CSA Inspired: Swiss Chard Salad

The photo above features my CSA share from last week. A lot of really yummy food. But does any of it scare you? Leave you puzzled? Over the past 5 years participating in a CSA I realized that the stranger-danger rule can sometimes apply to vegetables. Especially if they don't look like what you find in the aisles of your grocery store. Beets? Cabbage?

For me it is swiss chard.

It has always left me a bit bewildered. Use it in salad, toss it in a stir fry. Unfortunately this vegetable has sometimes gone to waste in our home. And then, it hit me. Rather than figuring out what to do with swiss chard, I started using it with the other ingredients I love, roasted garlic, olive oil, lemon. So I set out to make a pesto...but ended up with a salad.

2 cloves of garlic, roasted
2 Tbs. olive oil
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1/3 cup pine nuts
green tops of spring onions (not the bulbs, because I already used those!)
one bunch of roughly chopped swiss chard
olive oil as needed
salt and pepper to taste

Smash two cloves of garlic and roast on stovetop with olive oil. As the garlic roasts, chop swiss chard and put into a blender. Add lemon juice and pine nuts. Once garlic is complete, pour garlic and oil from the pan directly into the blender. Pulse to chop and dice and mix the ingredients together, adding more olive oil as needed. The consistency is to your personal taste. I used the full stalks, giving me a chicken or tuna salad consistency. If you prefer more of a pesto, save the stalks for stir fry.

This could work as a dip with pita chips or carrots. But we layered it on english muffins and topped with ham. A few minutes in the oven and it is open face sandwich perfection! How do you handle your stranger-danger veggies?