Chard is a member of the beet family and is known in Italy as bietola. It is a beautiful vegetable with huge green leaves that taste like strong spinach and thick white stalks that are often cooked as a vegetable in their own right, or used as you do celery in the basic soffrittos for soups.
Colourful varieties of chard, known as Bright Lights or Rainbow, are easy to grow. The stems are slimmer and as they seem to be stringier, we do not use them in the same way as the white-stemmed chard. But the leaves are absolutely delicious and a favourite way to cook them is simply blanched in boiling salted water, drained, seasoned and tossed with extra virgin olive oil, to be served cold.
Choose chard that has fresh, crisp and strong leaves and stalks that are stiff, which means it has been recently cut. To prepare Swiss chard, cut the leaves from the stalks and keep separate. Use a small sharp knife to peel away the thick fibrous film that is on the outside and cut into centimetre strips.