I have some beautiful rainbow coloured Swiss chard to cook, both the stems and the leaves. A fabulous way to brighten up your supper tonight. Serves 2.

• 1 bunch of Swiss chard (approx 200g)
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 very small red chilli (de seeded and finely sliced)
• 1 medium onion
• 50g stoned and sliced olives
• half a tin of  tomatoes (200 ml) leftovers can be put in a freezer bag  and frozen for another time
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 10 grams of butter

Fill and boil your kettle.

The stems –

Remove the leaves from the stems. Slice the stems into small chunks and put into a pan with boiling water, add a little salt. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes.  Drain and keep a mug of the cooking water.

Fry the chopped onion in the olive oil for a couple of minutes, add half of the garlic, the olives, tomatoes and chunky chard stems. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes adding a little of the cooking water as necessary.

The leaves –

Plunge the leaves into boiling salted water for a minute. Drain. When cool squeeze the leaves a little to drain, then roughly chop them. In a frying pan, melt the butter, add the chilli and garlic and then the leaves, stirring to mix everything together.

Delicious!

You can also use pak choi to make this recipe if you can’t find chard. You will have slightly less green leaf though.

This was one of the recipes I cooked at the marvellous La Cucina Caldesi.