I have had a love/hate relationship with my Swiss Chard. On the one hand it’s beautiful plant. It has long red and yellow stalks with large leafy greens. Not only that but it requires minimal care. It grew and crowned into two additional plants without any effort from me. But at the same time I cursed it because I had so much chard and very few ideas on what to do with it. All I could do was saute it occasionally. So the chard just grew larger and wider mocking me with it’s dark green leaves. But, recently I’ve been spotting recipes and I am starting to feel inspired.
The first recipe I used in my quest to utilize my chard was this New York Time’s recipe for “Chard and Red Pepper Gratin“. How could I resist a recipe that contained Gruyere cheese, garlic, risotto and used a hefty portion of my Swiss chard. It felt good grabbing a big armful of it from outside and bringing it indoors.
I did tweak the recipe a little, I added ground sausage and I added a full cup of risotto instead a half like the recipe said. The result of a nice hearty casserole with lovely creamy risotto and cheesy leafy greens. I think next time I am going to experiment with jalapeno to give it a little more kick.
Here is one of my Chard plants after it’s harvest and as you can see I still have plenty to work with for next time.
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