Imagine that...

Guess what, I lost my job this Thursday. The coach and I agreed that my selling wouldn't take flight so I'm not that sad. But when Saturday arrived I had the most magnificent headache, and instead of renovating my window gardens I... ehm... spend the day at IKEA... eating sauce bearnaise... (Forget the pork and other garnishing like ratatouille - I want the bearnaise.)

This means that for a few weeks I'll have only one job and one company to tend to. And I'm home with the kid while his pre-k is closed for summer, so I can only do classic STAHM things. I've decided to make the most of my time. I've already baked cinnamon rolls and sourdough bread, washed and folded two machines worht of laundry and cleaned one room (it's not good to overdo oneself...). Slowly, slowly I'm aproaching the moment when I'll be able to clean up my plants. First I throw away those dead skelettons, then I'll plant tomatoes, and chard, and popcorn cuttings, and chard, some herbs, and chard, one or two containers of pea cuttings, and, of course, some chard.

OooOOOOooooOOOOOooooh! This will be fun!

Recipes for chard

I promised you some recipes on chard, so I took a few hours on the library looking through cook books. (Oldfashioned, yes, but judging from the amount of visitors books won't go out of fashion for many years.) Perhaps it was stupid to do so when I was hungry, my rumbling stomach ought to have bugged others. By chance I happened to pick recipes from swedish and german cook books, so I'm not able to give you handy links to where you can by the books in english, but perhaps I can give you some new ideas.

Most of the recipes I found was spinach recipes, and since you can use spinach and chard interchangably I've taken the liberty to pick some recipes originally meant for spinach. I've put a star * after those where I've switched the ingredient. Both vegetables works well with strong cheese - which you can see - and fat. It's allways tempting to add some extra so make sure you have some measure spoons at hand when you are cooking.

Let's start with a YouTube vid where a professional chef, Derek Hanson from Nutshell restaurant in Portland, Oregon (recently closed, so I can't provide you with a link), who shows you how to make sautéed chard with cherry ginger gastrique. The vid is from everydaydish.tv. If you can't get your hands on dryed cherries you could use fresh ones, preferebly of the sour kind. This movie also gives you an idea on how to handle chard. (If you grow it indoors the leaves gets only half the size of those he handles, but the taste is the same.)



Next is a recipe from one of my favourite ladies, mrs Saxon. She was one of the first modern vegetarians in Sweden, and married to Johan Lindström Saxon, founder of Svenska Vegetariska Föreningen (Swedish Vegetarian Association). I don't agree with everything mrs Saxon writes in her book, she can be somewhat rabid, but the recipes are interesting, and I did find one on spinach 'buns' where it's possible to use chard.

Chard buns according to mrs Saxon*

2,5dl parboiled and minced chard
3 "french breads" (ie. breads made only from wheat the size of a fist)
1,5dl milk
1 egg
salt
a pinch of sugar (this is to balance the tastes, not a sweetener)
raspings

Mix egg and milk and soak the breads in the mixture, add salt, sugar and mangold and make a batter. Pick chunks the size of an egg and make oblong buns, roll them in the raspings and fry them untill they're brown.

Served with potatoes and "milk sause" (ie bechamel).

Mrs. Saxon wrote her cook book 1928 and I read it mostly with a smile (sometimes with a shudder) since it reeks of the thoughts popular pre second world war, but I cook the recipes since they are old swedish homely cooking with the characteristic taste combinations and harmonies. You're not spoiled with that when it comes to vegetarian recipes. ("Fru Saxons kokbok", 1928, Bröderna Lindströms förlag)

From another swedish cookbook "Barnfamiljens bästa mat" (The best food for families with children) by Lotta Brinck I've picked a recipe on chard fried with garlic. This is your basic chard sauce in one of its forms. You can vary this recipe in many ways, add some yoghurt and cumin for an indian touch or quick thicken it (sift some flour over the chard and let it fry for a while, pour in some milk and let it thicken) and season with white pepper and salt for an old swedish homely cooking taste.

Chard fried with garlic

Chop 2 liters of chard leaves. Put them in a hot frying pan and boil until most of the water [from the leaves] evaporate. Pour 2 table spoons of olive oil, a crushed clove of garlic and one teaspone dried thyme. Fry for a minute. Add a with a pinch of black pepper and salt.

This is a side dish. I would use it to fish or as a condiment to baked potatoes. ("Barnfamiljens bästa mat" Lotta Brinck, 1994, ISBN 91-502-1152-8)

In "Mera grönt - en kokbok även för köttälskare" (More greenery - a cookbook for meatlovers as well) by Cecilia Björk and Malin Kågerman Hansén I found several recipes for spinach and even one particularly for chard. Still I choose their bread pudding since it's a dish good for recycling old bread.

Bread pudding with chard and feta cheese*

250g frosen chard
6 slices of white bread
150g feta cheese
4 eggs
4dl cream milk (1 part milk, one part dairy cream)
salt, white pepper, ground nutmeg

1. Put the oven on 225¤C (437¤F), unfreeze the chard by putting it in a kettle with 1dl (1/3 cup) boiling and lightly salted water. Keep it boiling untill all the chard is soft. Put it in a colander and press out the water. Cut the chard into smaller pieces.

2 Toast the bread. Cut away the crust. Put the slices in a buttered pan.

3 Spread the chard over the bread. Crumble the feta cheese and put it on top of the chard.

4 Mix egg and creammilk together. Add salt, pepper and some ground nutmeg. Pour the mixture into the pan over the feta/chard.

