Chard and Goat Cheese Tart "Recipe"

I love cooking with things that I have grown myself. Chard is especially nice. It is so versatile. You can eat it in salads as a baby green. You can sauté it with a little olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. You can add to soup. You can pretty much do anything with chard that you can do with spinach. And don’t listen to anyone who says to cut off and discard the stems. They are very tasty cooked on their own or cut into smaller pieces and mixed right into the chopped chard leaves. 

Neon lights chard tastes as good at it looks!

Years ago I came across a recipe for a rustic chard and goat cheese tart. Try as I might, I was not able to find the recipe again. I do have a vague memory of what it looked like and I’m comfortable cooking without a recipe so I decided to go ahead and try to make the tart from vague memory. (I’m sure I could have found a comparable recipe online but where’s the fun in that?) Here, then, is my “recipe.”

1. Go out into the garden and pick a good-sized bunch of chard. Rinse well, making sure to get all the grit out of the stems. There’s nothing worse than gritty chard. It makes my teeth ache just thinking about it.

Some rinsed chard with stems removed - just removed! You will use them in this “recipe.”

2. Chop up the chard leaves and stems and put into a frying pan with a little bit of water. Add a package of mushrooms cut into smaller pieces. Season with salt and freshly-ground pepper. Cook until it looks done. (Hey, I warned you this was just a “recipe.”) Keep a lid on the pan early on to help the vegetables steam then take off the lid to let the remaining liquid evaporate.

Chard and mushrooms in the pan ready to cook

3. Make a single pie crust or use a premade crust. I don’t really use a recipe for my pie crust. My dad taught me how to make pies when I was little. I used about a cup of flour, 1/3-ish cup of shortening, a little salt and enough water to make it come together for this crust. Lay the pie dough out flat on a baking sheet. Spread the chard mushroom mixture onto it and top with crumbled goat cheese. Fold the edges a couple of inches in all around.
 

Tart ready for the oven

4. Bake the tart in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for twenty minutes.

5. Realize that pie crust, no matter how thin the pie, is not pizza dough. Up the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for another 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

There it is!

It took a bit longer than expected but my improvised chard and goat cheese tart tasted really good. It was a bit dry, though. If I make it again in the future I’ll have to come up with a way to remedy that. Maybe I could add eggs. Of course, if I was adding eggs, I might as well make a chard and goat cheese quiche. Mmm…quiche.