Currabinny Cooks: three ways to serve up chard - a hidden gem among veg

Pickle it, gratin it or serve it with pine nuts

Currabinny Cooks. June 19th. Gratin of Chard Stalks. Photo: Bríd O'Donovan.

Chard is a hardy biennial that is closely related to the beet. It was originally native to southern Europe and is in fact much older than the beet. It is believed to have developed from the wild sea-beet thousands of years ago. White, yellow and dark green forms of chard have been known since ancient times. Aristotle himself mentioned red-stalked chard around 350 BC.

Hailed by the puzzling title, ‘Swiss’, chard doesn’t have a particularly storied history in that Alpine nation. Though chard has been grown and eaten there for centuries, Switzerland is neither the vegetable’s homeland nor its most fervent consumer.