BETA VULGARIS VARIETY CICLA BOTANICALLY chard is a subspecies of ordinary garden beets, bred for its leaves rather than its root, and packs the same kind of nutritional punch. The name “chard” comes from the French chardon, or thistle, although chard is not a thistle (the name came about because chard has a wide midrib similar to the cardoon, which is a thistle, and because of this physical resemblance the French word for thistle came to be applied to chard as well).
For some reason, chard also goes by the name of Swiss chard. While the vegetable is commonly grown in Switzerland, among other northern European countries, it’s the French and Italians, not the Swiss, who have done the most with chard, with the Spanish and Greeks running a close second. In southern Spain and out on the Balearic Islands, it’s cooked much as the Arabs of North Africa use it, with spices and hot chiles, or cooked with sweetmeats. In fact, chard’s history is long, going back before Rome (its subspecies name, cicla, refers to sicula, the ancient name of Sicily), before Greece, back to ancient Babylon. Various theories have been proposed for why the country of Switzerland has been associated with chard, but none of them seem worth repeating. I just call the vegetable chard and leave it at that.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
Make sure your chard is organic. The high-nitrogen chemical fertilizers used in conventional agriculture can cause the plants to take up too much nitrate, which can change within the human digestive system to cancer-causing nitrites. Organic soils feed chard their nitrogen from natural sources, at just the rate the plants need it.
NUTRITION
Just 1⁄2 cup of cooked chard provides 30 to 40 percent of the daily requirement of vitamin A, 20 percent of vitamin C, 20 percent of magnesium, 13 percent of potassium, 5 percent of calcium, and 25 percent iron for males and 11 per-cent for females. While you sometimes see chard recommended as a salad ingredient, use it sparingly because raw chard contains oxalic acid, enough of which can cause gastrointestinal upsets and block the body’s ability to absorb iron and calcium. Cooking disarms the oxalic acid.
SEASONALITY
When grown in cold winter climates, chard is ready to harvest in late spring or early summer and will continue to produce stalks until hard frosts in November. In warm winter areas, winter is its preferred season with best growth and largest yields.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Look for stems that are crisp, not limp, and inspect the cut ends; they should look freshly cut, not dried or shriveled. The leaves should be fresh and glossy. Reject any bunches with leaves that have begun to decay.
PREPARATION
While it’s certainly possible to cook chard leaves and stems together, the leaves will be done long before the stems finish cooking, so it makes more sense to cook the two separately (the exception is if they’re going into a soup, stew, or braising pan that will cook for a long time).To separate leaves from the stems, lay a leaf on a cutting board and cut along either side of the rib.
To prepare chard stems for cooking, check the fibers that run up the back of the stems. If the stems are wide and older, their fibers may be unpleasantly chewy: Use a paring knife to peel the fibers from the stem, as you would with celery. Fresh young chard stems—even big ones—may not need to be de-strung. Give them a tooth test to see how chewy they are.
USES
Chard is as versatile in cooking as just about any vegetable. The leaves have a delicious earthy tang and the stems are succulent, bittersweet, and have a hint of salsify and cardoon in their flavor. The leaves and stems are functionally two kinds of vegetables from the same plant.
Chard Leaves Chard leaves can be steamed and served like spinach, made into a quiche, or used like spinach. The substantial leaves also make excellent wrappers, dolma-style, for ground meats, grains, or nuts to be baked en casserole. ....read more
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