Hamersley suggests this dish an accompaniment to the bacon-wrapped sea scallops. They are great together but this dish would be great with other sea food as well because of its subtle lemon flavor.
If you follow the recipe precisely, this dish is somewhat involved and expensive. You start by cooking four large artichokes but you only use the bottoms. It seemed like such a waste to discard the leaves. Perhaps they could be used as an appetizer although it might look funny to serve them unattached to the bottom. Also, I wonder if frozen artichoke bottoms would be an acceptable substitute. Suggestions please!
Next, you chop and saute the vegetables--no big deal here. Finally, the vegetables go in a gratin dish and are topped off with some cream, cheese and bread crumbs. Do not cut corners and use those dried bread crumbs from the supermarket. Make Hamersley's Bistro Bread Crumbs (page 7).
This would be a great dish for company. I would do everything ahead and refrigerate, then put the toppings on right before baking. Don't forget to add several minutes to the time to compensate for the refrigeration.
The bottom line: This is a wonderful, but expensive, dish due to the cost of the artichokes and Swiss chard (my supermarket only had organic chard). Making this in season will reduce the price. Also, Costco sometimes sells artichokes in bulk.
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