"chard" news and stories

If layered dishes like eggs benedict are your idea of bliss but Canadian bacon and hollandaise sauce give you pause, this garlicky chard and creamy polenta combo may be the answer to your breakfast prayers. Especially if you start with farm-fresh eggs, as blogger patentandthepantry did here. The yolk of an egg you buy from a farmer on the day it's laid is usually sunflower yellow and much more intensely flavored than those of conventional eggs from the market.

Fans of polenta with eggs might like them in a mustard sauce, as in this recipe. And if you prefer your polenta without the eggs, Curtis Stone offers a rich goat's-milk cheese and Parmesan recipe at Kitchen Daily.

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Chard. Photo: La Grande Farmers' Market, Flickr

• Delighting in chard with history, love and recipes.
• Texas State prof James E. McWilliams discusses the flaws of locavore living in his new book, "Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly."
• New York chef Tom Valenti, diabetes and his new book, "You Don't Have to Be Diabetic to Love This Cookbook."
• One more tome to ponder: Martha Stewart's new book, "Cupcakes."
• Food Matters in Austin: the Hot Sauce Festival, new restaurants on the horizon, Hudson's Sausage Co., outdoor movies, wine and food fests, free kids' meals at IHOP, 24-7 food at Twenty Four, June-Ann Rodil's title as Texas's Top Sommelier and Chisholm Trail Longhorn Beef co-op.

Fritattas -- those remarkable hybrids of potatoes and eggs -- are a bit like the girl with the curl in the center of her forehead: When they're good, they are very very good, and when they are bad, they are awful.

The dull, lifeless, underseasoned frittata is kept at bay by Tim at Lottie + Doof, who took advantage of the abundance of scallions and chives at his local farmers market. His creation is so vibrantly green, in fact, you might swear this is a closeup of a salad. It puts the "victory" in "victory garden." Note the ratio of greenery (there's also plenty of chard packed in here) to egg: this is one of the scant few dishes that could double as breakfast and salad.

[Via Lottie + Doof]

When trying to get rid of leftovers, it's easy to throw them into a stew, salad, or some other bowled smorgasbord of flavor. It can be a bit trickier to make a meal out of them that doesn't look like leftover land.

Granted, these leftovers aren't the pre-cooked kind, but what remained after a week of cooking and a journey through the freezer. We've got an eye of round dry-rubbed with a mixture of random spices, fingerling potatoes tossed in olive oil, herbs, and shallots and roasted in the toaster oven, and garlic and shallot-based saute of chard and bok choy.

The roasted shallots came off crispy, which made them the perfect topping to cover some old chevre. Now, I'm usually not a big fan of masking steak with other flavors, but when you're talking about a thick piece of meat, one that's been frozen for a few months, a little cheese and shallots go a long way. They swim with the juice of the meat, and team perfectly with garlicky greens and herby potatoes.

For a quick and simple meal, it really can't be beat.

Spinach salads are out for the moment, unless you feel like taking chances that even restaurants aren't willing to. Supermarkets are reporting a big drop in salad sales, but there is no reason to cut all greens out of your diet along with spinach. Now is the perfect time to experiment with some non-spinach salad greens. Some alternatives include:

• Mâche - delicate, sweet and slightly nutty. It resembles a cross between young spinach and a tender lettuce.
• Arugula - peppery and sharp. This green makes a great background for salads with sweet fruits or mild nuts in them
• Chard - tender and sweet when cooked. Chard is a great alternative for spinach in cooked dishes (unless you opt for frozen spinach, which the USDA says is still safe to eat at the moment).
• Dandelion Greens - sharper and more bitter than arugula. These are best when mixed with other greens, but choose smaller, more delicate leaves for salads

Romaine and iceberg lettuces can always stand in for other greens in salads, too, and can be a nice base for a salad when experimenting with other greens, particularly bitter greens.