Cooking Chard

Polly in Ireland asked me for a recipe for her chard which arrives in abundance in her veg box. At the moment it ends up uneaten which is a shame.

Chard is handy as it's really cooked in two parts. You have the leafy green which can be used as a spinach replacement and also the white stem.

First the white stem: Cut it into smallish chunks and cook it until just tender. Then simply drain and add it to a cheese sauce - not too strong a cheese though as the chard stems have a very delicate flavour.
Another alternative would be to add it, in even smaller pieces (think chopped onion size) to a bolognaise sauce but here you don't get the advantage of the flavour.

Now the green leaves: My favourite is to make a sort of samosa so you need filo pastry and also a tub of ricotta cheese.
Cook a decent sized- handful of green leaf and then put it into a magimix with the ricotta and blend well. Add some nutmeg if you want as well as some pepper (salt too but I don't). Then brush one side of your filo pastry with melted butter and turn it over. (The buttered side is the outside.) Put decent/reasonable size quantities of the mix onto the pastry and then wrap it/roll it in any way that works for your shaped pastry. Here in France the filo pastry is round so I cut it in half first. The resulting parcels are oblongish.
Now you can either cook them straight away in a hot oven (200) for about 20 minutes (watch them or they'll burn) or you can put them in the fridge until you need them - up to 24 hours is fine.

I'm quite sure there are other possibilities but that's it for now!

Ah, I've just noticed that the link I've given to Polly shows the most wonderful picture of rainbow chard, which is, of course all the colours except green! I've never cooked or eaten it but assuming it's edible I'm quite sure you can use the same recipes!