I have bunches of both of these things, from my CSA, and I don’t know what to do with them.
I am so not in to bitter, it’s not even funny. So I get really turned off by anything suggesting to be bitter and to me, green leafies are totally bitter.
I am a huge fan of spinach, though. And I will eat properly-cooked eggplant. So not everything has to be bitter once cooked!
I did manage to choke down some mustard greens without thinking they were bitter or spicy, but that’s because I put them in a gratin. I don’t mind eating stuff buried in cheese and breadcrumbs but it sort of makes me feel like I’m cheating.
This recipedidn’t look too bad as far as swiss chard goes, but I also didn’t look to deep.
So, any suggestions for what to do with my bunches of swiss chard and kale?
I don’t find kale or swiss chard to be bitter, not like mustard or turnip greens. Google “Kale Chips” for a nice snack.
Here’s a recipe that is pretty classic - Tuscan Kale with Anchovies, Golden Raisins, and Pine Nuts. If the idea of anchovies is too much for you, skip them and just add salt, but I don’t think you’ll even taste them; they break down and leave a little saltiness.
Kale goes great with pasta dishes. I recently made one with lemon, garlic, and shrimp - just throw the kale in last and let it wilt a bit, stir it up and enjoy. You can also throw in some toasted garbanzos to balance the textures a bit (and parm cheese.)
My favorite breakfast dish is kale with apple chicken sausage, carrots and corn. Just add a little chicken broth to the pot when you put in the kale, and it will only take a few minutes to cook.
You can also put it in a fruit smoothie without any noticeable taste difference.
Yep, me too. I grow it because the Bright Lights variety is absolutely gorgeous (edible AND ornamental!) and it’s the only green that might survive our brutal summers.
Small leaves (like, the length of your middle finger) are great in mixed salads. The big leaves are sturdy for light cooking, and if you got really big leaves (like, a foot long or bigger) you can treat the center stalk like celery. I generally saute some garlic in olive oil and lightly cook the roughly chopped leaves in that. Mr. Shoe adds lime juice to his.
I make a Chard/Kale mix southern style, but without overcooking.
In a big skillet, brown some bacon bits, then add sliced stalky bits of the Chard and a little diced onion. Once that softens, add some minced garlic and the chopped greens to the skillet and toss. Add a little chicken stock or water, salt and pepper, cover and simmer until tender. You can add hot sauce or pepper vinegar if you like, use olive oil instead of bacon, whatever.
Garlic Tomato Kale Soup: Saute a handful of chopped garlic cloves in olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot. Add a couple quarts of water and a spoonful of salt, and bring to boil. Add large pinches of paprika, sage and thyme, several grinds of black pepper, and a handful of chopped fresh parsley. Stir and simmer for a few minutes. Chop several fresh tomatoes and add to the pot with their juice. Reduce heat and continue simmering as you cook some small pasta in a separate pot. Taste test the soup and add more of the seasonings to taste. Add great handfuls of torn leaves of fresh kale; it will cook down dramatically, so you can put in more than you think. Drain and rinse the pasta a little before it is done, and add it to the soup. Serve when the texture of both pasta and kale is right.
Swiss chard and Kale are actually quite different. For one, Swiss Chard is actually good
Super simple recipe I got from my CSA’s “So… What Do I Do With It?” handout.
-Strip the leaves off the stems of a large bunch of Swiss Chard and rinse the greens for any bits of dirt. (it will look like a massive quantity). Discard stems or freeze for soup.
-Bring 2 qt pot of water to full boil.
-Drop all leaves in to boiling water, swish around a bit and boil 3 minutes, stirring if you need to.
-Scoop the greens out of the water, press them gently to get out the water, and chop them coarsely (I usually just do 1" strips).
-Heat a saute pan with a TBSP of butter, put the chopped chard in there and stir it around to break up the clumps and distribute the butter
-stir in a handful of parmesan cheese.
-Salt, pepper to taste.
-Devour.
Adding vinegar to kale (either pre-soak or as a recipe ingredient) really does cut the bitterness. So either soak it for a while in some vinegar and water first, or look for a recipe that incorporates vinegar (especially red wine vinegar.)
I make a simple dish with chopped sweet potatoes, finely chopped greens of any sort, Italian sausage and a little red wine or red wine vinegar. Put all ingredients in either a crock pot or covered casserole dish and cook until done. Garlic or red pepper flakes optional but tasty.
I like kale in the clone of the Olive Garden restaurant’s potato, sausage, kale soup. It’s easy, tasty and only has about 8 ingredients if you count salt and pepper. (I omit the bacon and cream for a lighter version which is still really good.)
Ooh, beaten to it. I was going to suggest this incarnation of the long beautiful partnership of beans and pork products.
Just saying if parmesan isn’t what you’re into, chopped up bacon also works (just cook the bacon, pour of some but not all of the fat, and add the boiled, chopped chard).
I made something like The Portugese Bean & Kale soup* with my first lot of kale and it was indescribably bland. I was so super disapointed! I used chicken broth I made myself, farm share onions and garlic, and ro-tel spicy tomatoes instead of a hot pepper. It should not have been bland at all but it was like the kale somehow sucked up and neutralized all other flavors. The only way I can describe the taste, is that it was aggressively nutritious. Kind of the way wheat germ is aggressively nutritious. Mmmm… tastes like [del]wood chips[/del], I mean fiber.
I HOPE this goes without saying, but if you use the bacon fat, don’t also add the butter Good suggestion though.
*(though my recipe characterized it as Tuscan, it wasn’t like that Olive Garden recipe, no cream)
That Olive Garden soup looks good. I am pissed because we head Italian sausage couple weeks back which is gone, and potatoes that sat around forever which are now gone (eaten).
I like the idea of kale with raisins. I will eat almost anything with raisins in it.
I tasted the chard and it wasn’t bitter and it actually is like spinach, so I might just cook it like it’s spinach.
All these recipes look good. Wish I would have come to you guys earlier because…don’t tell anyone…I threw out a bunch of CSA kale already. :o
We have a huge crop of chard this year. So far I think the most popular things I’ve done with it have been (cooked) stir fries and (raw) a sort of pesto-style thing with almonds instead of pine nuts, which we dropped into spicy chickpea stew (and ate on toast, and and … I made quite a lot of it!). Oh, and just dishing it up as a spinach-style vegetable, of course. It’s very versatile.
That thing about stripping the stalks and discarding them, though - unless they’re really massive and woody, why would you?! The stalks are delicious. Just chop them appropriately for your dish and put them in the pan a few seconds before the leaves.
One of my favorites is sauteed kale. A bit of olive oil, a bit of butter (the real stuff, none of that margarine stuff), and dump in cleaned kale that has had the thick stem removed and leaves chopped. Saute until it’s done to a texture that’s good for you (I tend to like it a bit on the firm side.) Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper and enjoy.