Meatless Monday: Swiss Chard and Chèvre Turnovers

Greetings! It's Monday so I have a delicious recipe that is free of animal flesh in the hopes that you'll consider reducing your meat consumption, if only for one day a week.
Today, I took some inspiration from this cookbook and made some major modifications to their Spinach and Goat Cheese Turnover recipe to make these quick and easy savory turnovers.
For your consideration, some reasons why this recipe is worth making:

• includes puff pastry
• uses up all that chard
• GOAT CHEESE!
• can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated or frozen
• easy to make in smaller sizes for hors d'oeuvres
• easy to veganize
• super fast to put together
• healthy, delicious, and even kinda fun to eat

Swiss Chard and Chèvre Turnovers
inspired by Laura C Martin's recipe from The Green Market Baking Book
Makes approximately 9 small turnovers (3-4 servings as a main dish)
1 white onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 large leaves of Swiss chard
3-4 tbsp. goat cheese
3 tbsp. pecorino romano (or any dry grated cheese)
1/2 c. pecans
2 tbsp. fresh chives, thinly sliced
salt and pepper
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
3 tbsp. butter, melted

Begin by thinly slicing the onion

and garlic.


Remove the stems from the chard and chop.

Sauté the chard stems and onions in a pan with a little olive oil or butter and salt and pepper until they're soft.  Then add the chard leaves which you've roughly chopped.  Cook until the leaves are soft and onions translucent.  Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, toast the pecans in a dry pan or low oven until you smell them.
Run to the backyard and grab some chives.
Once the nuts are toasted, let them cool and then chop them roughly.
Now grab your two cheeses.  You're free to use any soft cheese that you like.  I enjoy quark cheese, but it's harder to find than goat.  If you don't like chèvre because of its strong taste, consider a soft sheep or cow's milk cheese.  One of my favorites is Le Roule.
Take the cheeses, nuts, and chives and combine in a bowl.
Then add your cooled chard filling and stir lightly to combine.
Now prep your puff pastry.  Begin with one sheet.  As you can see, when you unfold it from the package it will be divided into thirds.
Slice along these lines and put two of the pieces of pastry back into the fridge to keep them cool.
Fold the bottom left corner up to make a triangle and slice.
Take approximately 1 tbsp. of the filling and put it in the center of the triangle and fold the corners.  Repeat with the rest of the sheet and the remaining 2 sheets.
Put these triangles onto a greased sheet pan and brush with butter.

Put the pan, covered with plastic wrap, into the fridge for at least 30 minutes or overnight.  Preheat the oven to 375 and bake the turnovers for 20-30 minutes (from the fridge. If you remove them and left them come to room temp first, they should only need 12-15 minutes) or until the tops are brown and the pastry is puffed up.
Serve warm.  The cheese in the filling will be gooey, and the chard should be tender.  Both are great complements to the crunchy buttery pastry.

We each ate two with a simple side salad with backyard raspberry vinaigrette and cucumber tossed with some extra pecans.
These turnovers were easy and delicious, and would be a major hit at your next get together.  The puff pastry is a great shortcut for entertaining because it looks and feels special with very little effort.
I wanted to remind you that we're having our Simple Lives Thursday twitter chat tomorrow at 4:30 central time.  Follow me (@culinarybliss) and come say hello!