Sauteed Swiss Chard with Baby Dutch Potatoes and Sirloin Strips

We have a bumper crop of Swiss Chard. I was afraid that row in the new garden wasn’t going to give us much but the weather warmed up a little and BAM! After looking at it in the morning, I new that I would be preparing Swiss Chard for dinner.

The internet abounds with sauteed Swiss chard recipes – I wanted to try something a little different. Could I come up with an all-in-one dish? My Sweet Lady Wife is a meat-and-potatoes gal, so I needed to figure out how to put those in there as well.

Time for an experiment. No recipe. Totally winging it. TIme to put on the helmeet, goggles, and parachute. They don’t call me the Fumbling Foodie for nothing.

And for added measure, I decided to live stream this experiment via ustream as well as record it. ‘Why?’, you ask. For the same reason they have a camera on the EOD guys when they work: If something went wrong, at least someone might figure out what it was. Unfortunately the sound volume is a little low. Next time I’ll fix that.

The results were outstanding. We loved it. Here’s the recipe. SInce I didn’t really measure anyting, the quantities are approximate:

Enough Swiss Chard leaves to fill an 8qt bowl
2 slices applewood smoked bacon
1 small boneless sirloin, filet mignon, or other high-quality beef
1 garlic clove, sliced
1 can low-sodium beef broth
3/4 pound Dutch baby potatoes, peeled.
1/4 cup white wine
1/8 cup julienned sun-dried tomatoes.

Slice the beef into very thin strips.

Wash the Swiss chard. Cut the center stalk out of each leaf and then tear the leaves into chunks about 2-inches square.

Fry the bacon in a sauté pan over medium-low heat. When the bacon is crisp, remove it from the pan. Add the garlic. Let the garlic sauté just until it starts to brown, then remove it from the pan and discard it. Add the beef strips. Cook for about 2 minutes then turn each strip over and cook for one minute more. Remove them from the pan and set aside.

Add the wine to the pan and deglaze. Add the beef broth and potatoes. Bring the broth to a boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook the potatoes until they are tender when pierced with a fork. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook off almost all the remaining broth.

Begin adding Swiss chard a handful at a time. As it wilts down, add another handful. Repeat. When you have two handfulls left, add the beef and bacon back into the pan. Add the sun-dried tomatoes with the last handful of Swiss chard.

Serves about 4