A chard day's night

If you subscribe to Real Simple, you probably know that their recipes are only good about 50% of the time (and always call for really random ingredients). But when they're good, they're really good! Robbie and I experiment with their recipes every once in a while when we're feeling adventurous, and this week we decided to plan our meals and get fresh produce and go to town. We were even feeling adventurous enough to cook with chard (the random ingredient mentioned earlier).

If you like vegetarian/vegan recipes and feeling healthy, I think you might enjoy this tasty dish that we had tonight. It was surprisingly good and so flavorful. And pretty easy and fast—the brown rice was the only thing that took a long time to make. A couple of our tomatoes went bad this week so we used sliced grape tomatoes and that worked out nicely. And we omitted the raisins because it sounded weird, but looking back it would have added a nice flavor and texture.

Just be careful about tossing the tomatoes in the olive oil. It's pretty much an accident waiting to happen.

Chickpeas with Chard and Pan-Roasted Tomatoes

Ingredients
1 cup brown rice (or couscous)
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 small plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 small bunch Swiss chard, thick stems and ribs removed and leaves torn (about 8 cups)
1/3 cup golden raisins
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
kosher salt and black pepper
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions
1. Cook the rice according to the package directions.
2. Twenty minutes before the rice is done, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the tomatoes, cut-side down, and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until browned and starting to soften, 3 to 5 minutes; turn and cook for 1 minute more. Transfer to a plate.
3. Reduce heat to medium and add the chard, raisins, garlic, 2 tablespoons water, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper to the skillet. Cook, tossing, until the chard wilts, 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Return the tomatoes to the skillet, add the chickpeas and lemon juice, and toss until heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Serve over the rice.