Vichyssoise!

Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of vichyssoise or gazpacho. It's not that I don't like soup--I love it, actually--but rather that I believe soup should be hot. However, a few weeks ago, I came upon this recipe during an oppressively hot week, and as I had tofu that needed to be used, I decided to give this a go.

Right now you're probably wondering why on earth tofu would be relevant, and thinking that this recipe is probably too weird for you to try.

However, it was amazing.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1/2 (pack? block?) silken tofu
1/2 onion
1/2 cup milk
1 consommé cube OR 1 tsp powdered consommé
salt
pepper
parsley

1. Thinly slice onions, and place them in a pot with water and consommé. Cook until onions are translucent.
2. Let ➀ cool to room temperature, then combine it and tofu in a blender. Mix until smooth, then add milk.
3. Salt and pepper to taste, then chill in refrigerator* and garnish with parsley before serving.
   

*I actually had this soup while still sort of warm and the rest after it had been chilled. Both are very good, so you don't necessarily have to wait...

falafel

A while ago, I noticed How to Cook Everything has a falafel recipe. As I have dried chickpeas, and tahini, and love falafel, I decided to try it out! Here is how it went (I made half this recipe)

Ingredients:
1.75 cups dried chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp cumin
~ 1 tsp cayenne
1 cup parsley or cilantro
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 baking soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Lots o' oil.

Blended chickpea mash.

Step 1. Soak the beans in a big bowl, covered by a few inches of water, for 24 hours.
2. WILL IT BLEND?
At this point the instructions tell you to put everything (except the oil) into your food processor. I do not have such a thing, and they cost more than I have. I do, however, have an aging blender; so I tried that. Here is the problem: blenders have sort of conical bowls, which is great for liquids but for solids means only the bottom stuff really gets chopped and the top stays kind of whole. if I'd thought about it, I could have done it in batches, but I didn't think to. So I ended up with a bunch of semi-processed chickpea stuff, and had to add extra water to it to blend it up. The results of this step do not really look delicious.

Frying is exciting.

3. Fryin'. I have never really fried something before, so this was exciting. You are instructed to put 2 inches of oil into a saucepan. THIS IS SO MUCH OIL. I did one inch, and that was a lot. Then, you are supposed to make little spheres from your mash. This also did not work well; in the end, I mostly got fried chickpea-matter, occasionally in coagulated lumps. (You toss them in the hot oil, and remove when brown). Then, you eat!

Food.

My evaluation is that this is a pretty time-consuming process, especially with having to poke around the chickpeas in the blender and then having to fry the non-balls three by three. I would probably not do this again soon, or at least not without a food processor. That said, the results are delicious, even if they are not as pretty as at a restaurant; there is something about things you fried freshly yourself that is hard to achieve in any other way. They were crispy and flavourful (though I would probably doctor the spices a bit on second go-round) and really rather delicious.

Kale Potage Soup

Uh... I am back to my usual ways. I'm not even sure if "potage" is a word commonly used in the English language.


Ingredients

1 bunch kale
2 potatoes
1 onion
500 ml milk
400 ml water
2 bouillon cubes
salt
pepper

1. Wash and cut kale into 5-cm strips. Wash and peel potatoes, and cut into small pieces. Thinly slice the onions.
2. Boil the vegetables in the 400 ml water until the potatoes and the kale stalks are soft. Set aside and allow to cool until no longer actively steaming.
3. Transfer the vegetables and water into a blender (or possibly a food processor) and blend until everything is smooth. Be careful: the steam released during this process will need to be occasionally vented, kind of like a sep funnel, or else the lid will try to fly off and splatter its contents.
4. Return the blended vegetable mixture to the pot. Use the 400 ml milk in approximately 100-ml increments to rinse out the inside of the blender, and add to the pot.
5. Bring to a boil, then add bouillon, salt, and pepper.
   

kitchen improv: white bean linguini

Kitchen Improv is where I read a recipe, in this case, this one, am missing many of the ingredients, go into the kitchen, and try to cook up something like it anyway, reconstructing the gist of what I read before.
So, I may have mentioned once upon a time that I had a lot of frozen white beans? Well, I still have some of them, and  I'm about to move, so it is time to Clean Up Frozen Things. Here is what I did.

