2020-05-03: Swiss Chard with Rice

Swiss Chard with Rice

Making Swiss chard with rice is maybe the recipe that made it out of no-where to my top three list of dishes I cooked in the last year. Before that I did not even know what a Swiss chard was or what todo with it. The dish is easy to cook, if the ingredients are available. It is a vegetarian dish that can serve as a light lunch. It can be eaten as a cold or warm dish. I picked up the basic recipe from one of Deborah Madison's vegetarian cookbooks. But I have seen similar recipes with other greens as pilaf rice dishes in Persian and Afghan cooking books.

Here is a picture of the red Swiss chard I used in this recipe (after I washed the leafs):

The Swiss chard I used for this recipe.

So lets get started with my preparation: I chopped a medium-to-large onion and some cilantro (I could have used more cilantro). I also poured about 3 to 4 tbsp of vegetable oil into my Dutch oven pot and layered the chopped onions into the oil and salted the onions with about 1 tsp of salt.

The chopped onions and the cilantro I used (I should have used double the amount).

Then I removed the leafy parts of the Swiss chard from its stems. I chopped the red stems and added them on top of the onion layer in the pot. Then I sprinkled about a half cup (or a little bit more) of rice on top of the onion and Swiss chard stem layer. Then I sprinkled 1.5 tsp of paprika on top of the rice, onion and stem-chard layer and switched the heat to medium.

How things look after adding the chopped red chard stems and the rice.

How things look after adding the paprika. By that time I switch on the heat (there is a bit of steam).

The last step involved chopping the leafy parts of the Swiss chard into 2cm wide strips of maybe 10cm length. The strips, still wet from the washing phase by this stage, are then layered on top of the rice. Initially they fill up most of the remaining pot space, but will cook down later on. I also added the chopped cilantro to the pot. Then I put the lid on and cooked the whole thing on low (or very low) heat for about 40 minutes. No stirring is required. Just gently cooking/steaming the whole thing. 5 to 10 minutes before the end of the 40 minute phase, I open the lid and stir things a bit with a spatula. If the dish looks relatively dry, I added about 1 to 2 tbsp of water to support the remaining cooking phase (this is normally not necessary since the chard leafs are relatively wet when they are added to the pot).

The pot after the leafy parts of the Swiss chard and the chopped cilantro are added.

The finished dish can be eaten warm or cold and can be seen in the first picture in this blog post. I have also seen other Swiss chard recipes without the rice. Such recipes look a bit more saucy/watery. Sometimes some garlic cloves and or tomatoes are added and cooked down into a dish with a tomato sauce. 

Generally I have come to like Swiss chard quite a bit and decided to grow this year a larger amount of it in my backyard raised beds. Lets see how that endeavor turns out.