Silverbeet/chard
For flamboyance, lush greenness and leafy generosity, it's hard to beat chard. A great fistful is a vegetable bouquet, a gift worth leaving piled on the kitchen table for a bit of admiration before you set to work and cook it.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
I have a nasty feeling I have done this before, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. Though I might have found some different recipes and different quotes. Suffice to say that this was brought on by a visit to Monika's garden from which she gave me some rainbow chard - and ordinary silver beet too. Because we call it silverbeet here. Silver because of the white stalks and beet because it's related to beetroot, not spinach, even though the taste is similar.
So having this wonderful big fresh bunch of silver beet I needed to find something to do with it. And I have to say it also inspired me to do something with my vegetable patch. As long as I can protect it from the rabbits and all the other wildlife around here, I can actually grow silver beet. And I do like it. Next week maybe.
It's another one of those vegetables I knew nothing about until I came to Australia. I gather it is now pretty common over there in the British Isles, but not when I was a kid. Which is curious isn't it? I mean it is easy to grow, and people did grow vegetables - it was a hangover from the war when they had to grow vegetables. Rainbow chard - the beautiful stuff, is comparatively recent here though - along with other vegetables that have appeared in other colours to those we traditionally knew - carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes, zucchini ... The vegetable shelves in the supermarket these days are bursting with colour. Mind you, as many commentators have said, silverbeet, even rainbow chard, are nowhere near as trendy as spinach and kale. And it isn't as if it is not healthy. It has heaps of good things in it - more than we need of vitamin K and vitamin A and also iron, though I gather it's iron cannot be absorbed as well as that in spinach due to something else it has.
"[it] is truly one of the vegetable valedictorians with its exceptionally impressive list of health-promoting nutrients." World's Healthiest Foods
Monika also grows kale, and she gave me some of that too, so I should finally get around to doing that I guess. And try to figure out why it is so so trendy.
There is a distinct lack of colour this time of the year: no leaves on the trees, boxes of potatoes and brown lentil soup. And then – POW – there’s the chard, coloured like an Indian sunset. The incongruous vegetable has big green leaves, but it’s the stalks which are breathtakingly beautiful. Rhubarb pink and lemon yellow, it’s the Gianni Versace of the vegetables – making all the other Maris Pipers and drab heads of cauliflower look about as exciting as Gordon Brown. Rachel Walker - The Food I Eat
And if you want a recipe that makes it look good go no further than Nigel Slater and his Braised chard with herb crumbs. Normally all the chefs I found seemed to chop the stalks first rather than braising them like this. But it looks lovely and gives plenty of scope for improvisation around it.
It's called Swiss Chard over there, not because it originated in Switzerland but because it was first described, either by a Swiss botanist, or a German botanist who was in Switzerland. But it is actually a coastal plant descended from sea beet. It's name - chard - is from the old French 'carde' and latin 'carduus' meaning artichoke thistle (if left to grow it's head is a bit like a thistle), or cardoon. But here in Australia, as I said, we call it silverbeet.
I gather the Italians and, to a slightly lesser degree, the French like it. There's a French dish called Tourte de blettes (the French for chard is blettes) which is a sweet dish really with currants and other things. I think it deserves a blog of its own sometime. To me it sounds a bit Sicilian, and it is from Nice which is approaching Italy, but quite a long way from Sicily. It looks like this.
So what does it go with and what can you do with it? Well put simply you could say that anything you can do with spinach you can do with silverbeet but you can do more than with spinach, because the stalks are also edible, and taste a bit like celery. As lots of writers say - two vegetables for the price of one. Also because it is somewhat more robust than spinach you can also wrap the leaves around things - stuffed little parcels - like vine leaves I suppose. And more should be made of the baby leaves:
"It is curious that when we are so enthusiastic about harvesting baby turnips and carrots, baby beans and peas, and adorable baby spinach, consumers have not yet demanded baby silverbeet except for the few leaves found in mixed salad greens." Beverley Sutherland Smith
Common 'goes with' items seemed to be chick peas, mushrooms and various cheeses. Or in more general terms, as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says:
"It's a powerhouse of nutty, green-leaf flavour, so pair it with feisty partners: olives, cream, tomatoes, spices, strong cheese, smoked fish."
A simple example of this and also of something quite different is an idea from Jamie Oliver, reported by another blogger.
An idea from Jamie Oliver (Jamie Cooks Italy) who had left a batch of greens near his wood oven and thus created, according to him, ‘an incredibly delicious mistake and a lovely handheld receptacle that, when filled with a little beaten ricotta, chilli and anchovies, people just go mad for’. Basically, you lay the leaves flat for 20 minutes in a low oven (150°C). Use your imagination as to what to fill these with – Saucy Dressings
So I'll finish with just three suggestions from Nigel Slater and Yotam Ottolenghi: Cheesy Swiss Chard cigars, (from Yotam Ottolenghi) Chard and Waterloo tarts (from Nigel Slater - the Waterloo cheese he talks about is a kind of brie), Swiss chard and herb tart with young cheese (from Yotam Ottolenghi)
One from the River Cottage guys Chard and new potatoes with paprika and fennel. Sorry no picture - but the River Cottage people and their chief Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall have lots of other ideas for chard.
And finally just to show the Australians can do their thing with silverbeet too, here is Stephanie Alexander's interpretation of a northern Italian dish: Silverbeet and potato torte
I have ignored all the vast array of stir-fries, salads, soups, frittata, and gratins that there are out there. It's just such a versatile vegetable. We should use it more.
"Few vegetables are as beautiful as a bunch of rainbow chard, with its wide stems in sherbet colours of apricot and rhubarb, orange and raspberry red." Nigel Slater
