"Todd" > wrote in message
...
> Hi All,
>
> If you were teaching beginners 101 swiss chards, what
> you teach?
>
> Many thanks,
> -T

I have only ever made them one way. It was a recipe I saw online for Quick
Swiss Chard Supper. I only made it because we were getting CSA baskets in
those days and the chard was in there. I could tell by looking at it that
none of us would eat it on its own.

Basically if you have the larger leaves, you need to cut out the ribs and
either discard them or cook separately. If you are going to cook them, they
need to be finely chopped and they will take longer to cook than your
leaves. Then for this recipe, the leaves were finely minced. I did use
both pieces and didn't exactly follow the recipe because it had you cook the
chard first and then add ground beef to it. I didn't find that the chard
needed that much cooking.

So... First I added the chopped ribs and cooked them in a little olive oil
for a couple of minutes. Then I added the minced leaves, a chopped pepper
and maybe some chopped celery if I had it. Then a pound of ground beef.
Salt and pepper. Cook through, stirring and chopping at the meat to break
it up until the meat is browned.

Then... And you might not like this step... Add enough sweet rice flour to
coat the meat. Recipe called for regular flour but we were gluten free in
those days. Cook for another minute, mixing well to get the flour cooked
through. Then slowly add some beef broth, milk or cream to make a gravy.
The liquid must be added slowly and stirred through as it cooks. As soon as
it is mostly absorbed, you add a little more. And keep doing this until a
nice gravy forms.

This gravy would then be served over mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, or even
toast. All of which are things you would be unlikely to do. But I will
sometimes use green or wax beans (well cooked) as a substitute for pasta.
So you could either do this or make the end result pretty thick and serve as
a soup. You could even leave out the thickening if you are going to do
this.

The whole idea behind this recipe is to disguise the chard so that hopefully
your family will eat it. And this did work for the first few times I served
it. But then they began to wonder. What are those little red flecks in my
food? And then they saw the chard. And then they freaked. And then it was
all over. And this is why I no longer bother to serve Swiss Chard.

When Angela was young, we used to get salads at McDonalds and they had in
them what I may have mistakenly labeled as baby Swiss Chard. They were tiny
green leaves that looked like spinach but had a red rib to them. But in
looking up spinach for you I see that they may in fact have been a variety
of spinach. Someone else suggested beet leaves. But more and more I am
thinking they were spinach. If I could get a huge bag of that, she'd be
happy as a clam! But I have only ever seen it mixed with other stuff that
she doesn't like.

I do believe that chard can be used in a salad but I've never tried it. And
raw foodists will use it in lieu of bread or a taco shell to make wraps,
tacos, etc. Again, never tried that either. But all you do there is wash
it well and wrap your filling in it. They would use a faux tuna salad made
of walnuts or some sort of vegetable thing maybe with sprouted lentils,
sprouted garbanzo beans or corn.