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The Mother Of All Gratins, Featuring Swiss Chard

swiss chard au gratin

Most of us probably know the gratin preparation best from potatoes au gratin -- but no spuds here! We've got some gorgeous local rainbow Swiss chard.

Stems And Greens And All

I created this recipe when I was cooking in Europe. The funny thing is Europeans eat the stems and discard the leaves. When I moved back to the states, I noticed that Americans eat the leaves and discard the stems. In the spirit of international diplomacy, I changed this recipe to include both the stems and the leaves!

First order of business is to blanch and shock the Swiss chard. You will cook it in boiling salted water and then plunge it in an ice water bath. Be sure to wring out as much excess water as you can before adding the chard to the other ingredients.

Let's Get Saucy

Now for the good stuff.

This recipe includes a béchamel sauce. It's 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup butter, cooked down to a roux. Add three cups milk and cook for 10-15 minutes.

This is one of the five "mother sauces" in classic French cooking, which you can remember with the acronym TVinBED -- tomato, velouté, béchamel, espagnole and demi-glace. These are bases upon which you can build other sauces. (For instance, béchamel is a milk sauce, so if you've had sausage gravy, you've had béchamel sauce.)

While this recipe will never be vegan, you could make it vegetarian by substituting the bacon for capers or chopped olives.

As always, I encourage you to adjust the recipes to your taste and have fun while you cook!

In case you have kohlrabi leaves in your fridge, those would work wonderfully in this recipe as well.

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