1. Cook linguine. That part should be easy.
2. Fry up some onions and garlic in generous olive oil. I used three fat cloves of garlic and most of a small onion ("most" because part of it looked funny), but I would recommend using more, because garlic is awesome.
3. Add to this about a cup, heaping, of white beans, and a cup of chicken stock. Also salt, pepper, and a large portion of oregano.
4. Cook this down to sauce-like consistency, and mash up the beans as you go. If you are impatient and have too much liquid, which I did, you can add tomato paste--which I had, and the original recipe had sun dried tomatoes in it so I thought something tomatoey would be good. The exciting part about this is that I do not have a can opener, although I have canned goods, because it got rusty or something and my roommate threw it away. In this situation, you can still open cans by poking a hole in them with the back end of a hammer, and then cutting a hole with a knife. Tomato paste cans are a poor choice, because they are small and thus more structurally intact, and also their contents don't pour, so then you have to scoop it out spoonful by spoonful while attempting not to cut yourself on the ragged metal edges of the little hole you made. Guys, I don't recommend this course of action. Keep your rusty can openers. Anyway, add maybe half the tomato paste.
5. Serve! Add lots o' cheese.

This produces about two portions of sauce, I'd say. It needed to be slightly more vigourous in flavour, but I am not sure what it needed, so I'll go with garlic. Maybe salt, too. It was pretty delicious, but it needs beta-testing. I wouldn't make it for a dinner party, but maybe for people who were hungry and not judgmental would like it.

Potato Gnocchi

Since Anna needs things to read...

Earlier this week my lab held its (questionably) annual potluck. I had to feed a lot of people, stay within my imaginary budget, and use up almost two pounds of potatoes before they were overwhelmed by eyes. And so I decided to make potato gnocchi (I almost made a potato cake, but this idea was vehemently rejected by a friend).

Anyway, the process is pretty simple, although the whole process, from washing the potatoes to making the tomato sauce that went with the gnocchi, took approximately five hours. It won't take this long if you don't attempt to feed anything larger than a family, but just keep the timing in mind if you're ever inclined to try this recipe.

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes (~400 grams)
70g flour
1/2 tsp salt

1. Wash the potatoes and remove any eyes or damaged parts. Boil whole, with skins, until soft.
   (I boiled for about half an hour.)
2. Peel potatoes, and mash in a bowl until smooth.
   (This is the key part--I mashed the potatoes with the end of a rolling pin until they were the consistency of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes. I then began to knead the potatoes with my hands until all of the lumps were removed, and the starch was drawn out. By the end, the potatoes had become a sticky, uniform ball.)
3. Add flour and salt, and mix together into a ball of dough.
4. Pinch off a bit of the dough and roll into a small ball. Place on a flat surface, and flatten the ball with the tines of a fork. This helps the gnocchi take up the sauce after it has been cooked.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat!
   
   
   In case you were wondering, 960 grams of potatoes makes 150 gnocchi.
   
   
6. Bring a pot of water (with some salt) to a boil, then add the gnocchi. Once a gnocchi floats, remove quickly from the pot and let drain in a colander.
   
7. To prevent the gnocchi from sticking to each other, drizzle a very small amount of olive oil on top and mix so that they are all evenly coated.
   
   
   

things that are delicious

Guys, if you are reading this, don't. Go away and make something wonderful and write about it. I want to read! Shoo!



Anyway, here are things that I made recently that were good.
The first thing is inspired by something I had at a Turkish restaurant. It was basically tzatziki, but Turks don't call it tzatziki. Anyway, to make it, you will need some yogurt (which I have lots of), and also garlic and dill and cucumber and a little salt and olive oil. I think I used about half a bowl of yogurt and about an inch of cucumber cut up small, and several smallish cloves of garlic (can you have too much garlic?) and then put in as many shakes of dill as seemed useful and then a little more than that. The olive oil is mostly to thin it, only my yogurt is already kind of runny; but olive oil is also delicious. Anyway I served this with pasta, and it was good.
The other thing I made was to use up some leftover pasta I had from the previous thing, and also some broccoli raab I have lying around (I think it's in season? but normal broccoli is supposed to work too), and taken from The Cookbook. Basically, boil the green things in a pot, and meanwhile roast up some garlic in a skillet; when the raab is done, which takes less than five minutes, take it out with a slotted spoon and dump it in the skillet. You now use the same water to boil up some pasta, while stirring around the green things (possibly with some pasta water added to them); then when the pasta is good, drain it and reserve some water, and put pasta and water into the skillet and toss with some salt and pepper and maybe some red pepper flakes. Serve with some grated Parmesan/Romano. I put in a lot of red pepper and it was good; however I suggest erring on the low side for the pasta because my rotini to not-rotini ratio was really suboptimal.

