Swiss chard - silverbeet to all antipodeans or leaf beet to Americans, is a most wonderful vegetable. It has long creamy white stalks that look a little like celery with a large frill of foliage surrounding the top part of the stalk. Each individual stem looks like a child’s drawing of a tree! The stalks come in several colours - yellow, red and white, but the most flavoursome is the good old-fashioned white one.
In the garden
Swiss chard is incredibly easy to grow. If you have a sunny space in your garden sow a few seeds in the spring, water and add some plant food every so often. It looks great mixed amongst a flower bed. The beauty of this vegetable is not only does it look great but it tastes wonderful. To harvest, pick the outer stalks leaving the inner ones to mature. The plant will survive for about two years and will only need protection in very cold areas. This can be done by surrounding the stalks with straw.
Swiss chard is a good source of antioxidants (being a leafy green vegetable), but also has vitamin C and iron. Actually, it has lots of other nutrients, but to a lesser degree.
In the kitchen
You get double your money with Swiss chard because the stalks can be eaten as well as the leaf. Cut the stalks out of the foliage and steam them whole or in long pieces until tender but not too soft. Serve them with melted butter, a sprinkling of sea salt and a fine spray of black pepper. Eat them as you would asparagus.
To prepare the leaves, finely chop and treat as you would spinach, or lightly steam.
Swiss chard goes with just about anything: cheese, butter, cream, olive oil, pasta, rice and potatoes, vegetables from the onion family, hot spices and particularly pastry.
Take a trip down memory lane and revisit a classic vegie dish … Hunza Pie. If you weren’t around at that time, try it anyway, it’s delicious.
Hunza pie
Pastry: Place 220g of wholemeal flour in a food processor and blitz with 110g of cold, salted butter until the mixture looks crumbly. Add a little cold water until the dough forms a ball - about 2-3 tablespoons. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for about an hour. Alternatively, go to the shop and buy ready-made short pastry dough!
Roll out dough to about 0.5cm and place in a 24cm pie dish. Bake in the centre of an oven at 180C degrees for 15-20 minutes. To ensure the centre doesn’t rise, place some grease-proof paper over the base and add something with weight, such as some dried pulses.This is not essential though.
Filling: Wash 5 large Swiss chard leaves and stems. Remove leaves from stems and immerse them into boiling water. The leaves should take about 2 minutes and the stems about 7 minutes. Drain and cool. Remove as much water as possible from the leaves and roughly chop them.
Chop stems into 2cm pieces. In a bowl, combine stems and leaves with 100g of cooked brown rice, OR chopped cooked potatoes OR a mixture of both, 200g of mature cheddar and 1 egg.
Season with salt and pepper and bake in a preheated oven at 180C degrees for 20-25 minutes or until ready.
Serves 6-8 or 3-4 if really hungry (or greedy!)
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http://www.eostreorganics.co.uk/boxes_london.htm