Summer is underway and I’m watching my (very small) garden grow, however most of it won’t be ready for harvest until much later in July or even August. The exception are green leafy things, like lettuce, spinach, herbs, and chard. I love Swiss chard and plant some every year. It tastes a bit like spinach but is much more versatile and pretty. You can use it raw in salads; cooked in stir-fries, quiches, curries and pies; or even rolled up as faux cabbage rolls or low-carb wraps. So many possibilities.
Swiss chard (or simply, chard) is actually the leaf of a variety of beet. It comes in red, white, purple or yellow varieties, which refers to the colour of the stalk. The leaves are always green and fairly large. Chard is native to the Mediterranean and Middle East, but is now cultivated around the world. The Greeks wrote about chard as early as the 4th century CE, where the plant was used medicinally.
Nutritionally, chard is an excellent source of vitamin C, vitamin A, magnesium and potassium. It is also a source of iron and calcium. Chard contains oxalic acid, so it needs to be cooked for the iron and calcium to be available. Cooked chard is considered a good source of iron. Stir-fry or cook the leaves in just a bit of water for a couple of minutes until they are just wilted.
Chard is ridiculously easy to grow. Simply toss some seeds into a large gardening pot filled with potting soil, put it in a relatively sunny spot and keep the soil moist. As you harvest the chard, periodically resow new seeds. This will give you chard for the entire summer. (Presumably you can grow chard indoor in the winter, although I haven’t tried this.) Keep an eye on the leaves of the plant. If they start to get brown spots or ‘tracks’, remove the leaf immediately. You’ve got ‘leaf miners‘ and left alone they’ll rapidly ‘mine’ your entire crop! I actually lost almost all my chard to the miners earlier this summer. My new crop is only just starting to sprout up now.
Chard growing in a container in my garden alongside romaine lettuce and pepper basil.
Here are some recipes for chard from around the world wide web:
- Swiss chard lasagna with ricotta and mushroom from Bon Appétit
- Swiss chard purses with sausage stuffing from Gourmet
- Kale and chard salad with blue cheese and walnuts from Pink Bites
- Raw curried cashew chard wraps from Gluten-free Cat
- Pasta with Swiss chard from Chatelaine
And here is my own recipe for Swiss Chard pie, adapted from Colin Spencer’s The Vegetable Book. As well, this picnic-ready spinach salad with quinoa recipe works very well if chard is substituted for the spinach. Enjoy!
Swiss Chard Pie
- 1 to 1.5 kg Swiss chard, chopped
- 1/2 cup gruyere chese
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
- 1 cup 10-15% cream
- 2 free-run eggs, beaten
- 1 Tbs fresh sage or oregano
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- Raw pastry, chilled, enough to make a covered pie
Preheat the oven to 375F and take the pastry out of the fridge. Cook the chopped chard for 5-10 minutes over low heat in a saucepan with a tiny bit of water. Once cooked. Cool, drain, and then squeeze out any excess water from the chard.
Using about 3/4 of the pastry, roll out your bottom pastry shell, put it in your pie dish. Roll out the top and set aside.
In a bowl, beat together the eggs and cream. Add the cheese, cooked chard and seasoning. Put the mixture into the baked pie shell. Brush the edges of the pie shell with milk and then put the pastry top on. Crimp the edges to seal the pie shell and top together.
Brush the top with milk (optional) and bake for 45 minutes. Serve warm or cold.
This post is one in a regular weekly series on seasonal produce and ingredients. Enjoy!
Sources: The Vegetable Book by Colin Spencer, and The Visual Food Encyclopedia. Photo credits: Lolly Knit, Creative Commons License, and Amanda Strong.
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Sources: The Visual Food Encyclopedia, and Wild Garlic, Gooseberries and Me. Photo credits: John Fielding and Weedy Connection, Creative Commons License
Posted in Recipes, Weekly Ingredient Series.