The Miracle of Butternut Squash!

So... today I discovered that one can eat butternut squash seeds just as one would eat pumpkin seeds. And they taste better! Was I the only one who didn't know?

In case I wasn't, here's how you prepare them:

1. Wash seeds thoroughly to remove any of the stringy pumpkin parts.
2. Lay out the seeds on parchment paper laid out on a baking pan, and let air-dry for several minutes.
3. Sprinkle with salt.
4. Bake for 5-10 minutes at 300 F.

Harvard seriously wasted so many seeds...

Japanese "Melon" Scones

Ingredients

200g flour
10g baking powder
2g salt
40g sugar
40g vegetable oil
1 egg

1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together in a clean plastic bag, then add vegetable oil and egg. Knead together through the bag until everything is mixed evenly.
2. After the dough is mixed, split into sixths and roll into balls, then flatten them slightly. Place on greased or lined baking pan. (The dough might be crumbly here--don't worry, and just do your best.)
   
3. Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top, then make slight gridlike cuts using the back of a knife, like the outside of a cantaloupe! (My dough was a little too crumbly for good cuts, as you can see from the non-melonlike appearance of my scones.)
   
4. Bake for ~15 minutes at 356 F (or 180 C, for those abroad).
   

Cauliflower and Potato "Salad"

This is perfect for winter, when the selection of in-season vegetables can get a little sparse... There are also no measurements really associated with this recipe, as everything can be done to taste and to the desired amount.

Ingredients

potatoes
cauliflower
garlic
mayonnaise
salt
pepper
mustard
olive oil

1. Wash and peel potatoes, and cut into bite-sized pieces. Separate cauliflower into small parts. If you are using actual cloves of garlic instead of garlic paste, slice the clove thinly.
   
2. On low heat, cook garlic in olive oil until fragrant. Then add the potatoes and cauliflower, raising the heat to medium.
3. Briefly stir-fry, then cover pan and let the vegetables steam-cook for several minutes. Remove lid, and add mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and pepper to taste. Continue to stir-fry until vegetables are cooked and golden brown.
   

By the way, as I was looking up terms for this recipe I discovered what "cauliflower ear" is. Not pleasant.

Palak Paneer!

So, now that I had paneer, the obvious thing to do was to make palak paneer. I really love palak paneer. In order to make it, I had to increase my spice cabinet considerably, so maybe this is not the most practical thing in the world unless you have a lot of spices lying around. If you do, it is dead easy. Basically, I synthesized a number of internet recipes  (like here and here ) and so it went something like:

This is the best picture I could take.

In a saucepan, sautée in olive oil one onion, two fat cloves of garlic, some pepper flakes, and about a half-inch chunk of grated ginger.  [I am sure technically it is supposed to be ghee, but who has ghee lying around? Not I. Also I think green pepper is more proper, but too bad. ] When this is nicely done, add a spoonful of yogurt, and some spices--turmeric, coriander, cumin, garam masala, that sort of thing (about 1.5 tsp each?) . The coriander I think is especially delicious. So now you have like a sauce thing. Add two packages of thawed frozen spinach to your pan, and a can of tomato paste. Mix! Then fry up the paneer and add that in. I tried to fry my paneer in the same pan, but it didn't work very well. It was still good though.

Look how enthusiastically I am eating! It must be good.

And there you go! Delicious curry. I would serve this to friends. I do not know if I would buy it in a restaurant, as the spicing still needed tweaking and I am not sure how. Somebody should try it and tell me. Anyway, hooray spinach, and hooray spice cabinet!

also: inverse test kitchen?

So, a while ago I made chicken stock, because I felt it would be a useful thing to have. I don't actually know what I plan to do with it, so if you have ideas, tell me.  Anyway, then I had cooked chicken, so i made fajitas! No need to really go into how to make fajitas, though I did include a zucchini and some carrot in there, which I recommend. I also made guacamole to go with the fajitas, because I was feeling extravagant and was doing groceries anyway.

mmmm burrito.

