For almost two years, I had managed to avoid a New York inevitability: attending an improv comedy show. That streak came to an end this month.
Thankfully, it was at the hands of my hilarious friend Meg, who invited me to her improv class’s showcase. Equipped with a classmate’s prompt about working at a farmers’ market, she stepped forward.
Meg was now Brett, a surly Swiss chard farmer. Brett was on a date with a woman, Carly, who did not know what Swiss chard was. The two began harvesting chard visible only to them.
“Is it like the enemy of kale?” asked Carly. “Many have said,” Brett replied, wistfully. I cackled, loudly.
One-Pot Braised Chard With Gnocchi, Peas and Leeks
Swiss chard has toiled in the shadow cast by kale for long enough. Step forward like Meg did, chard! It shines alongside springy peas and leeks in Melissa Clark’s one-pot braise with gnocchi, pulls double-duty in Ali Slagle’s citrusy lentil and sweet potato soup and anchors Alexa Weibel’s creamy pasta with leeks, tarragon and lemon zest.
A hearty, leafy green, Swiss chard can grow ribs and stems in a variety of vibrant colors, making it perhaps worthier of your dinner spotlight than its cruciferous nemesis. (Fun fact: Chard is part of the amaranth family, along with beets and spinach.) There’s chard with ruby-red stems, chard with caution-tape yellow ribs, chard with millennial-pink stalks. There’s even rainbow chard, which is not a single varietal but a kaleidoscopic bundling of several.
Any of those stems would look beautiful blistered on a grill and served with garlic oil, as the chef Gabrielle Hamilton recommends. It’s a smart way to use up vegetable scraps, but I’d work in the reverse: Set out to make that recipe, and save the leaves for the verdant, nutrient-dense filling of David Tanis’s creamy casserole, dolloped with ricotta and showered with bread crumbs.
Though there are ample recipes that use up the entire vegetable at once. Melissa’s, Ali’s and Alexa’s above do, as does this recipe from the chef Rahanna Bisseret Martinez, in which she sautées the greens, quick-pickles the stems and pairs it all with mushrooms atop a bowl of creamy vegan grits.
You don’t even have to seek out a Swiss chard recipe to eat Swiss chard. The next time you stumble upon, say, a kale pasta or kale soup, make like Meg and improvise.
