Summer Greens Pie with Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Farmers must love Swiss chard. Every single week I get an enormous bunch of Swiss chard, sometimes varying only by the color of the stems. Most of my recipes that use Swiss chard are hearty winter stews and soups, I've frozen most of what I've gotten for use later this year.

Last week, while I was enjoying a glass of wine and browsing through cookbooks on the front porch, I came across a fun spinach pie recipe in Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes. I had most of the ingredients on hand already, and I knew I could alter his recipe for spinach and crazy British foodie speak with my Swiss chard and wee bitty American lady foodie tricks. I also got a cucumber and a delightful bag of tomatoes this week, so I tweaked the accompanying salad recipe as well. Very good. Very good indeed.

You need:

for the pie

5 eggs
8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1 lemon, zested
1 tbsp. butter
1 large bunch of Swiss chard, washed, stems removed and discarded, and chopped roughly
12 sheets of phyllo dough, thawed
1 tbsp. grated nutmeg
olive oil
salt and pepper
parchment paper
oven safe frying pan

for the salad

1 large cucumber, seeded and cut into 1 in. chunks
2 large tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1 in. chunks
10-12 Kalamata olives, pitted and cut in half
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp. chopped fresh mint
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In an oven safe frying pan, melt the butter with a wee drizzle of olive oil. Add the Swiss chard and saute until the chard is dense and wilted. This should take about 5-10 minutes. Be sure to keep an eye on it, stirring it around a bit so it doesn't burn. In the meantime, crack the eggs into a medium bowl. Whisk and then add the cheeses, oregano, lemon, and nutmeg. When the chard is done, remove it from the heat and let it cool.

Tear off a large rectangle of parchment paper and lay it down on your work surface. Drizzle it with a little olive oil and smear it about. Then, crinkle it up into a ball and then flatten it back out on the work surface. Atop the parchment paper, arrange four pieces of phyllo dough, overlapping, to make a large rectangle just slightly smaller than the parchment. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat with another layer of phyllo, drizzle and sprinkle. Do this one more time until you have three layers of phyllo.

Remove the cooled chard from the pan and add to the egg mixture. Lift the parchment and place your parchment/phyllo creation into the same oven safe pan, pushing down into the pan carefully so that you do not tear the phyllo. Fill with the chard and egg mixture. Fold the phyllo over the top in whatever wonky pattern needed to cover the top. Drizzle the top with a little more olive oil to make it slightly glossy and crispy when baked.  Turn the stove back on medium heat and cook it for about 3 three minutes to firm up the bottom. Then, place in the oven for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, toss all of the salad ingredients together and let them sit and make friends while the pie cooks.