RENEE'S ROOTS

Without a Popeye, chard works its leafy-green heroics in secret

By Renee Studebaker
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Today, I want to talk about chard.

Now, don't just say "bleh," and go on to another story. Stay with me. This is important.

Chard is related to spinach, tastes similar to spinach and like spinach, it packs a powerful nutritional punch. So why doesn't it get the same level of love and respect as its leafy-green cousin?

Maybe it's because chard has never had a Popeye to champion its virtues. Aristotle mentioned it in his writing in the fourth century B.C., but I don't think anyone ever wrote an anthem about it. Certainly nothing as catchy as "I'm strong to the finish 'cause I eats me spinach, I'm Popeye the sailor man.''

So, if you will, please allow me, a lowly garden writer, to sing the praises of Swiss chard, a vegetable that I have come to regard as the miracle plant in my garden.

• Chard is beautiful. Celerylike stalks sport big, ruffled leaves that glisten in the sun in a rainbow of colors - ruby red, golden yellow, white and green. In my spring and fall gardens, it's a showstopper. Passers-by sometimes stop their cars in front of my house to tell me how beautiful my chard is. I am not kidding.

• Chard is one of the easiest vegetables to grow in a backyard garden, much more robust than spinach and more tolerant of weather extremes. It grows practically year-round in Austin (in the ground or in a container). Ruby red chard and Ford Hook chard are among the few plants still alive in my August garden. (By the way, now is a good time to plant chard seeds for the fall garden.)

• Chard tastes good - earthy and sweet with slightly bitter undertones. Like spinach, it contains oxalic acid, which contrasts well with creamy ingredients, such as eggs, milk and cheese. It's also great with white beans and perfect when paired with tomatoes and garlic. Try throwing it on your next pizza.

• And finally, chard is a superstar in the nutrition department. It is an excellent source of vitamins K, A, C and E, as well as magnesium, manganese, potassium, iron and dietary fiber. It's also a good source of copper, calcium, protein and vitamins B2 and B6, along with phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc, folate, biotin, niacin and pantothenic acid.

Does reading this make you want to go eat some chard right now?

Yeah, I know. You're not likely to fall in love with chard just because it's good for you. Or because a garden writer is raving about it. You have to spend some quality time with it. Get to know it. Grow it. Cook it. Eat it.

Try these recipes and let me know what you think.

Amy's Chard Bake

Amy and Kris Olsen of Milagro Farms in Red Rock grow, eat and sell Swiss chard year-round at the Austin Downtown Farmers Market. Kris Olsen says the trick to keeping chard growing well and tasting good through the hot summer is to harvest the leaves when they're young and keep the plants' roots cool with 3 inches of organic mulch. Amy Olsen says living and working on a farm gives her plenty of access to fresh seasonal produce. "But," she says, "it also forces me to be creative with all of the excess vegetables we have at one time or another. `Ahhh, let's see, this week what else can I cook with chard?' I should have sent you my chocolate chard cookie recipe. Just kidding. "

11/2 cup chopped, cooked chard, stems and leaves

Olive oil for sautéing vegetables

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup other chopped vegetables (carrots, zucchini, broccoli or whatever you need to use up)

1 cup onions, chopped

1/2 cup milk, skim or low-fat

1 egg

1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 cup cheese of choice (feta, cheddar, Manchego, etc.)

21/2 cups cooked brown rice (or other grains like millet, quinoa, etc.)

1 tsp. fresh thyme, minced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 Tbsp. butter

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Sauté chard in olive oil until wilted and just tender. Add garlic and cook for one minute more. Pour into a mixing bowl. Sauté other vegetables with onion until tender (but not mushy) and add to chard bowl. In separate bowl, combine milk, egg, mustard and cup of cheese. Add cooked grain, all vegetables, thyme, salt and pepper and stir gently until well blended. Pour into buttered casserole dish and top with Parmesan cheese. Bake in a 375-degree oven for 20 minutes or until edges are just beginning to brown. Transfer briefly to broiler to brown the top.

