Blettes avec pois-chiches, tomates, et ail

In French, blettes are the word for chard. American friends of ours who live just five miles upriver from us grew a good crop of chard this summer. The variety they grew has red stems and leaf ribs, not the standard white stems and ribs. You can see how beautiful they were.

Day before yesterday, they gave us a kilograms of fresh blette leaves (2¼ lbs.) from their 2023 garden. We decided to make a recipe using blettes, pois-chiches (garbanzo beans, chickpeas), tomato sauce or paste, olive oil, garlic, and bread crumbs. We've made similar dishes before — once using kale, and once using collard greens. The original recipe calls for spinach. It's a Spanish tapas dish, but we had it as our main course at lunchtime.

The first step is to wilt or "sweat" the greens over medium heat with olive oil and a spoonful or two of water or wine until they are tender. Then brown some garlic cloves in olive oil. Take them out of the pan and brown some bread in the same oil. You can use ready-made bread crumbs or croutons. If you use croutons, reduce them to crumbs in a food processor with the garlic cloves. Add spices like cumin, paprika, powdered coriander seeds, and black or white pepper.

Cook or open a couple of cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas). Make or heat up some tomato sauce or paste with some hot chili peppers or hot red pepper flakes cooked in it, to taste. Add a tablepoon or two of sherry or red wine vinegar to perk it up.

Finally, combine the tomato sauce or paste, the bread crumb mixture, the garbanzos, and the greens in a frying pan or wok. Mix them together, gradually adding some wine or water to get the consistency you want. Serve hot or warm.