After my bad experience with quinoa a few weeks ago, I thought the best way to move on with Resolution No. 6 was to pick out some new ingredient to make up for it.I've been craving a nice, hearty pasta dish, but I've also been on kind of a healthy eating kick so I thought I would look through a low-fat pasta cookbook I have. Before you diss it, two of my favorite dishes are from this cookbook. I love the baked ziti recipe which uses tomato sauce and nonfat milk instead of a bechamel sauce as well as a pesto made with basil, garlic, chicken broth and cream cheese and just a touch of olive oil.
This week I chose an orecchiette pasta dish that mixes sundried tomatoes, bell peppers and the ingredient I've never used before, Swiss chard. It was easy enough to find Swiss chard in the grocery store, unlike the kohlrabi I tired to use a few weeks ago. It is a big leafy green vegetable with a thick stem up the middle. For this meal, we cut out the stem/vein from the middle, then thinly chopped the rest of it. The chard was added to a saute pan with the tomatoes, bell peppers and garlic. It wilts down like spinach so a lot was needed to fill out the dish. But on the plus, a cup of Swiss chard has only 7 calories so eat up.
The meal was filling and the chard had a somewhat peppery taste to it. It is definitely a vegetable I will try to incorporate into more meals.
Photo by Melissa Flores
Swiss chard is cooked up in a pasta dish that mixes bell peppers, sundried tomatoes and chicken.
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