Humble: Rice with Braised Chard, Olives & Feta

Tonight, I present to you a humble dish of rice with braised chard, olives and feta. Made all the more humble to me because it was going to be gorgeous chard, olive, and rice soup, but a number of humbling events lead me to a slightly different-than-planned dish.

I love to wing it in the kitchen with the ingredients I have on hand. To me, this spontaneous ability is rather what inspired cooking is all about. It's been a grey, rainy day here and I was craving soup and remembered this pretty and delicious recipe for Chard, Cauliflower, & Olive Soup:

Similarly inspired by a beautiful bouquet of rainbow chard, I was psyched to have a hot, flavorful soup with greens and olives.

But I made the classic mistake of not being sure of the ingredients I had on hand before I started cooking. When I reached for the vegetarian soup stock and found it missing, I decided to switch to the Aussie soup bouillion a friend had donated. I searched high and low, but to no avail. So now I had a combo for onions, garlic, rainbow chard, and jalapenos that I had to mix with a miso soup broth. But, whoops! I'd already added a little red wine thinking I'd have a Latin broth. So now I had chard braising in a pink miso broth. Honestly, not pretty.

The end result of drained and braised chard with olives, jalapenoes and feta over rice was really very satisfying. The combo of flavors worked for me, but I'm very glad I lost the pink sauce.