Green Pie

Everything about this pie is heavenly, from the creamy chevre cheese to the silky combo of eggs and fresh cream to the buttery pie crust! This recipe makes one pie, enough for four hearty servings. Serve with roasted potatoes and a side of baby greens salad for a healthy brunch.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Crust: Make your own trusted recipe or try this: mix 1/2 cup white flour and 3/4 cup wheat flour with a tsp. of salt in a food processor with the steel blade. Add one stick of butter, cut into chunks. Pulse until all the butter is incorporated into the flour. Leave the machine running and feed about 1/4 cup cold water through the feed tube. Add some more flour if too sticky, which it most likely will be. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll flat. Place into a pie dish. Make a few holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork. Layer the dish with crumbled chevre. Be generous!

Filling: Fill a six quart pan with loosely packed baby greens (I used beet and mustard, but spinach would be great, I am sure) and a little water. Bring to a boil and let the greens just barely wilt. Remove from heat, strain fully and chop up the greens with a sharp knife. Layer over the cheese in the pie dish. In a small bowl, beat four eggs and then add 1 cup good heavy cream. Salt generously and pepper. Pour the egg/cream mixture over the greens. Sprinkle the top with nutmeg and bake for about an hour.

Garlicky creamed baby beet greens

The beet greens just keep a comin', which suits me just fine since I love them! This little side dish is so easy you could make it with your eyes closed, and so good that you'll be eating them with your eyes closed, too, as you savor the garlicky creaminess.

Melt a few tablespoons of good butter on very low heat in a stickproof pan. In the meantime, mince 3 large garlic cloves. When the butter is nice and hot, add the garlic. Toss the garlic around by lifting and shaking the pan and let it cook until just translucent. Add enough baby beet greens to the pan so that it almost overflows as you stir them. Stir to coat with the butter and the garlic, and salt generously. When barely wilted, add some good, fresh heavy cream to the pan and heat through. I use Smiling Hill Farms cream; the processed kinds don't have the same taste.

Serve in separate bowls as a side dish with a piece of toasted bread or baguette to sop up the cream. Believe me, you will want to sop up the cream!

Beet green salads

A few very simple ideas for using those beet greens from the garden.

First, we love them raw in a salad, just like you'd use lettuce or spinach. The young, smaller greens are better to eat raw since the older, larger leaves can be a bit bitter and more tough. On this night we mixed the greens with a basic vinegarette (two parts olive oil, one part vinegar, garlic clove minced, salt, a touch of dijon mustard), some onion slices and walnuts.

Steamed beet greens are an excellent way of preparing the older, larger leaves. After they become tender, add a splash of vinegar, lemon juice and salt for a very fresh dish.

Beet greens and carrot salad

Tom Robbins once said that the beet, with its feverish, fiery, lusty red, "is the most intense of vegetables." If so, that must make the beet green, with its dark-green leaves and rich red veins, one of the most intense of the leafy greens. Adele and I opted for a bit of intensity with dinner tonight, so we gleaned a basketful of beet greens from the garden this afternoon and brought it back home for a simple salad.

Spread the beet greens evenly in a large bowl. Peel and shred two carrots and place them in a pile in the middle over the greens in the middle of the bowl. Thinly slice about half a small onion and spread evenly over the greens, around the carrots.

The dressing is a creative variation of the most basic vinagrette: In a small bowl, mix a clove of garlic, minced, with a generous amount of salt, and allow to sit for a while. This will bring the flavor of the garlic out. Add about a teaspoon of ground ginger and mix. Add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and stir again. Stir in two heaping teaspoons of olive oil and finally, add the zest and juice of half a lime.

We ate this salad with a grilled hamburger topped with some of our very own basil and a basil and garlic mayo that Adele made the other day with - you guessed it - more of our own basil. Makes an excellent, light summer-time meal.