Croque swiss chard: the french - hungarian love child

Written by Gabor Keve on 19 June 2015.

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Let's start from the beginning! There's a big leaf, which is a weird love child of the spinach and the sorrel. The taste of the raw swiss chord sour like the sorrel, after steaming, completely different it's taste, like the spinach sweet and earthy flavour. But it grew much larger than it's both "parents"! That's why it's very well suited for dishes where the softness and slightly sour flavor required. But what if, when we changing a well-known recipe, and replacing some ingredients with swiss chard?

The croque monsieur, or we (hungarians) call french toast is a meal that everybody love. Crunchy outside, soft bread melted cheese and butter in it. Who is the one who does not love that? It's time to expand the limits, and create a brand new french toast with some new ingredients!

Ingredients for 4 persones

400 g fresh swiss chard
2 tbs sherry vinegar
2 tbs oliveoil
4 tbs unsalted, roasted peanuts
100 g unsalted butter
100 g cooked pork meat
200 g grated cheese(gruyere)
16 piece sliced bread

Preparation

First, you need to cook the swiss chard, and chill out very fast with cold (ice) water. Here's two method:

Put the washed swiss chard into a vacuum bag, and solder the bag. Place into the 84 °C (183 F) sous vide path for 10 minutes, then drop the bag into ice water.
Boil water, throw into the washed leaves and 10 to 15 seconds, then remove and dispose of ice water.

If you are prepared in sous vide bath the chard, tastes will be much stronger, much like the sorrel. If you are prepared in boiling water, it will be softer and the taste will remind spinach.

Place the prepared chard into papertowel, for excess moisture removed from it. Mix the vinegar and the olive oil, put a pinch of salt. Place the chard leaves into dish, and pour the vinegar mixture to it. Spread the bread with butter, place the pork meat and the swiss chard to the bread, sprinke with rough cutted peanuts, at least place the chease to the top. Put the other bread on top of the cheese. Spread the outside of both sides of the breads with small amount of butter, then put the sandwich into an oven (or into a pan), and bake until golden brown on both sides.