Chard Pie

A scrumptious savory pie full of chard goodness. Not difficult to make, and utterly delicious. From a Martha Stewart recipe.




Here's the recipe (from www.marthastewart.com/355600/swiss-chard-pie):

Ingredients

For The Olive Oil Dough

• • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup cold water
  • 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

• For The Swiss Chard Pie

  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 medium red onion, cut into small dice
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 1/2 pounds Swiss chard, stems cut into small dice and leaves torn
  • 3/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
  • Coarse salt and ground pepper
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (I used sharp cheddar, and it was still delicious)
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • Grated zest of 1 large lemon, plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1 large egg yolk

Directions

1. In a bowl, combine all-purpose flour, extra-virgin olive oil, cold water, and coarse salt. Stir with a fork to combine, then turn out onto a work surface and knead 1 minute. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature, 30 minutes.
2. In a large pot, heat oil over medium-high. Add onion and garlic; cook until onion begins to soften, about 2 minutes. Add chard stems and red-pepper flakes; cook until stems begin to soften, about 2 minutes.
3. Pack chard leaves into pot; season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until chard leaves wilt, about 4 minutes. Uncover and cook, stirring occasionally, until chard is soft, about 4 minutes. Drain, pressing out as much liquid as possible. Place chard mixture in a large bowl and toss with Parmesan, flour, lemon zest and juice. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Roll two-thirds the dough to a 12 1/2-inch round; fit into an 8-inch round cake pan (2 inches deep). Fill bottom crust with chard mixture. Roll remaining dough to a 9 1/2-inch round; place over filling. Pinch edges of dough together and tuck in to seal; cut several vents into center of pie. Combine yolk with 1 teaspoon water and brush over dough, avoiding edge of pan. Freeze pie (see below).
5. To serve, preheat oven to 400, with rack in lowest position. Bake frozen pie until crust is deep golden brown, about 1 1/2 hours. Serve warm or at room temperature.

(Note- I did not freeze this- I just popped it in the oven when ready, and baked for about 1 hr, and it was delicious... so delicious that I think I should make it again, and freeze it.)

Mixing the olive-oil dough:

The dough:

The dough has a very different texture than either buttery pie dough or bread. The final crust had a soft cracker-like texture reminiscent of breadsticks; the dough was pliable and soft but without crumb. Very easy and pleasant to roll out.

I always forget how time-consuming washing and prepping veggies can be. In this case, prepping three bunches of chard wound up being the most time-consuming and irritating part. First, there's washing and stemming:

Then chopping. Here's the chard stems, onion, red pepper flakes and garlic, cooking:

Rolling out the dough:

One bottom piece (the recipe calls for a cake pan, but I actually used a 9.5" shallow pie pan and was pleased with the result) and one top piece:

Cooking down the chard. This also took longer than expected-- we don't really have a big enough pot for this sort of thing, so at first the saucepan was so full I couldn't even stir. So it took a while for all the leaves to soften. Need to buy a stockpot.

Mixing the cooked ingredients and cheese, flour, and lemon.

 Once the pie was all tucked in, I rolled over the edges and pressed together:

 An hour later, with chard juice oozing out of the top and a lovely browned crust:

 Sublime steamy chard  goodness:

  

 This was an excellent lunch, cold, the following two days, too.

Can't recommend this recipe highly enough. All hail Martha!