Sunday, December 6, 2009

Doctor Langdon...or how I learned to stop worrying and love the chard


So we sat down to watch Angels and Demons on Friday after a dinner out with friends. The movie we selected off of Netflix was Angels and Demons, the Tom Hanks movie where he plays symbologist Dr. Robert Langdon.

In this movie, Dr. Langdon has to travel directly inside Vatican City in order to avert a potential crisis between religious factions and scientific factions. The movie was very enjoyable, but that's not the point of this post.

Not being the most religious of guys, I was surprised to learn that the Pope and Vatican City has a "Secret Service" of sorts called the Swiss Guard. Even stranger, to me at least, is that in the heart of Italy (within the Vatican City, which is a country in and of itself) the Pope's most trusted inner guards are....Swiss. I suppose for their avowed neutrality, but if my life is in danger the Swiss are not the nationality that come to mind to protect me.

So as I was watching the movie with the repeated references to the Swiss Guard, I started to think about the green vegetable Swiss Chard. I had always wanted to try cooking with it, so the next day I bought some and made it for us for dinner last night. Here's what I did:

Swiss Chard is massive, so I "de-stemmed" it and my girlfriend cut the leaves into smaller pieces. Then we sauteed some Spanish onion in olive oil until translucent and added the Swiss Chard.

I sprinkled some oregano on it and sauteed it on medium heat for about 4-5 minutes a side, then flipped it with tongs to coat the other side and cook it. When complete, we topped it with some parmesan reggiano.

It does shrink up when sauteeing, so make sure you really put a lot in there. It had a good taste, in the spinach class of things.

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