So, then I ended up with an excess of tortillas and cilantro and the like, but no avocado, so I couldn't make guacamole, and I did not wish to purchase another avocado because I was no longer feeling extravagant. Plus, it is the nachos dilemma.  So, for a while the only idea I had was to make a bunch of quesadillas with cilantro, but that is not all that exciting. THEN later I was eating chili--I have lots of chili in the freezer, though not from the same batch I posted about--and thought "what can I do to make eating chili more interesting?" And the answer, so obvious, is burritos! So I made rice, and then added cilantro, to get flavoured rice. This has the added advantage of making my somewhat lousy-quality rice less lousy. And then I heated up some chili--which is like the beans and salsa part of a burrito all in one! And I melted some cheese onto my tortilla, because I was feeling FANCY.  And then I ate a burrito. And it was good. But other ideas for the rest of my cilantro would still be welcome.

more fun with tiny life-forms: bread!

ANOTHER STORY. So, I'm at a Divinity School, and at Div School we have chapel. Not that you have to go, but they schedule classes so you are always free then and there is coffee hour afterwards, so why not. So, this one time, a few months ago, a dude gave a sermon about the loaves and the fishes and whatnot, and he gave it while kneading dough in the center of the chapel and talking about how his grandmother made bread and how he worked at a bakery and stuff. It was a pretty good talk. ANYWAY the point of my story is, after chapel everyone got a tiny baggy of sour-dough starter as like a symbolic souvenir or something. I think most people probably threw them out, but my reaction was "Sweet! Now I can make bread! AWESOME." And I took my sourdough starter and put it in a container and fed it a little bit every week, and eventually my little pet grew big and strong, by which I mean there was enough that I could do something with it, i.e. make bread. Because the thing is, I really like bread, and the other thing is that I don't feel like paying for fancy bakery bread and I don't like squishy American bread.
So, using the magic of the internet, I found a recipe for sourdough! And then I made sourdough. If you don't happen to come across some starter, as I did, you might not make sourdough, though supposedly one can make one's own starter. Or I can give you some, if you want. Or you could use regular yeast--I just got a good yeast bread recipe off my brother (who is to bread as cookie monster is to cookies) but have yet to try it because I have no yeast and I do have starter (which is basically INFINITE BREAD).

Bread after second rising.

Freshly baked bread!

Basically, making sourdough turns out to be pretty easy. First you let your starter sit on your counter for a bit, and give it is feed of flour and water, and eventually it will start to bubble. Which is kind of freaky actually, because IT'S ALIVE. Then you take two cups of the stuff and put it in a bowl, and add 2T olive oil and 2t salt and 4t sugar, and then add flour until it's doughy. Which is two or three cups, depending on your flour and your dough. [It bothers me that I can't find any big bags of flour, because making bread runs right through those little 5 lb bags and now it's gross out ad I don't want to buy more.] And you knead knead knead, until your dough is sort of flexible--like when you get the idea you could roll it out pretty thin without it breaking. This actually isn't as much work as I always thought it would be. Then, take dough, cover, put in warm place (like your oven) to rise. When it doubles, re-knead, shape into desired loaves, cover again, let rise some more, and then bake at 300 degrees for half an hour or so, until it's baked-seeming. Bread is pretty forgiving as far as I can tell.

So! I have done this I think three times now. The first time the bread had kind of a dense texture--not bad, but not what I expected. Maybe it didn't rise enough, I dunno. The next time it was picture-perfect, but I didn't take pictures. This time I made two little loaves, and froze one, and they ended up expanding out rather than up so they're a little flat. And also I tried glazing them with egg and it looks a little funny. However the bread is CERTIFIABLY DELICIOUS and good for eating.
So: Bread!

Slice of bread, with breakfast.

Test Kitchen #1

Guys, the Test Kitchen is a scary place. If I were you, I wouldn't go there. Seriously. I've posted a big sign. It says "Test Kitchen." If you've read this post, you know not to go there. If you haven't, it's your own fault.

Today, avocados were rapidly going soft in the Test Kitchen. No tomatoes were available, nor was lime juice, and it's very cold outside. Also, no cilantro was available, and you can only get that at a Turkish supermarket. The environs of the Test Kitchen contain no Turkish supermarket. The upshot: no guacamole.