– May 25, 2011
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Kohlrabi: The Sputnik in Your CSA
In my earlier post about Daikon radish I mentioned a kohlrabi, carrot and daikon salad that I really enjoy and is a great winter salad, so I thought I’d write a bit about kohlrabi. This was another vegetable that I wasn’t familiar with until I started getting a CSA box. Even in my many years as a vegetarian it wasn’t a vegetable that came up in recipes.
Kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family, where it belongs to the gongylodes group, meaning roundish or swollen. This refers to its stem, which swells into a bulbous sphere. This is the part we eat. Kohlrabi may be green, purple or a pale white. It has a thin skin with a fibrous layer beneath it. Both should be peeled before cooking. The edible interiour is crisp and a bit sweet, similar to water chestnut or daikon radish. The leaves are also edible, although I haven’t tried them. Nutritionally, kohlrabi is an excellent source of vitamin C and potassium. It also contains vitamin B6, folic acid, magnesium and copper.
Although kohlrabi can grow to the size of a grapefruit, larger bulbs tend to be more fibrous and have a somewhat wooly interiour. Stick with the little guys (under 3″ diameter). Kohlrabi can be eaten raw, either grated or diced into a salad or served on its own in a crudité plate. Cooked, it can be used similar to any root vegetable, although I haven’t tried roasting it. Colin Spencer also suggests slicing it thin and deep-frying the slices, like chips; or poached whole, hollowed out, stuffed and baked.
Green and purple kohlrabi at La Grande market.
Here is the recipe for the kohlrabi, carrot and daikon salad. Honestly, you can use just about any combination of light root or stalk vegetables. (I once substituted broccoli stems for the daikon.)
Korean-Style Kohlrabi, Carrot and Daikon Salad
1 large (9-10 oz) kohlrabi
1 medium carrot
5-inch chunk of daikon about 2 inches in diameter
1 tsp salt
2 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 to 2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp Korean crushed red pepper or 1/4 tsp cayenne
1 Tbs roasted sesame seeds
2 tsp toasted sesame oilPeel and cut off the bottom of the kohlrabi, then julienne it. Cut the ends of the carrots and daikon, peel them, and julienne them as well. You can also coarsely grate the root vegetables if that’s more you thing.
Mix together the kohlrabi, carrot, daikon and salt in a bowl. Set it aside for 30 minutes. Then rinse and drain the vegetables. Transfer the veggies to a dry bowl and add the soy sauce, vinegar, Korean red pepper, sesame seeds and toasted sesame oil. Toss. Adjust seasonings if required. Serve.
Here are some other kohlrabi recipes from across the web. Enjoy!
- Steamed Kohlrabi from Chef Michael Smith
- Kohlrabi Hash Browns from Urban Harvest, Kelowna
- Kohlrabi Carpaccio from Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall
- Kohlrabi Remoulade with Smoked Mackerel on Toast from Well Seasoned
- South Indian Kolrabi Curry (Noolkool) from Veggie Cookbook Blog
How do you use kohlrabi? Do you have favourite recipes or do you simply sautée it or add it to stews and salads? Share your stories!
This post is one in a regular weekly series on seasonal produce and ingredients. Enjoy!
Sources: The Vegetable Book by Colin Spencer, The Visual Food Encyclopedia, and Farmer John’s Cookbook by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics. Recipe adapted from World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey. Photo credits: Christa Richert and La Grande Farmer’s Market, Creative Commons License
Posted in Articles, Recipes, Various, Weekly Ingredient Series.
– January 26, 2011
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Thanks so much for mentioning my Swiss Chard Wraps! I’m loving the sound of your pie. I may try to make a gluten-free version of it.
It should be easy enough to do. I think you’d just have to change the crust.
I grow beets and harvest the tops just like chard and spinach. I find it less bitter than the other two. And at the end of the season you have beets too. Of course they are smaller then they might normally be because you’ve stunted their growth by interferring with their leaves, but it is a yummy trade off..
I’ve done that too when I’ve planted beets. Great idea!