Rainbow Chard Curry

Back to blogging after a long time. Last few days kept me busy in moving to the west coast. Yes! We have moved to Redmond, WA. I wouldn't say we got settled already; our things are yet to arrive. I just have my kitchen ready with groceries and minimal utensils to keep us going. Hope our routine will be back by this weekend. I heard from lot of people about the Seattle rains and got mentally prepared to face them. I always hate rains as it makes roads wet and dirty making us immobile. But still, dry weather with no greenery also irritates me equally. I should say the city looks pretty green owing to the excessive rains. I love the Emerald city. Luckily, so far the weather is sunny and bright. Moving further north from Boston, we have daylight till 9:30 PM. But it is obvious that we are gonna have less of light in the fall. Well, it is good to see places.

I badly wanted to update my blog and actually I started cooking right from the day we moved into our new apartment. I should say cooking keeps me occupied and if I don't cook for more than a couple of days, I feel depressed. Lately, I discovered that I can never do without a kitchen. Enough rambling and lemme break the inactivity in blogging by a simple recipe - rainbow chard curry.

For those of you who do not know what it is, I should admit that even I was unaware of it till a few days back. I ran into this bunch of leaves that have brilliantly colored stalks at the whole foods market.

These glossy green leaves along with their red, golden and white stalks is aptly called rainbow chard and as you all know my craze for greens and colors, I fell in love with it at the very first sight. Needless to say, it went straight into my cart. To me, it looked like beet leaves and I had no idea what to cook with it. Bored of eating just spinach all this while, the new set of greens thrilled me. I used to love eating the dry curry made out of raddish leaves back home and thought why not implement the same formula. You can make use of any variety of chard. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

Finely chopped chard - 1 bunch
Coconut - 1 tablespoon or few pieces
Green chillies - 2 small
Coconut oil - 2 tsp
Mustard and urad dhall to temper.

Method:

1. Clean the chard well several times using water to get rid of mud and dirt.
2. Heat the oil, season with mustard and urad dhall.
3. Add the greens and little water. Cook till done. This takes longer time than spinach. If you want to save time, try using microwave to boil the greens.
4. Add salt. Grind the coconut and green chillies into a smooth paste and mix with the curry.
Serve hot with rice.

Tip: You can also try making molagootal using chard.