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homegrown swiss chard | onion | parmesan | sunflower seeds

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Lately, I haven't been able to cook as much as I would have liked to. I have fallen back on making quick and simple dishes, which does not always lend itself to being photographed.

The light in the kitchen fell perfectly, I harvested a bunch of Swiss Chard despite some setback, and in front of me was a beautiful dish waiting to be cooked.

I present a savoury side dish, made with caramelised onions, sunflower seeds, Swiss Chard and parmesan cheese.

It is on the healthy side of things, with some unique tastes that might not be for everyone. But if you like cooked leafy greens, with some cheese and seeds, this is the dish you want to make.

In this recipe post, I will show my process step by step, illustrating just how easy it is.

So, please follow along!

Ingredients List/Recipe

For this recipe, I used the following ingredient amounts, which made roughly five small side dish portions, or three rather big portions:

Process/Method/Steps

Step 1: Cutting (As Always)

It feels like all of my recipes begin with cutting vegetables. I guess cooking is 90% chopping things up into smaller pieces.

So, I began by removing the stalks from the Swiss Chard, cutting the leaves and the stalks, and cutting the onion as well.

When this was done, I moved on to grating the cheese. These are easy steps that you can do well beforehand, making the whole process a lot easier and streamlined.

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Step 2: Roasting the Seeds

The second step is relatively easy, but it starts the cooking process. I just started by roasting the sunflower seeds in some oil and salted them right after I took them from the pan.

Step 3: Cooking the Rest

Now that the pan was warm, and all of the sunflower seeds had been taken out, I started cooking the onions on a relatively high heat. You don't want the onions to caramelise slowly as one would do traditionally, instead, you want to almost char them a bit.

I also added the stalks of the Swiss Chard, cooking them like they were onions!

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After the stalks and onion were cooked, I added the leaves. Be careful, they cook quickly. It is always magical, or it seems like magic, how the volume decreases so drastically. It feels like you can never add enough leaves.

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While still in the pan, I decided to add the sunflower seeds, giving them an extra last bit of the heat!

Step 4: Dishing Up

Because I made this as a side dish, I added it to a separate bowl, trying to be fancy and do a nice presentation for the family. I added the cooked leafy greens and the seeds first.

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Then I added the parmesan cheese. The residual heat will potentially melt some of the cheese, but some of the pieces will not melt. This creates a nice heterogeneous bite!

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And there you have it, it is really that simple to make something spectacular in less than an hour of cooking time. In fact, this is literally from harvesting the Swiss Chard till sitting down and eating. It cooks so quickly, the prep work takes longer.

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Postscriptum, or Cheers and Enjoy

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In almost truly South African style, I served this dish with some braai-ed (BBQed) meat and fruits. Over some open coals, I grilled lamb chops and pineapple pieces.

We enjoyed a couple of cold beers while the fire was going, and the food was cooking. We then opened up a special bottle of wine and celebrated life.

Everyone enjoyed the food, and I was happy that I could serve something grown and harvested from my garden.

From garden to table.

In any case, I hope that you enjoy your cooking. Make something nice, life is too short!

Happy cooking and stay well.

All of the musings are my own, albeit inspired by the beautiful Swiss Chard growing in my garden. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 50mm Nikkor lens.