Excuse me, I Charded.

Last night while talking to my mom I told her I was making chard for dinner and she had heard of chard before. Since I'm a big fan of this vegetable I thought I would give y'all a little tour of this heavyweight veggie in terms of nutrition.

This is Swiss chard. Red stalks, big dark green leaves packed with Vitamins K, A and C.


below is Rainbow Chard...and yes those colors are all real and natural!

To make it you can saute, steam, or blanch it (there's probably more ways, those are just the ones I've done). Previously I rolled it up, cut it in ribbons and steamed it with garlic and orzo...but I couldn't find the recipe last night and almost drove myself crazy looking for it.

So instead I tried out a new recipe from the Alton Brown cookbook I got for Christmas, which has onions, LOTS of garlic, which after you cook for awhile you add a paste of butter and flour and toast it all, then add crushed tomatos, chicken broth and whisk till the sauce becomes creamy goodness. Throw in whole wheat pasta (boiled in the water the chard was blanched in to get extra minerals and goodness) and the chopped up chard. Topped with parmesan or feta (the parm was better) it was pretty darn good! I think I may add a few of my own tweaks, but Matt ate 4 servings so it couldn't be that bad!

mmmm...we're both having it again for lunch today too...


and did I mention this entire meal costs about $6 or $7?

Here is Alton Brown's recipe from his book, I'm Just Here For the Food (with my own tweaking)

Chard with Garlic and Tomato

Ingredients

2 Tbl butter, softened

2 Tbl flour

2 Tbl olive oil

1/2 cup diced onion (or couple of shallots)

8 cloves garlic, sliced thin (if you use a garlic press that's just fine too, don't freak out)

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (more if you're of the daring sort)

2 cups canned crushed tomatoes (or you can use fresh tomatoes, dropped in boiling water, skinned and seeded. Then crushed. Crushing is the fun part.)

1 cup chicken stock

16 oz dry bowtie pasta (or penne, or whatever is left in your cupboard)

1 bunch Swiss or rainbow chard, trimmed and chopped

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I know the pics show feta...but that wasn't a homerun...)

1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped fine (or dried, I guess. sigh)

salt & freshly ground pepper

Directions

1. Bring a big pot of water to a rolling boil. Have another bowl with ice cold water in it ready. You're going to blanch the chard first.

2.  Drop the chard in the boiling water, blanch for 3 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon or pasta server to the cold water bowl and submerge to stop the cooking. Once its cooled, strain it and let it dry out a bit.

3.  Keep that water boiling, and notice that its greenish colored now? All those nice nutrients are still floating around in there. Add a bunch of salt, and add the pasta. Cook until al dente.

Note: People like their pasta at different consistencies. I have a tendency to forget about the pasta unless I set a timer, so if the cooking time says 10-12 minutes, I'll set a timer for 9 minutes. When it goes off, I'll keep testing the pasta every minute or so until its the texture I like.

4. While the pasta is cooking, blend the butter and flour in a small bowl until a smooth paste is formed.

5. Head the olive oil in the sauté pan over medium heat.  Add the onion and red pepper flakes, and sauté until the onions turn golden - about 7-10 minutes. In the last minute or so add the garlic (the directions say add when you add the onions, but I find my garlic burns by the time the onions are done). 

Oh, check on your pasta. It might be done now.

6. Drop the head to medium-low, whisk in the flour and butter mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

7. Add those tomatoes and keep whisking for 2-3 minutes. 

8. Add the chicken stock and whisk until the sauce is smooth and creamy. 

9. Throw in that cooked pasta and the chard, season with salt and pepper and stir until heated through.

10.  Top off with the Parmesan and rosemary. 

This dinner is also easy to add chicken too. Just cook the chicken before tossing it in at the end with the pasta and chard. 

To further impress upon you the goodness of chard, here's a link to a chart showing how much good stuff it has...
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=16

Thus endeth my acolade of chard.