Chard springs to life

Deep green goodness is best enjoyed from leafy greens that are as fresh as possible. These giant chard leaves were picked from my garden and steamed within 24 hours. Once you’ve tasted veggies as fresh as this, you’ll understand why so many cooks become gardeners. They were grown from seeds planted last year from my friends at JL Hudson and pretty much grow themselves in most conditions. Just add water and wait for them to flourish.

Before cooking up these leaves last night, I went to my local yoga studio for a little post-work breath, stretch and relax. By strange coincidence, my fabulous teacher, Gabe Hendrie, was comparing some of the poses to chard and fresh salad greens. She described how yoga poses and greens are not as good if they wilt, and how the simplest of ingredients and poses make the most vibrant and nutritious dishes and yoga asanas. She also said that the best reason to do anything, whether yogic, food-related or otherwise, is for the pure enjoyment of it. Of course, Gabe’s observation of parallel culinary and yogic forces and the pursuit of pure pleasure struck a nice chord with this particular OrganicFoodee. So after class, I asked Gabe for a chard recipe that brought her the highest enjoyment factor. This is what she said:

1. Take four big leaves to feed two people as a hearty side serving.
2. Don’t use too much stalk. Discard about half of it, then chop the rest into 1 inch / 2 cm long pieces and steam.
3. While the stalk is steaming, halve the leaves down the spine, then slice them in 1/2 inch / 1 cm strips.
4. Once the stalk is fairly tender (about 4 minutes), throw the leaves on top and steam until everything is cooked to your taste.
5. In a bowl, mix 4 tablespoons olive oil with 1/2 teaspoon good quality sea salt. Himalayan pink crystal salt tastes good in this dish, also my personal favorite salt variety, Halen Mon. You can try a flavored olive oil too, especially lemon olive oil.
6. Once the greens are tender, remove from the heat and drizzle with the oil.
7. Serve and eat immediately for sheer taste pleasure and utmost nutritional satisfaction.

Please let us know what you think by leaving a comment...

Like this page? Please link to us and let the world know!

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• ma.gnolia
• BoingBoing

This was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 10:26 am by Ysanne Spevack. To link here, use the permalink. You can follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed.