Chard Autumn Rolls

Sunday 13 October

Holt was inspired to use the big leaves from our chard from the yard as purses for stuffing.  The best recipe he found was this, but of course we had to mess with it a little.

First, instead of making up our own forcemeat, we used a pound of loose sausage from Charles Bare - it's already well seasoned.  About 7/8 of it went into the stuffing, being mixed well with a diced-up slice of pane pugliese, an egg, and 1/4 cup of fresh parsley. 

The eighth that was left over went into a pan, where it rendered its fat to fry up some of the chopped chard stems and half an onion, until tender.

In the meantime, we'd gently parboiled fifteen of the biggest, best chard leaves, a few at a time, for 2 minutes or until limp; then removed each, drained gently, and laid out flat on a board.  We had a couple extra to patch any that tore.

Holt found the best method of rolling them: lay the leaf out horizontally and put a "sausage" of stuffing in the center just below the vein.  

Lap the side closest to you up over the sausage, and tuck the right and left ends over that; then roll up over the rest of the leaf. 

We laid the chard bundles rolled side down on the sautéed vegetables in the pan, added a cup of chicken stock and a splash of lemon juice, raised the heat up to boiling, drizzled with some olive oil, then covered and let simmer for 35 minutes until done.

When they were done, we removed them, boiled the stuff in the pan down, and used it as a topping.  Nothing else was needed for a perfect fall dish.