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Plain Swiss Chard
This is the ordinary method of preparing it, but there are a few points to be observed. Cook the entire stalks, including the leaf, in very little water until tender; remove, drain and chop very fine. Return to kettle, season with salt, a little pepper, a saltspoon of sugar and piece of butter; let it get very hot, place in hot dish and garnish with small toast points. Serve with French dressing or vinegar.
A straightforward braise-and-chop treatment of chard from the era when greens were cooked soft and dressed at the table. Two details in the original are worth adjusting: the measure, and the fact that stalks and leaves do not cook at the same speed.
- SaltspoonAn old table measure equal to about a quarter teaspoon. That is the right amount of sugar here — enough to round off the mineral edge of the chard, not enough to taste sweet.
- Stalks before leavesThe instruction to cook the entire stalk with the leaf will give you either tough ribs or collapsed greens. Slice the ribs and give them 5-6 minutes, then add the shredded leaves for the last 2-3 minutes.
- Very little waterRoughly half an inch in a covered pan; the leaves release plenty of their own liquid. Wet greens go grey and lose flavour into the water, so drain well and press out the excess before chopping.
- KettleIn this period a kettle is any deep cooking pot, not a tea kettle. A wide saucepan or a lidded sauté pan is what you want, since surface area helps the water cook off.
- Getting it very hotThe return to the pan with butter is a quick reheat to drive off remaining moisture and melt the seasoning through — a minute or two over brisk heat, stirring. Longer and the chopped leaf turns to paste.
- Toast pointsBread toasted, crusts removed, cut corner to corner into small triangles. Set them around the edge of the dish at the last moment or they soften in the steam.
- French dressingIn American cookbooks of this vintage this means a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing, about three parts oil to one vinegar with salt and pepper — not the sweetened orange bottled dressing sold under that name now. Pass it separately; dressing poured on hot greens dulls quickly.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a rough guide, a pound of untrimmed chard cooks down to roughly a cup of chopped greens, enough for two as a side dish. Chard loses more volume than it appears it will, so buy generously.
Swiss chard is a beet bred for its leaves and ribs rather than its root. The origin of the "Swiss" in the name is unsettled — the plant is Mediterranean, and the name is often said to come from nineteenth-century seed catalogues distinguishing it from the garden beet, though this is tradition rather than documented fact. It was valued in American kitchen gardens for cropping on through the heat of summer when spinach had bolted. The instruction to serve it with French dressing or plain vinegar reflects a long habit of treating cooked greens as something between a vegetable and a salad, dressed at the table to the eater's taste.