Fantastic dish i just learned from my friend, Rancho Gordo. He made it already twice in the last three days and i’m planning to do the same.

RG made it with watercress as the original idea suggested – i went with chard. There was not watercress in the store and in hindsight chard was no less appropriate anyway.

Slice the corn off the cob and cook it with a bit of water. Char sliced onion (or fat scallions – this is what i used), chiles (like jalapeno) and unpeeled garlic cloves. Peel the char off and whizz vegetables with half corn and some cream. Large bunch of chard, leaves only finely chopped, salt rubbed itm left for a min, rinsed and squeezed dry. Cook corn sauce for 10mins until reduced. Cook chard for about 9mins, add corn kernels and the sauce. I’m yet to get the ratio right but in this first version there was too much corn (4cobs)

Wegmans started to carry nice organic legumes – got some split peas and chickpeas to try. Decided to make the chickpeas/spinach dish one can find in every spanish cookbook. My version came from Jose Andres. I made some changes in spicing – braised chickpeas with cloves and cinnamon. Didn’t use saffron, and forgot paprika (stupidly). But it was picada that made this simple dish into something interesting and damn tasty.

I liked greens in Kennedy’s arroz verde so much so that i decided to use this to flavor grits. In fact, it sounded like the right thing to do. And even more than that – the sauce seemed a natural as a shrimp marinade. Don’t need to explain where shrimp came from – you know, shrimp and grits, right?
So the prep went like this. Soaked coarse grits from Anson Mills. Whizzed poblanos, romaine leaves, garlic, scallions, parsley and cilantro in food processor and moved most of the paste to a blender. Slowly added some olive oil to the stuff remaining in the processor to make a marinade for shrimps (wild from the Gulf of course). Added some water to the blender – this will be a final water addition to long cooking grits. And touch of mascarpone didn’t hurt the grits

Nothing much to say about this dish, i posted about it before: Braised Greens, Avgolemono Style.
So the main reason for posting would be a pretty picture – to break from a tyranny of comfort but brown food of several previous dinners.

Yet couple of things worth to note: added a thinly sliced fennel, for its affinity to dill flavor. And instead of traditional lamb used my favorite beef cut – tri tip.