- Amy Olsen

Notes: I made Amy's Chard Bake and took it to the office. It was a big hit. Even a devout chard-hater finished his portion, saying he could barely taste the chard. Here are the ingredients I had on hand from my garden: chard, sweet red pepper and butternut squash. I also used white onion (grown by Kris Olsen and purchased at the downtown market), a cup of my current favorite local goat cheese - Wateroaks, available at Boggy Creek Farm and Wheatsville Food Co-op - and my favorite high-protein grain, quinoa. Next time I make it, I'll probably throw in a 1/4 cup or so of chopped sautéed poblano pepper to add a little extra spice. I love recipes like Amy's that leave room for the cook to play.

- Renee Studebaker

Rajas con acelgas y hongos

(Poblanos, Swiss chard and mushrooms)

In the spring, the Swiss chard in the new vegetable garden at Fonda San Miguel (2330 W. North Loop Blvd.) was growing so fast that Executive Chef Alma Alcocer-Thomas could hardly keep up. "After cooking Chorizo verde, lentils with chard and adding chard to the soup, the chard was still everywhere in the garden," she said. "It's as though it grew overnight." So she started adding chard to the restaurant's grilled flat iron steak entrée, which is traditionally served with roasted peppers. "Green Swiss chard grows all over Central Mexico, and I remember it in pasta soups and in salsa verde," she says. "But I always liked it best inside quesadillas and stuffed in tamales, so it was very easy to just add it to one of my favorite ingredients - rajas (roasted peppers) and mushrooms. Rajas and grilled meat are very common in northern Mexico, but I added the mushrooms and chard because I love them. (At the restaurant) we used a mix of wild and cultivated mushrooms that were in season, but I made this recipe (below) with poblanos and cultivated mushrooms because they are easy to find."

- Renee Studebaker

4 Tbsp olive oil

1 medium white onion, cut into strips

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 lb. Swiss chard, rinsed, stalks finely chopped, leaves roughly cut

12 oz. cultivated mushrooms, cut into strips

4 chiles Poblanos (or other seasonal peppers), roasted over a grill or open flame; peeled, seeded and cut into strips

Sea salt

2 Tbsp. epazote, chopped

1/2 cup queso panela or other farm-style Mexican cheese

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan; over medium heat add the onions, garlic and the stalks of the Swiss chard; cook until soft, about 3-4 minutes.

Add the mushrooms, roasted poblanos, Swiss chard leaves and salt to taste. Cook over low heat, stirring from time to time, until the mushrooms and chard are tender and the mixture is moist but not watery. Remove from heat, mix in the epazote.

Top with grated cheese. (Serves 6 to 8 as a side dish)

- Alma Alcocer-Thomas, executive chef, Fonda San Miguel

rstudebaker@statesman.com. 445-3946. Renee's Roots appears in Food & Life the last Wednesday of each month.

Chard - the other leafy green

• Chard is in the same plant family as beets. Beets are Beta vulgaris and chard is Beta vulgaris variety cicla.

• Chard's history goes back to Ancient Greece and Rome. (The `cicla' in its botanical name refers to Sicily, which is thought to be where chard originated.) One of its recorded early uses was as a wrapper for baked eels.

• Chard is very popular in Mediterranean regions, especially in Provençe and Nice, France, and in Catalonia, Spain, where leaves are often prepared with pine nuts and raisins .

• Chard is the camel of the vegetable garden. As the plant matures, it develops a deep root topped with a fat growing bulb that allows it to hang on for a while through hot, dry conditions. Later, when it gets water, it starts producing leaves again.

• Chard is sometimes used to clean up contaminated soils because the leaves are known to take in heavy metals, especially lead. When the plants are harvested, they must be disposed of carefully.

Ways to add chard to your diet so you hardly notice you're eating it

• Add baby leaves to salads or sandwiches.

• Add choppoed mature leaves and stalks to soups. It's especially good in bean soups. It can be puréed along with other soup ingredients for cream soups.

• Add chard to other ingredients with strong or distinctive tastes that you do like. Garlic, onion or sweet pepper, for example, mellow out chard's flavor.

• Add wilted, finely chopped greens to mashed potatoes.

Chard on the side

For a simple and tasty side dish, sauté coarsely chopped chard leaves with a bit of minced fresh garlic and olive oil. When the chard is wilted and tender, sprinkle with sea salt and top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

- Renee Studebaker