Eastside Road, July 18, 2014—
THERE ARE NOT MANY finer vegetables, I think, than chard. "Swiss chard," it was always called, when I was a child, and perhaps one reason for my fondness goes back to my childish curiosity about the name — why "Swiss"? (It was, alas, all too often charred, when Mom cooked it, with her usual technique when it came to cooking vegetables: chop them into small bits; cover them in a pot with at least two inches of water; boil rapidly until it is burned and sticking to the pot.)But I do Mom's memory injustice. In fact I have fond memories of even the taste, let alone the name, of chard. I do not like beets, or turnips, or swedes, whose bitter aluminum taste lies unpleasant on my tongue. Chard has something of that taste, but I don't dislike it. It's not mineral, so much, as oxalic. Is chard related to rhubarb? I wouldn't be surprised.
And then chard always reminds me of Bob, Cook's father, born into a paisano family in the Italian Alps west of Torino, a man always fond of his vegetables and his orto, his vegetable garden. He lived well into his nineties, and from May until November he'd ask, when we visited, You want chard? And would go to the border of the garden and bend over with his knife and cut the broad white ribbed stems, always on the diagonal, and send us away with a big bouquet of broad-leafed green chard, with perhaps a perforation or two here and there as his orto was innocent of insecticide.
When I cook chard I cut the leaves from the stems, chop the stems and cook them in a little water with salt of course, then slice the leaves into thin strips and throw them on top, with another sprinkling of salt.
Tonight's chard was much better than that: Cook chopped it all, and added crushed garlic to the stewing vegetables, and finished them with a squeeze of lemon juice.
After the chard, the rest of the leftover fusilli con pesto, and I must say the pesto has held up beautifully, those pine nuts of ours deepening its flavor since Sunday. And then applesauce, since we'll have a big new harvest of apples before we know it, with ice cream.
Cheap Pinot grigio
1 comment:
14838My stepfather, who grew up in Wisconsin, was fond of chard.
He would boil it, much the same way one would spinach, and serve it limp and wet as a side vegetable.
I grew to prefer it to spinach. Not as acidic, and a pleasant mild flavor, such as cabbage.
As a child, I couldn't stand to eat spinach, broccoli, carrots, avocado, squash or beets. Also despised melons, and rhubarb. Holiday fruit-cakes made me retch.
As an adult I love them all, though I can't handle carrot juice.
Beets are good in certain salad combinations.
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