voila’: the marriage of veggie virtue and cheesy decadence
Since I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook I have had a load of requests to provide the recipe for my Chard Gratin. I usually don’t have time to photograph my meals with a tripod and stuff so Instagram has been a godsend. Having said that it is not a vehicle for actual recipes. Please forgive the image quality… but here is the recipe.
The back story is that the other day I had trouble shutting the fridge because I had two huge bunches of chard spilling out of the veg drawer. I had whizzed round my local farmer’s market (which I have done almost every Wednesday since 2006) and bought too much – because first I bought from my usual stall as it looked lusty if imperfect and I felt in the mood for chard. Then I saw better chard at another stall, it was less gnarled and less stalky and not white chard but red – so I bought it there too… and then to my annoyance on a little way I saw an amazingly kick-arse rainbow-coloured bunch at a third stall. It was the super-model of chard. It was an utter firework of ochre and magenta and forest green and was so tender and unblemished that I had to get it too. Sometimes I can be so superficial that I will buy a thing for its beauty alone. I also went to the market hungry which is not recommended. In any case I knew I would find some or other use for – probably a soup or something that would wilt it all right down it and since I felt a detox was imminent I just paid up and hurried home.
After a few attempts at steaming it and serving it with just olive oil and lemon zest, maldon sea salt, pepper and garlic, my husband protested. Sighing: “It’s too much like hard work. It feels like punishment… like chewing on tin foil. Ugh.” At this point I realized I had to come up with a better, more lovable recipe.
In my mind I was thinking melted cheese makes everything better, especially for blokes. I had a sexy image of a “gratin / tartiflette-style” dish but I had no idea if it would work. Alternatively a soup. To check I thought I’d see if I could find any in my vast cookbook library. I flicked through about 5 books – fyi, Hemsley and Hemsley had not one chard reference in the index – which I found rather surprising. Sarah Raven’s “Garden Cookbook” (which I LOVE) had both a soup with coconut milk which appealed to me – but which was overruled by my husband – and a one pot dish which was a chard gratin with mussels (latter optional). I had recently made my first bechamel (I know, I know) to give a more comforting, luxurious layer to a potato topping for my shepherd’s pie. (It actually tastes nothing like a British shepherd’s pie and more like a ragu’ al bolognese with mince as the key ingredient and potato gratin on the top, I’ll provide this recipe shortly) and was utterly taken aback at how easy bechamel is to make. Raven’s recipe called for cream on the chard and also Parmesan and a browning sesh under the grill. I didn’t have any cream and I liked the idea of something rich-seeming but not so dairy-tasting so figured I could hybridize and rustle up my own chard gratin with bechamel and then grizzle the cheesy bits on the top.
Anchovies breaking down into a wonderfully savoury sauce when fried in olive oil (and garlic)
What takes this recipe up a notch is the anchovy element. Even my American, anchovy-hating husband has come round to loving them after 10 years of me secreting them into dish after dish. If they are broken down by frying gently in olive oil, they disintegrate into a wonderful granular dressing and provide a wonderful stock-like flavour and savoury kick that very little else can match. As this it the only non-veggie element to the dish, when cooking for veggie friends I tend to flex in with capers in their stead. Capers don’t break up and dissolve like anchovies do, but when blitzed in a chopper or finely sliced by hand, are great for mimicking that salty, marine-like flavour and punchy tang.
Here are some step by step images of how various stages of the recipe should look:
Cut the chard stalks in to 1cm chunks then…
…add the stalks to the pan of salted boiling water and cover…
after a couple of minutes add the ribboned chard leaves to the boiling stems and cover again
gently fry your anchovies and garlic and chillies (optional)
…and then throw in with the drained and dried chard and combine well
make your roux… it will bubble and look like this. Don’t let it burn, stir it every now and then while the flour cooks through (4-5 minutes)
add the milk gradually, stirring it in as you go to give this creamy kind of texture.
Chard with Parmesan gratin top, spelt bechamel, anchovies, marjoram and garlic
I like to use anchovies - particularly chilli-marinated ones I have found on ocado and alsobrought back from my hols in Italy, but you can choose the less fiery option, or recreate it by using fresh chillies. I also have tried putting anchovies in the base for my bechamel roux and in the dressing of the greens for the base and find this is more to my taste, but you can skip doubling up on the anchovies if you are not that into them and just salt your bechamel instead.
If you are catering for vegetarians, then capers are a good swap for anchovies.
