Tuesday, January 19, 2010

chard



More from the garden. These are the ends of the stalks of the rainbow chard I have been using to make a pie —it seems a shame to throw them into the compost with out stopping to appreciate their wonder. I'm fascinated by these plants, they're like the silver-beet I used to know as 'spinach' but with red, magenta, yellow and orange stalks.



When I started cooking for myself, I learned to call this plant 'silver-beet', rather than 'spinach'. It went into a number of things [pies, stir-fries, soup] but I was always a bit puzzled by the flavour I thought of as soapy, which didn't seem to be mitigated by the addition of lemon juice — which I had read was an ideal partner to spinach. Now I think the perfect foil for the earthy, alkaline quality of chard is sweetness, rather than souring. Spinach is sometimes paired with currants and pine-nuts. Chard seems to benefit from the addition of the flavour of cinnamon or all-spice, the gentle sweetness of ricotta, onions cooked until they are well softened and golden brown, or fried or toasted nuts. Its coarser aspect is softened by fat or oil.

I grew rainbow chard by request (G had admired it at the Ceres community garden), sowing the seeds midwinter between rows of broad beans. I left it to disappear below the taller stalks of the beans, food for the earwigs. Since the broad-beans have taken their faintly eau de cologne scented crimson flowers back down into the compost, the chard has come into its own. My gardening books say that chard is a heavy feeder, so it probably appreciated the nitrogen that the broad beans gathered into the soil. I am amazed at its beauty and its tolerance of the recent heatwave. At first, I didn't know what to do with it. Since discovering English spinach 18 years ago, I've come to see chard as the poor cousin. However, I did remember that a marvelous chef called Rachel Titchener, who I worked for as a kitchen-hand, grew rainbow chard and made a beautiful pie. This is my memory of Rachel's recipe -





1 x onion
oil for frying
salt and pepper
about two handfuls shelled walnut pieces
ground dutch cinnamon or allspice
a large bunch of chard
ricotta cheese (about 250g)
feta cheese (about 100g)
thick filo pastry
olive oil and butter

Make the filling: Wash the chard, slice the stalks and leaves into thin strips. Chop the onion finely, fry gently in about 2 tablespoons of oil with a sprinkle of salt until soft. Add the walnut pieces and about three quarters of a teaspoon of cinnamon or allspice. When the nuts are slightly brown and the onion is coloured, season with salt and pepper, add the chopped chard stalks and cook, adding the chard leaves as they cook down, stirring to mix the leaves, onion and walnuts well. Cover the pan and allow the leaves to steam. When they are cooked down, remove the lid and increase the heat to evaporate excess moisture. Mash the ricotta and feta cheeses together in a bowl, add the cooked chard mixture and mix.

Lay out a sheets of filo pastry in an appropriate tray, brushing with a mixture of olive oil and melted butter between each sheet. Let the pastry hang way over the sides as you will be folding it over to cover the top. Place some of the filling on the pastry, distribute evenly, cover with more sheets of pastry, add another layer of filling, another of pastry, fold the bottom pastry over. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C until the pastry is well browned.

As they were also growing in the garden, I added a few leaves of cavollo nero to the filling, and stirred the finely chopped leaves from a few sprigs of mint through the cheese mixture.

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Saturday, January 02, 2010

rhubarb harvest

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