Chard lasagna

Are you scared of chard?

No?

Then perhaps you aren't growing it right now.

That stuff scared me the first time I grew it because it would. not. stop. growing.

It's like postal service of vegetables. Rain, sleet, snow, whatever - it keeps right on delivering the PennySaver even though you've never once looked at it.

The good news is that, unlike the PennySaver, you can tame your chard with a few swift moves.

In this case, lasagna-type moves.

Chard lasagna

Adapted from Lasagna with Chard, tomato sauce and ricotta, NYTimes.com

Ingredients
1 recipe of The Best Tomato Sauce Ever. Yep.
1 generous bunch of Swiss chard (1 1/2 lbs)
Salt
6 lasagna noodles

Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

1 T chopped fresh herbs (oregano's nice)

To make 

Preheat the oven to 425. 

First, start your tomato sauce.

 
While the tomatoes for your sauce are roasting in the oven boil some seasalty water and, after cutting the big stalks off of your chard and rinsing the leaves in cold water, dunk your full chard leaves in the boiling water for 1 minute. Then take those leaves intact (I find my Oxo tongs do the best job here) and dunk them in icy water.

Some fancy people refer to this process as blanching, but I'm not fancy, so let's just call it dunking.

Then you'll want to squeeze out all this water by stacking those leaves into a neat pile, placing them on one end of an unrolled tea towel and rolling them up while squeezing.

Unroll the towel and take your little chard cigar over to the cutting board for ribboning. The towel can then go into the wash or your kitchen laundry hamper if you have it.

Now you can ribbon slice your funny chard cigar.

Once you're done making the tomato sauce, pour the sauce into a good sized bowl and, with your tongs, toss your sauce with all that ribboned chard.

Then compile it as such:
Coat the bottom of an 8x8 pan with a bit of the sauce mixture
Then one layer of uncooked lasagna noodles
Then ricotta
Then sauce mixture
Then some shredded Parmesan
Repeat once more and finish with noodle, ricotta, sauce, Parmesan
Sprinkle some salt and oregano on top

Wrap the whole deal with foil and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool, uncovered, for about 5 minutes or until it cools below MOLTEN LAVA temps. Cut and serve with a salad.

Good eating and bye bye chard.