I tend to make my bechamel by eye, and if I have some left over, it does form a skin when cold, but it can be re-used the next day if you remove this and whisk it back into to life with some love and heat.
Incidentally, I have recently re-worked this recipe to finish of the remaining chard and left over bechamel and put a layer of finely sliced potato across the top and the bechamel and cheese on that. The kids ate it more willingly this way : )
Ingredients
- For the base:
- 1kg chard (white chard tastes less metallic and therefore requires less saucing up! but I like to throw in some colourful chard for interest and visual impact too)
- Salt
- Pepper - freshly ground
- 5 garlic cloves
- 15 anchovies
- 1 chilli finely chopped- optional (with seeds if you like more fire, de-seeded first if not)
- 1 small cupped handful of fresh marjoram leaves - if available (if not fresh oregano, or in third place, thyme and if not don't worry!)
- For the topping (hybrid bechamel and cheese):
- 50g butter / ghee
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 5 anchovies (I like the bechamel to be salted with anchovies but you can skip this and just use salt)
- 2 heaped tbsp flour (approx 50g) - preferably spelt, as it has more flavour and is more wholesome - if not plain is fine)
- a light grating of fresh nutmeg (or c.1/4 tsp of ground)
- 400-500ml whole milk (about 3 mugs worth) - depending on how fast the bechamel thickens up - you can choose to add more or less, decide as you see the consistency
- 1 bay leaf
- 5 turns freshly ground pepper
- salt to taste (if not using anchovies here)
- 5 or so heaped tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese (enough to cover the top layer of your baking dish)
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius / gas mark 4
- Put a large saucepan of salted water on to boil
- While this heats up, wash and de-stalk the chard. You need to separate the leafy part from the stalk because they cook at different rates.
- Pile the stalks one on top of the other in an orderly bunch and cut them mercilessly in to 1cm-wide chunks with a large knife (- this will make it quick and easy - see pic on the blog post).
- Then gather up the leafy parts, and roughly slice them in to ribbons about 1 inch wide (2cm approx.)
- Throw the stalks in to the boiling water and cover.
- After 2 minutes also add the leaves, stir to distribute the heat throughout and cover again.
- After another 2 minutes drain the lot in the basket of a salad spinner (if you have one - in a colander or sieve if not).
- Whizz the lot around in the salad spinner to centrifuge out as much water as possible. If you are not spinning the greens dry, squeeze them gently with a spoon from above to remove the excess water and spread the leaves and stalks out on to a clean tea towel (do make sure the tea towel has no softener or laundry smell or you're going to be nauseated later). Put to one side.
- Now comes the flavoursome part:
- Pour some olive oil in to a saute pan (or re-use the pan you boiled the greens in).
- Turn the heat to medium and add finely sliced garlic and your anchovies / finely chopped capers and chillies (optional). Move it all around the pan to avoid it sticking and when the anchovies start to disintegrate into yummy dust, throw in the greens and give it all a good mix. At this point add your marjoram or herbs of choice and combine some more.
- Now for the Bechamel:
- Bechamel is made by forming a "roux" (cooking a flour and butter sludge in a pan to prevent the thickening flour from tasting raw) then adding milk. There are all sorts of serious roux-making theories about flavouring the milk by heating it with onion and cloves and bay etc first but I really never bother. It is such a faff. You can do a roux by eye after a go or two, as it is just this:
- * Butter and flour heated together in a pan then cooked and stirred regularly for a few minutes (4-5)
- * Bay leaf, seasoning added and stirred in (nutmeg, salt, pepper)
- * Cold milk poured in gradually while stirring the mixture, until the consistency of it resembles thick cream.
- It is very hard to make it go lumpy, it is really very easy. There are pictures on the blog of how to do this step by step.
- When I want extra anchovy flavour in my bechamel I simply start my roux with olive oil, anchovies and butter and then continue with the flour once the anchovies have broken down and it works fine.
- Then you simply pour one third of the bechamel on to the greens (pick out the bay leaf at this point) and stir to combine. Transfer to the baking dish, pour over a layer of bechamel to obscure most of the greens and cover with a snowfall of Parmesan. I like to drizzle a thin stream of olive oil over the top and some more pepper before shoving it in the oven.
- 20 minutes later it should look bubbly around the edges and golden and crispy. Make sure you let it cool for at least 15 minutes before attempting to eat it, unless you want a skin graft for the roof of your mouth.
- Et voila.
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