The Test Kitchen had recently acquired a new ingredient: corn flour. Flour is magical, because when you put it with water (or other liquid, with or without sundry dry ingredients) and make it hot, it becomes a solid, edible mass. Sometimes the mass is delicious. One such delicious mass is called a pancake, and I make pancakes in the Regular Kitchen, not the Test Kitchen. That's because pancakes don't backfire; they don't let you down.

You may have guessed where this is leading: avocado pancakes. I asked the internet whether such a thing was possible; the internet told me "it is possible with bananas." No, I had no bananas. But one time I heard the phrase savoury pancake and I decided that since I had heard the phrase before it was probably something delicious. I am not in the habit of hearing non-delicious phrases, as I'm sure you know. So I whipped up some savoury pancake batter:

1 avocado, mashed
1 egg
1 shallot, minced
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup corn flour
some milk
some baking powder
some black pepper

green

I heated some oil in a pan, and then I put the batter in the pan, making sure to spread it pretty thin. The batter coalesced into a solid mass, which I was then able to flip.

pre-flip

At the end, I put sour-cream-like substance on the pancake, and ate it. It was a thing that I ate. Will I eat it again? Probably; I still have about half the batter left. Will I make it again? The flavour was curious, and I think this pancake, like most other pancakes, should have been a sweet pancake. I would, in an hour of need, attempt to make a sweet pancake out of avocados. Would I serve it to a guest? No, no I would not. I would not allow a guest into the Test Kitchen.

Rating: 4 beers out of 5 (You should drink 4 beers before attempting to enjoy this food, and only ingest it if you're still hungry afterward)

adventures with bacteria

FIRST STORY: So, I really like kind of thick yogurt. A lot of store-brands bother me, because they are weird and runny and also advertise how good they are for your digestion. I have nothing against good digestion, but I want to just eat yogurt because it's delicious and not because I am being Healthy. So, the other day I saw a brand that was just the ticket--Fage Total greek-style yogurt, made with whole milk. Sure, it was five dollars, but then everything is a little expensive in this store [side note: New Haven has no true grocery stores. Fun Fact. The place I get my groceries is a shop kind of like Broadway market only like a third the size. Actual stores like Trader Joe's or ShopRite or what-have-you are out in the boonies and hence inaccessible to carless me.] Guys, be warned: THIS IS THICK YOGURT. It was basically indistinguishable from sour cream, and while I love sour cream, it is not a breakfast food. [Fact: this school year, I have consumed at least 104 ounces of sour cream.] So, let this be a cautionary tale.

SECOND STORY: After hearing recommendations for "How to Cook Everything" from multiple independent sources, I became convinced that this was a book I needed, and, never having seen it in the flesh, ordered it off Amazon (the new, revised version). Cost me about twenty dollars, and, friends, that was money well-spent. It's pretty much the best ever. If you are the lone solitary person on this blog that has not yet gotten this wondrous book, well, you should.

COMBINATION OF ABOVE STORIES: Soooo, leafing through the cookbook I realized there is a recipe for making yogurt! Gosh, I thought, then I could make this kind of strange and overpriced yogurt go to good use! I too will make yogurt!

Making yogurt is, superficially, a pretty simple process. First you boil your milk , and then you cool it to about 110 degrees F (I discovered I had a thermometer lying around, and used it!). And then you add some room temperature yogurt. [Oddly, the internet seems to unanimously declare the rations to be 2 T yogurt to a gallon of milk, but the cookbook has 1/2 a cup.). Then you put this mixture somewhere and keep it at about 100 degrees. [Above 120 and the bacteria die; below 90 and they get drowsy and fall asleep again]. And then you wait for 6 hours at least--or a lot a lot longer--and disturb it minimally. And then you get yogurt.

SO. I don't have a nice yogurt maker or a thermos or whatever, so I wrapped the container up in some tea towels and put it in a slightly warmed oven, which I sort of reheated from time to time, nervously checking the oven thermometer.

THE RESULT. Well, I don't have any pictures, because this wasn't what you would call an unequivocal success. I don't know if maybe things got too hot or too cold by accident, or if this process just turns out funny, but my yogurt was kind of bizarre. It was really runny, with tiny yogurty lumps in places, and tasted--well, kind of like warm milk actually, even when cold. I mean, it was pretty good--I ate the whole container for breakfast--and it wasn't sour like a lot of store yogurt which I guess is a plus? (My original yogurt wasn't that sour either, which may have helped.)But it was a little strange--which is why I decided not to save some for the next batch of yogurt but decided to buy some more later, since I can't tell if I killed the happy bacteria or not. IN CONCLUSION I really want to try this again, because then I will have self-perpetuating yogurt. INFINITE YOGURT. Maybe someone else can try and tell me if it works?

