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Just saying the word “chard” is enough to keep many people from eating this vegetable. At least that’s what happened in my case. Say it with me.
“Chard.”
It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
I’ve been eyeing this veggie all year. It’s so colorful! Stalks in pinks, reds and yellows. I took this picture on a reconnaissance mission back in March. The chard is from Deep Roots Farm.
In preparation for finally giving this vegetable a try, I decided to start saying “chard” with a rolling R, thinking it had a nicer ring to it. Say it with me.
"Charrrrrrrd."
Plus, saying “charrrrrd” reminds me of the movie The Princess Bride when Indigo Montoya and Fezzik the Giant rhyme back and forth trying to outwit each other.
Indigo: Why is selling this vegetable so...........harrrrrrd.
Fezzik: Probably because you call it..............charrrrrd.
My husband caught me practicing saying “charrrrrd” out loud. This required an explanation.
“I don’t think ‘chard’ sounds very nice,” I said.
“Uh huh,” he said. “Well I hate to break it to you, but whatever you’re saying right now doesn’t sound very nice either.”
After researching Swiss chard, I was excited to find out that the name “chard” has a dubious origin. Maybe there's hope for a re-branding strategy.
The ‘Swiss’ part has been attributed to:
- A 19th Century Swiss Botanist who first classified chard
- A 16th Century Swiss Botanist who first classified chard
- A large crop of chard cultivated in Switzerland
- The great flee beetle epidemic that caused the leaves to resemble swiss cheese.
Here's a picture of "Swiss Cheese Chard."
On the flee beetle theory, one blogger wrote: “If that’s the case, I grow many varieties of Swiss spinach, Swiss radishes and Swiss arugula in my own garden each year. Swiss cabbage is one of my specialties.”
For the chard part we can blame the French who first mistook chard for cardoon (for a picture of cardoons, see last week's Monday Dose of Market: Weird Fall Vegetables). The French word for cardoon is ‘chardon.’ But apparently, they’re no longer confused because now the French call it blettes. In the UK and Australia they call it silverbeet, in Italy bietola, in Spanish acelga. I’d take any of those over chard.
And if the name doesn’t stop you, and you’re unlucky enough to unknowingly try this vegetable for the first time during warmer weather, you might have ‘pungent and bitter’ imprinted in your brain when recalling chard.
Colder weather brings sweeter leaves.
So, when I read the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market Grapevine Newsletter and the market manager’s endorsement of the chard coming to market (he called it extraordinary!), I decided that if I was going to try chard, now was the time. Deep Roots Farm had another nice display.
I followed the market manager's recipe for Braised Chard with Wild Mushrooms. While chopping chard, I sampled the red, yellow, and pink stalks, which felt exactly like chewing on celery, but I actually thought it tasted sweeter than celery. Different varieties of chard have different colored stalks and leaves. Rainbow chard has mutliple colors in one plant.
I saved a stalk for my husband, excited for him to try it, as he still counts “ants on a log” as one of his food staples.
He didn’t like it as much as I thought he would. This cast doubt over the entire meal.
“Have you tried it yet?” he said with a hint of desperation. I gave him a spoon. He sampled, and proclaimed it “earthy” but good. Phew.
I made one addition to the recipe by adding some of our fresh tomato sauce to balance out the earthiness, then tossed it with pasta as suggested in the recipe note. This was a hearty meal, and I was psyched to be adding a highly nutritious leafy green to our fall rotation. I thought the taste was similar to spinach, but the chard leaves were not as delicate as spinach. It made us think of chard lasagna possibilities.
Or “charrrrrd” lasagna, as I will be calling it from now on.
For more charrrrrd ideas, see this New York Times
