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 fora bit of admiration before you setto work and cook it.
It's possible to find this luscious leaf all year round, but it's at its best from July through to November; I've been tucking into my homegrown crop for a few weeks now, and should be able to keep cutting it right through the frosts and into the new year.
You cannot ignore chard – it's the most eye-catching and colourful of greens. The white-stemmed variety, chard or Swiss chard, will always be the daddy for me. With its broad, muscular ribs that contrast with the bright leaves, it has the finest flavour and most succulent stems of all the chards. But the more colourful, slender-stemmed types are also good eating: ruby chard has beautiful scarlet stems and red-veined leaves, while rainbow chard produces stems in a gorgeous spectrum of lemon yellow, acid orange, rose pink and deep red. The raw baby leaves of the coloured types look stunning in salads, and though they dull a little on cooking, a pile of young leaves, wilted and buttered with stems still attached, isstill handsome on a plate.
The adult plant gives you two vegetables in one: the crisp, robust stems and the abundant, delicately ruffled leaves. Chard is related to beetroot, and you can detect in its stems something of that root's earthy flavour. The leaves, though, taste of pure, iron-rich vegetabliness, somewhere between a mild kale and a spinach. It's a powerhouse of nutty, green-leaf flavour, so pair it with feisty partners: olives, cream, tomatoes, spices, strong cheese, smoked fish. It will not let you down.
Although many chard dishes use both parts of the vegetable, it's best to cook leaves and stems separately. Treat the stems as you would celery: they respond very well to being sliced and sweated in butter until tender. You can whip up the simplest of side dishes by cooking the stems in this way, then, a few minutes before serving, stirring in the shredded leaves and letting them wilt down. Drain, squeeze to push out any excess liquid, then return to the warm pan over a low heat with aknob of butter. Season and add perhaps a sprinkling of thyme leaves, and you have a delicious partner for almost any meat or fish. If you have stems left over, sauté until tender with a scrap of garlic, give them a lick of cream, scatter with breadcrumbs and grated cheese, and flash under ahot grill for a gorgeous gratin.
Chard has such presence, though, that you won't want it only on the side. It's cool in a curry, superb in soup and great with goat's cheese, eggs and cream, baked in a savoury tart. The leaves wilted in a little oil are wonderful with olives – either alone or stirred into pasta – and it's often found in risottos, the stems sweated down with the onions at the start and the shredded leaves added at the end; add bacon, or finish with a rich cheese such as taleggio.
Chard is a truly lovely vegetable that flourishes with a little attention, so please give it some.
Tourte de blettes (V)
An unusual and delicious Niçoise recipe, this is a sweet tart for pudding or tea. You need only the chard leaves for this dish – use the stems to make a gratin as a first course for the same meal. Serves eight.
50g raisins
3 tbsp cider brandy or brandy
Leaves from 1kg chard, stripped from stems, washed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
50g pine nuts, lightly toasted
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
35g caster sugar
2 dessert apples (about 250g total)
Icing sugar, to serve
For the sweet shortcrust pastry
300g plain flour
50g icing sugar
Pinch of salt
175g cold, unsalted butter, cut intocubes
1 large egg yolk
About 75ml cold milk (or water)
Combine the raisins and brandy, and leave to soak for a few hours.
To make the pastry, put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and blitz briefly to combine (or sieve into a bowl). Add the butter and blitz (or rub in with your fingertips) until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and enough milk or water to bring the dough into large clumps, tip out on to a lightly floured surface and knead lightly into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Put the chard leaves in a pan with just the water that clings to them from washing. Cover and cook over a medium-low heat until wilted, tip into a colander and leave to drain. When cool enough to handle, squeeze out excess liquid, and chop.
Combine the chopped chard with the eggs, pine nuts, lemon zest, sugar and raisins (plus their liquor). Grate the apples, squeeze out as much liquid as you can, and stir in, too.
Roll out two-thirds of the pastry fairly thinly on a floured surface and use to line a 24cm, loose-bottomed flan tin. Trim the excess from the edges. Spread the chard mixture in the pastry case. Brush a little milk or beaten egg around the rim of the pastry. Roll out the remaining pastry to form a lid, place over the tart, press down lightly to seal, and trim. Make a couple of slits in the middle of the lid so steam can escape. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown on top. Leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin, then remove the side of the tin, put the tart on a rack and dust with icing sugar. Serve warm.
Chardy cheese (V)
This hearty dish gives chard the cauliflower cheese treatment. It makes a great side dish to chops or sausages, but I'd happily eat it as amain course with a hunk of bread.
About 750g chard
Small knob of butter
About 50g breadcrumbs
A little rapeseed or olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground blackpepper
For the sauce
300ml whole milk
½ onion, peeled and cut in two
1 bay leaf
A few black peppercorns
20g unsalted butter
20g plain flour
75g strong, mature cheddar, grated
25g parmesan (or vegetarian alternative), or mature hard goat's cheese, grated
¼ tsp English mustard
Heat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5 and lightly grease a shallow, ovenproof dish.
For the sauce, put the milk into asaucepan with the onion, bay and peppercorns. Bring to just below simmering point, turn off the heat and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes, and an hour or two, ideally.
Meanwhile, separate the chard leaves from the stalks, and cut the stalks into 1.5cm slices. Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil, drop in the leaves and blanch for a minute or two, until just wilted. Remove the leaves with tongs, drain and, when cool enough to handle, squeeze out excess water with your hands, then roughly chop. Meanwhile, drop the chopped stalks into the boiling water and blanch for three to four minutes, until just tender. Drain, toss with aknob of butter, season and spread over the base of the oven dish.
If the infused milk has cooled completely, warm it gently, then strain into a jug. Melt the butter for the sauce in a medium saucepan over a fairly low heat, then stir in the flour to form a smooth paste (a roux). Cook gently, stirring frequently, for aminute or two. Remove from the heat and add a third of the milk. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon or whisk until you have a thick, smooth paste. Add the rest of the milk in one or two lots, stirring it in until smooth. Return the sauce to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring. Let it bubble for two minutes, stirring every now and then, to "cook out" any taste of raw flour, then turn the heat right down. Add the cheeses and mustard, stir gently until they melt into the sauce – don't let the sauce boil, or it may curdle – and season.
Stir the chopped chard leaves into the hot cheese sauce and pour over the stalks in the dish. Scatter with the breadcrumbs and a trickle of oil, and bake for 20 minutes, until golden and bubbling.
Chard, chickpea and mushroom curry (V)
If you have time to toast whole spices and grind them yourself, so much the better, but good quality ready-ground will do. Serves four to six.
2 tbsp sunflower (or rapeseed) oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1 big pinch chilli flakes
300g chard, leaves separated fromstalks
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 tin plum tomatoes
300g mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 tsp garam masala
Fresh coriander leaves, to serve
Sea salt and freshly ground blackpepper
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large saucepan and sauté the onions for 10minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and spices, and cook for a minute or two more – add a splash of water if it looks like it's going to catch and burn.
Remove the stalks from the chard and chop into bite-sized pieces. Add to the pan, cook for five minutes, then add the chickpeas. Crush the tinned tomatoes to a pulp with your hands and add these, too, as well as any juices from the tin. Bring to agentle simmer and cook for 15 minutes, stirring from time to time.
Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat and fry the mushrooms until all liquid has been driven off and they take on some colour.
Shred the chard leaves, add to the curry pot along with the mushrooms, and cook for a few minutes, stirring often, until the leaves are tender and wilted. Stir in the garam masala, add salt and pepper to taste and serve scattered with coriander, with rice and/or flatbreads.
