Rainbow Chard with Tomatoes and Green Olives | Ottolenghi’s Flavor

The fresh and bountiful farmers market produce inspires this dish. I came across the rainbow chard with tomatoes and green olives recipe in Ottolenghi’s Flavor. A quick sautè of the rainbow chard, combining it with a fresh tomatoey sauce, imparts color and flavor for this vegetable side. When you get the best-quality and ripe vegetables, there is not much else you need to put something wonderful like this on the table. In the process, I learn a few tricks about cooking rainbow chard.

A few simple techniques worth reinforcing in cooking vegetables:

• The use of residual heat — Sauté the rainbow chard stalks for 4 minutes. Then add the leaves and sautè for another 3 minutes until the leaves are tender. I don’t expect the extra step in transfering the rainbow chard to a covered bowl. Then let it soften in the residual heat for another 3 minutes. Residual heat may not be something we think about. However, it’s a popular method to leave baked bread and granola in the oven, with the oven door ajar and the heat turned off. That invariably produces the extra and lasting crunch in baked goods. Residual heat on vegetables? Well, it’s worthy of our attention at Ottolenghi’s suggestion. It works without overcooking the vegetables.
• Aromatic oil — Infused oil brings another layer of flavor. In this recipe, garlic, onion, lemon peel and oregano are gently fried in 6 tablespoons of olive oil for 12 minutes. It’s a deliberate step to make the infused-oil as the base, in building the tomatoey sauce with green olives. The resulting sauce works well with rainbow chard, as well as other green vegetables or squashes.
• Lemon strips and juice for acidity — We generally use lemon zest and juice. There is more! The lemon strips, from shaving the peel, is yet another good use of the lemon. In this recipe, the subtle acidity of lemon is brought out in the hot olive oil. To finish the dish, drizzle fresh lemon juice on the rainbow chard for brightness. No part of the lemon is wasted.

Print Recipe

Rainbow Chard with Tomatoes and Green Olives

By Yotam Ottolenghi – Serves: 4

This summery side dish is a standout when you're using the freshest and best-quality of rainbow chard and ripe tomatoes.

Ingredients

• 14 oz/ 400g rainbow chard, bases trimmed, leaves and stalks separated and each cut into 6cm-long pieces
• 1 tsp/ 125ml olive oil
• 5 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
• 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped (110g net weight)
• 1 lemon – skin pared off in 2 strips, then juiced, to get 1 tbsp
• 2-3 sprigs fresh oregano
• 300g ripe plum tomatoes (ie, about 2-3), cut into 1cm dice (I throw in a few cherry tomatoes)
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup/ 120g Nocellara (or other green) olives, pitted and halved (or quartered if large)
• 1 tbsp (5g) basil leaves, roughly torn

Instructions

1

COOK THE RAINBOW CHARD: Cut any wider chard stalks in half lengthways (or three times, if they are especially wide). Put a large saute pan on a medium-high heat with a teaspoon of oil, add the chard stalks and saute, stirring occasionally, for four minutes. Stir in the leaves and saute for another three minutes, until just wilted and cooked. Transfer to a large bowl, cover with a plate, leave for three minutes to soften further in the residual heat, then remove the plate.

2

MAKE THE TOMATO/OLIVE SAUCE:Wipe clean the chard pan, pour in 90ml oil and return to a medium heat. Once hot, add the garlic, onion, lemon peel and oregano, and fry gently, stirring often, for 12 minutes, until the onion is soft and golden. Add the tomatoes, half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, and cook for about two minutes (or a couple of minutes longer if the tomatoes are not that ripe), until the tomatoes are just beginning to soften. Stir in the cooked chard and the olives, turn off the heat and leave to sit for five minutes, so the flavors come together.

3

SERVE: Pick out and discard the spent oregano stalks and lemon peel, then transfer the chard and tomatoes to a lipped platter. Drizzle over the lemon juice and the remaining two tablespoons of oil, finish with a scattering of the torn basil leaves and a good grind of pepper, and serve.

Notes

Adapted from Ottolenghi's Flavor