On Friday we celebrated my husband's 34th with a yum dinner at home. For the past 3 years we've opted to stay in and enjoy most celebration dinners at home. It probably has a lot to do with being parents of a 3 year old, but we've also become fairly good cooks.
The menu: ribeyes accented with maytag blue-cheese, wild-rice, chard & radicchio gratin, and steamer clams (fresh from the Trader Joes freezer case, give em a try!) We cooked together and created a great meal with some local ingredients,(beef is from Roseda & the greens are from my back yard.) The rice & clams were cooked according to the package instructions, and the steak was seared and pan fried. But the gratin was created on the fly, here's what I did:
Chard & Radicchio Gratin
Ingredients:
- 1 leek cleaned and sliced into half-moons
- 1 radicchio halved & chopped
- 1 bunch chard cleaned, stems removed and chopped, then leaves chopped and reserved with radicchio
- 2 cloves of garlic chopped
- 1 cup of shredded gruyere cheese
- 1 cup of panko breadcrumbs
- pinch of fresh grated nutmeg
- butter, olive oil, salt & pepper
Method:
- preheat oven to 425
- sauté leeks, garlic, and chard stems in 1 tbs butter and 1 tbs olive oil for 10 mins, season with salt and pepper
- add radicchio and chard leaves into pan, continue to cook for 5 mins
- grate nutmeg over greens and turn off the heat, season with salt and pepper to taste
- in a seperate dish, combine breadcrumbs & gruyere
- put greens into 8x8 baking dish, cover with breadcrumb and gruyere mixture
- bake for 10-15 mins or until golden brown and bubbly
The meal was great and the leftovers (steak & rice) were repurposed as burritos! We don't celebrate every meal at home, but when we do I'm always thrilled with the results.