I'm also planning to make cottage cheese some time. I was actually going to do this today, but you need buttermilk and the store was out of buttermilk, so it will have to be another time.

delicious lentils: story cum experimental recipe

Here is a story. The story is that I live next door to a schawarma place, which also has a convenience store of sorts. And while I was picking up milk at said schawarma place, my eye fell upon a can of Foul. Foul is delicious stuff--it's basically seasoned fava beans in a pita of deliciousness, and is maybe my favourite thing at the falafel place in Harvard square (and I've tried a lot of their things). So i thought, gosh, delicious! Except that this, being unseasoned, was basically a can of fava beans, so I thought I would wait until I had some seasonings, like maybe a lemon or whatever. And then later in the week I actually did my groceries, but then it was too late to buy the can of foul. And today I would have, but it was snowy and I'd already put on my pajamas owing to my clothes being soaking wet from going sledding, and so I did not go get any fava beans. However, I then thought, who needs fava beans anyway? I have lentils! Lentils are so useful. They are cheap and non-perishable and don't need soaking. So, I decided to make a lentil thing. Here is what I did.
1. Cook desired amount of lentils, according to package. Side note: For once, the package didn't lie to me about serving sizes. It said a serving size was 1/4 cup of dried lentils, but usually the serving sizes assume you are a starvation artist midget who is also having at least three other items in their well balanced meal, so I made 1/2 a cup, but that was enough for two bowls. I was hungry and ate them both, but it's a word of warning.
2. Meanwhile, cook up a small onion and some garlic. I had about three cloves that were no longer in a bulb, so I used them, but it could have had more. I mean it was ample garlic, but I also really like garlic. Anyway sautee that up in some olive oil (onions first!) and when almost done add a small tomato.
3. Meanwhile, make yourself some dressing with lemon juice and olive oil. I started off with a 1:1 ratio, but that was wrong, so I added more oil, but didn't look to see how much. I think it was less than a 2:1 ratio. Maybe 3:2? Whatever. Season that up with some salt and basil and oregano and whatever you have around.
4. When lentils are cooked, add the other stuff. Warm. Eat.
I'd regard this as pretty successful, except that it turns out half a lemon is actually kind of a lot of lemon juice so I had too much of the dressing. So, yeah, don't make as much dressing. Or use more lentils.

Anyway I am kind of excited that I have found a good use for lentils! So hooray!

Lemon "Tartar" Sauce

This is like a 2-minute recipe for a great sauce that goes especially well with white fish (baked):

mayonnaise	３tbsp
lemon juice	２tbsp
sugar	１tbsp
salt
pepper olive oil

Mix everything together, and you're done! This serves about three. For those adverse to using 3 tbsp of mayonnaise (like me), you can substitute at least half of it with an equivalent amount of plain yogurt. I used Trader Joe's European Style Nonfat Plain Yogurt, which has a loose consistency ideal for a sauce.

Potato-Spinach Pancakes

Who doesn't like pancakes? =D I actually used swiss chard instead of spinach, and swiss chard has a better texture for this, but I figured that spinach would be a more commonly available ingredient. Anyway...

Ingredients

3 large potatoes
1 bundle(?) of spinach/swiss chard
3 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
(2 tbsp shredded cheese)

1. Wash then boil the spinach/swiss chard, then chop into small pieces. Both the leaves and the stalks can be used. Lightly squeeze out some of the water, and set aside.
2. Wash and peel the potatoes, then grate into a medium-large bowl.
3. Add the spinach/swiss chard to the bowl, along with the salt and flour. (The original recipe calls for the cheese to be added as well, but I actually skipped the cheese altogether and thought it tasted fine.) If the mixture is too watery, then adjust by adding more flour.

   The other option would be to remove some of the water that the potatoes generate before adding the rest of the ingredients, but this water contains a lot of useful starch, so this is not ideal.

4. After everything is mixed in the bowl, shape them into small pancakes, and pan-fry with a small amount of olive oil until brown.