5 Put it in the oven and let it bake for about thirty minutes.

This is a main dish. ("Mera grönt - en kokbok även för köttälskare" Cecilia Björk och Malin Kågerman, 1998, ISBN 97-47-04490-X)

Lastly a recipe from "Gesund und schmackhaft kochen mit der hl. Hildegard von Bingen" by Ellen Breindl ('Sound and Tasty Cuisine with Holy Hildegard von Bingen' - I read the swedish version 'Hildegards kök' translated by Sune Karlsson). The book uses texts written by and about Hildegard of Bingen - one of medieval times most famous nuns. Writing this I can't say how close the recipes in the book follows the originals, but here we have a small trifle suspiciously close to a smoothie.

Chard milk*

500g mangold
salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 liter of fat milk

Carefully rinse the chard in cold water and put it in a saucer. Pour in water untill the chard is covered, salt lightly and put it to boil. Mix the chard in a mixer untill it's purée. Cool it. Add lemon juice, the egg yolk and honey and mix for a short period of time. Add and mix in the milk right before you are pouring the drink into glasses. Decorate with some finely chopped parsley.

This is a cold delicacy for warm days. ("Gesund und schmackhaft kochen mit der hl. Hildegard von Bingen" Ellen Breindl, Pattloch-Verlag, Augsburg 1994 and "Hildegards kök" Ellen Breindl, övers. Sune Karlsson, 2000, ISBN 91-7085-207-3)

How the heck do I cook chard?

Chard seedlings

Have you ever done this; you read about an interesting vegetable, let's call it a visulaumblema, and since it seems to be easy to grow, looks nice and can be cooked in a number of ways you buy seeds and grow an entire allotment full. The only thing is that when harvest arrives you realise that you don't really like the only recipe you've got, and the rest is only vague hints. So you trow your magnificent visulaumblema on the compost and grit your teeth over the waste. (I might add that most of my visulaumblemas end up in the freezer. Not much better.)

This has happened to me a few times, and many more times have I refrained from growing things because I suspect they may end up visulaumblemas. To help others avoid this in their indoor vegetable gardening career I thought I'd give some cooking manuals for the best indoor vegetables. Let's start with the basics; chard.

How the heck do I cook chard?

Chard is the first vegetable to be "used as spinach" - the two plants are sisters in the kitchen and whatever you can do to spinach you can do to chard too. Chard has an additional feature in its thick stems which makes it even more useful. The rule ofd thumb is to cut out the stems from the leaves and parboil them separately since they require different time in the water.

The leaves are good for
-gravy, make a white gravy and add the leaves parboiled and finely cut. Good as a side dish for fish, meat and baked potatoes.
-parboil in salted water, add spices and use as stuffing
-filling in pie (see above)
-cutting up and add as an ingredient in stews and casseroles
-mix finely and make a green soup (I'll give you a recipe for this next week)
-tender leaves can be used raw in sallads

The stems should always be parboiled in salt water and
-eaten hot like asparagus
-saved (frozen for ex.) and used as mild tasting filling vegetable in stuffing

Spices that works well with chard
-salt (this is a vegetable that needs some extra salt to taste good)
-garlic
-black pepper
-nutmeg
-sambal oelek
-soy sauce

I'm convinced there are more ways to cook chard, but this gives you some pointers to start with. When chard is grown indoors it developes small leaves, and that' why I only mention here that the leaves can be used as wrapping for dolmas (yum).

That's about it for today. Chard is easy to grow, so start some seeds right away to get some chans to experiment! :) Next week I'll give you some old fashioned recipes.

Death to the chard, long live the seedlings!

I thought I would sow today, but I haven't got any sowing soil. The best I can manage is that magnificent homemade potting soil I made. I think I overdid myself a bit... When the son returns home I'll bring out my worn pans and start sterilizing used soil from my cupboards. Will be interesting, especially when the hubby returns home and ask what's for dinner.

The true answer to that question is probably "something with chard" since I intend to empty that box today. It's interesting, the leaves have been left alone for quite a while and their stems have turned coarse. Normally you can cook and eat them lika asparagus, but when we tried it last time it wasn't a hit. Today I'll probably make a gravystew (it's a swedish thing I think - you make a bechamel and add stuff to it, like finely minced chard - I can't find any proper english word for it, but I may post a recipe later on) on the leaves instead, and add boiled potatoes and smoked pork loin to it, mmmmmmmmm. (And a thought strikes me, if you're a vegan, how do you replace the pork loin? is it possible to grow at home? indoors? I'll never be able to grow normal potted plants.)

Tomorrow it's time for sowing. I have an abundance of egg shells, a large stack of seed envelopes, for some reason with a majority of strawberry parcels, some funny looking containers and a lot of wild ideas.

Strange tastes...

It has to be something wrong with me. I like chard and spinach, especially chard...

The tomato window again

My current pride. Tomatoes and chard. Fits the available space and will be delicious when cooked. Yum!

Size do matter

Looky here. The library window looks tidy again. The Tiny Tim tomatoes seems to thrive and have already sprouted their first flower buds. Little chard seedlings are peeking up above the soil, and they'll soon grow to fill the window. On the other hand none of these plants will become as tall as their predecessors*. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a proportional window display this time.

*Chard reaches a modest height of fifty centimeters compared to the ten meter vines of the indian spinach. 'Tiny Tim' is a miniature tomato, and won't reach the two meter height of the plum tomatoes I grew here before.

After indian spinach comes...

...chard. 'Bright lights' to be specific. Part of me whispers that these colours don't match my carfully planned colour scheme for our home...



...but I have already planted the variety on my allotment, and know that the hues are brightening up the day. So I ignore my inner perfectionist - for now.