.
Use those same small containers to also store herb butters which are even easier than pesto to prepare. Let a stick of butter come to room temperature, chopped desired amount of herb of choice, combine herb with softened butter and transfer to small containers. My freezer right now contains dill butter (great on fish or boiled potatoes), cilantro butter (excellent to melt and pour over a pot of moules) and sage butter (pan-searing steak and mushrooms or pan-frying fresh trout).
Continuing on from herbs to other greenery, the Curly Cress in the past two week’s shares has been fun. We didn’t have this item last year and so when I saw it and first tentatively tried it, I was a little nervous. It looked like grass. With flowers on it. I’m sure some of you had the same thought and that is fair because cresses are, in fact, grass while we are not, in fact, cows. So I’ll say again here, hesitation is fair but I’m telling you it tastes SO GOOD! Two of my favorite ways to use the cress have been to put it on a roast beef sandwich (with your favorite mustard, chutney, onion and/or horseradish) and to use it as a raw base for potato pancake with slices of smoked salmon stacked all together with a little basic vinaigrette drizzled over the top. The cress is all simultaneously peppery, sweet and bitter and that combo really works with the above mentioned flavors. Cress, like chard, escarole, arugula, spinach and many other greens is going to taste wonderful tossed with pasta and some other veggies and/or meat.
The rest of your greens can certainly be used in a lovely salad but I’d like to leave you with two recipes, one for escarole and one for chard:
Chard and Salami Frittata
Bon Appétit | August 2007
Molly Stevens
6 large eggs
3 tablespoons freshly grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese, divided
1/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch Swiss chard (about 10 ounces), stems and center ribs cut away, leaves coarsely chopped
2 ounces thinly sliced Italian Genoa salami, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 2/3 cup)
1 garlic clove, minced
Preheat broiler. Whisk all the eggs, 1 1/2 tablespoons cheese, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in large bowl. Heat olive oil in medium nonstick broilerproof skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until tender but not brown, about 6 minutes. Add Swiss chard in 3 batches; toss until each begins to wilt before adding next. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until any liquid in skillet evaporates. Increase heat to medium high; add salami and garlic to skillet and stir 1 minute. Add eggs to skillet; stir to distribute evenly. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until eggs are almost set but still moist in center, about 4 minutes. Sprinkle remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons cheese over top. Transfer frittata to broiler and cook just until set in center and beginning to brown, about 1 minute. Using flexible spatula, loosen frittata around edges. Slide frittata out onto platter. Serve warm or at room temperature.
and a recipe from a site called “Group Recipes”:
Savory Sausage and Escarole Bread Pudding
4 large eggs
1 lb ground sausage (we prefer spicy)
4oz escarole (one bunch without the stalk/white parts)
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 onion (thinly sliced)
2 cloves minced garlic.
2 c whole milk (I use whatever is on hand usually 1%)
1 c shredded swiss or Gruyere
10 c cubed french style bread (most of a loaf)
1tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp grated nutmeg
Directions
Fry onion in oil until golden. Add garlic and sausage to brown. Reduce heat to low and add chopped escarole. Cook 1-2 min until wilted. Whisk milk and eggs in a bowl. Stir in cheese, bread cubes, salt pepper and nutmeg. Add sausage mixture and stir to mix well. Spread mixture into 9×13 buttered baking dish. Bake at 375 until top is golden and knife in middle comes out mostly clean (35-45 min).
Tags: cress · greens · herbs · radish
