This is my favorite Swiss chard recipe. It's from Field of Greens by Annie Somerville.

Fettuccine with Swiss Chard, Currants, Walnuts, and Brown Butter

1/3 cup brown butter
1 tablespoon dried currants
2 tablespoons golden raisins
1 bunch of red or green Swiss chard, about 8 cups packed leaves
1 tablespoon light olive oil
1/2 medium-size red onion, thinly sliced, about 1 cup
Salt and pepper
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/2 pound fresh fettuccine
1/3 cup walnut pieces, toasted
Grated Parmesan cheese

Make the brown butter and keep it warm over very low heat. Set a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Plump the currants and golden raisins in a small bowl covered with 1/4 cup hot water. Trim the stems from the chard and slice the across the leaves to make 2-inch-wide ribbons.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan; add the onion, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and a few pinches of pepper. Saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until the onion softens and begins to release its juices. Add the garlic, chard, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Saute for 4 to 5 minutes, until the chard is just barely tender, then reduce the heat to low.

When the water boils, add 1 teaspoon salt. Add the fettuccine to the boiling water, timing it to finish cooking with the chard. (The chard will be tender but not overcooked when the pasta is done.) When the pasta is just tender, drain it immediately in a colander, shake off the excess water, and add it to the onions and chard, along with the plump fruit, walnuts, and brown butter. Toss together and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

SERVES TWO TO FOUR

Usually I trim the stems from the leaves, slice the stems and leaves separately, then saute the stems with chopped onion till they are tender. At that point add the leaves, salt and simmer till the leaves are tender, according to your preference. Add a little water or broth if your pot is dry. I add some lemon juice before serving, or a little vinegar is nice. This is a basic preparation that I think would be good in a quiche, omelet or some kind of veggie tart.

A long time ago a friend made me a wonderful lasagna. It only had cream sauce, some kind of bitter greens, and nutmeg sprinkled on it; I think something similar would be good. See this version by Rachel Ray: I think it would be good as a regular lasagna; just make sure the chard is drained of juice before layering. I've also had chard in an Italian white bean soup, similar to this recipe.

You can use the chard leaves in anything that cooked spinach would be good in - the baby leaves are good in salad but yours will need to be cooked. Look for recipes with the word "florentine."

Saag Paneer!

Been cooking more with chard this year. Olive oil and garlic stir fry, with maybe a bit of braising in chicken/veggie broth is classic and yummy way to get some tender greens. Onions work well, as an addition, and you can play around with adding different spices. Last week I made a few changes to THIS Bell Pepper and Chard stir fry with Hoisin sauce, and it was delicious!! Fun to have a new flavor in our chard, it complimented beautifully. Firstly, we used olive oil, rather than canola (because of flavor!!). And we actually didn't add any broth this time, but it still got nice and tender and delicious. And I didn't measure out the hoisin sauce, just kinda squeezed some in, so it was probably more than the 1.5 tsp, which would explain why we didn't have to add broth. I'll copy and paste the recipe below, for those who dislike hyperlinks.

Also, New Roots Organics recipe search has been a great resource for us to use veggies that are newer to our family. Just enter "chard" in the search box. The yam and braised green recipe looks delicious. http://newrootsorganics.com/recipes

Ingredients

1 tablespoon canola oil 1 onion, halved and thinly sliced 1 large red bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, thinly sliced 3 tablespoons vegetable broth, or water 1 1/2 teaspoons hoisin sauce 1 pound chard, washed, stems diced, leaves shredded (6 cups) Salt, to taste

Preparation

Heat oil in a wok or large deep skillet over high heat. Stir-fry onion until they are translucent and slightly soft, about 2 minutes. Add bell pepper, broth (or water) and hoisin sauce; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, for 2 to 3 minutes. Add chard stems and leaves, tossing to combine. Simmer, covered, just until the chard is tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with salt.

I have two go to dishes that I make with chard.

Chard Tart from Joy of Cooking (you should be able to find in the library or bookstore). This is kinda quiche-link but not as eggy, with a super simple press in pan oil crust. It is totally yummy eaten warm or room temp. It's a great buffet item.

The other comes from We Called it Macaroni, a Neopolitan focused cookbook. You chop the chard or spinach and an onion (I'm not a big onion fan so I might do only 1/2 cup of diced onion) and sauté in olive oil, adding in salt, pepper and dried basil. When the greens are just softened you add in a can of high quality tuna, preferably in oil from Italy -- but I use whatever Ive got on hand (chunk light is fine and it has less mercury as well) Cook up some pasta (penne, farfalle or whatever) and then toss the greens mix in with the drained pasta, adding more oil as needed. We actually just ate this last night for dinner.

My favorite thing to do with chard is to toss it with kale in sherry vinaigrette, for my recipe check out my blog post below:

http://myglutenfreebelly.blogspot.com/2011/02/eat-your-greens.html

Buon Appetito!!

Fry it up. Plenty of oil and garlic. That's pretty much what we do with all our winter greens. And the gigantic leaves shrivel down into a small amount of greasy, garlicky goodness (that's good for you), so that ton of chard you think you have will be gone in no time.

Also: your chard could easily survive a frost. It'd probably have to get down to around 20F for it to die completely.