Swiss chard is something you hardly ever see in supermarkets - it tends to fade quite quickly, the bright green leaves look tired after a day and where the stem is cut turns an unappealing purply-black. So best to grow it yourself. More positive reasons to love the stuff are that once established it survives frosts and stands over the entire winter even in the wilds of Preston; you get two veg for the price of one - the leaves cooked like spinach, stems treated entirely differently; and the stems in particular have a pleasing sweet earthiness about them. Inevitably some cookbooks equate them to asparagus (along with a dozen other veg that taste nothing like the magic green sticks), but they have a fine flavour of their own.
Sunday's roast was followed by a gratin of the stems, cut into 2cm pieces and parboiled for five minutes. The bechamel was flavoured with grated Parmesan which suited the sweetness of the chard, and in the post-roast oven browned nicely. It was almost a pudding - if I'd used ground almonds in place of flour as a thickener it would have been even more like some medieval sweet-savoury offering.
It's always a good sign that nothing is left in the dish, but sadly this year we have grown very little chard - not for want of trying, the wet weather took its toll - so at most we can look forward to two more repeat servings now.
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