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Barb's Cheese and Swiss Chard Squares

Ranked #13,397 in Food & Cooking, #227,876 overall

A Delicious Way to Use Swiss Chard

This is one of our favorite autumn and winter dishes for whenever it's cool enough to use the oven in comfort. It's fast and easy, as are most of my favorite recipes. Assembly takes little time once the chard is cleaned and ready to go. You can substitute spinach for the chard. I just happend to have an abundant supply of the rhubard chard in my garden.

Before you start, make sure you have an 8" by 12" shallow baking dish or pan. You will also need a bowl of at least four quarts. It's more important to make it large in diameter than deep, as you will see later on. A blender is handy for making bread crumbs, but you can use packaged crumbs, or even wheat germ if you have it on hand. And it's nice to have a blender to make your crumbs and a food processor to grate your cheese.

Before you start, grease your baking dish.

Whenever I open a package of butter, I save the wrapper and usually it has just enough butter left on it to grease a pan. If not, just use shortening or other solid fat. You can also spray with Pam.

Assemble your ingredients for your cheese and chard squares.

If you assemble everything ahead of time you will find out if you are missing anything. Nothing is worse than having half your ingredients mixed and realizing something important is missing.
  • 3 eggs
  • 6 tablespoons whole wheat flour (you can use white or rye flour if necessary.)
  • 2 cups cottage cheese
  • 2 cups grated cheddar cheese
  • 1./2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 pound Swiss or other chard leaves (Spinach may be substituted) I used red (rhubarb) chard, which is not to be confused with rhubarb itself, which has poison leaves
  • Enough bread crumbs to cover the surface of your baking dish. I used my blender to crumb one long slice of sourdough garlic bread, and that was just right. It made about a cup.

Be sure to put on an apron before you make your Cheese and Chard Squares.

swiss-chard_6475-hielema apron
swiss-chard_6475-hielema by MarleneHielema
See more Marlene Aprons

Have you ever cooked with chard?

Before I started growing chard, I never had tried cooking with it. Then I discovered it could be a substitute for spinach in many recipes, and spinach was much harder for me to grow. My husband first tried this when I used spinach and loved it. He thinks he doesn't like chard, but he raved about this today. In this recipe, he can't tell the difference. Sometimes a good disguise is a great way to introduce your family to a food they might not think they like. I think I fooled him because I cut off the tough red stems, and it's these he doesn't like.

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Preparing your cheese and chard squares

First get your ingredients ready to use.

Crumb your bread to make the bread crumbs if you need to, and grate your cheese. I normally grate more than I need and store it in one-cup portions in the freezer, so today I just pulled two packages from the freezer.

Break eggs into large bowl --- at least four quarts. Beat them with fork or wire whisk until smooth and yolk and white are well mixed. Add whole wheat flour, cottage cheese, grated cheddar cheese, and salt. Now you can work on the chard. See directions for getting chard ready below. It's a gradual process that you begin after the egg mixture is already in the bowl.

Picture shows the bowl with the egg-cheese mixture at the bottom where you can't see it. The chard I've started to tear up is on top.

How to prepare the Swiss Chard to go in the egg mixture.

Get out your salad spinner. Rinse your chard (or spinach) and remove the tough stems if there are any. I just rip the leaf down along the stem and put the large pieces in the salad spinner. When the spinner bowl gets full, spin the chard leaves until dry and then keep doing each batch until you've done it all. After each load, tear into bite sized pieces and empty into egg/cheese mixture in bowl. Then spin the next load until everything is torn in pieces and in the bowl. As you see, the first bowl I used was too small to mix the ingredients once the bowl was full.

I had to dump the contents of the bowl into a bigger bowl.

You can skip this step if you started with a large enough bowl.

It would have been impossible to toss the ingredients in the first bowl without spilling most of them.

Getting the cheese and chard squares ready to go into the oven.

Now is the time to preheat your over to 350°F

Now that you have a big enough bowl, toss the chard with the egg-cheese mixture until it appears most of the leaves are coated. Toss it as you would a salad, except from time to time you will use the bottom of your spoon to spread the egg mixture over the leaves before continuing to toss.

Now that you have a big enough bowl, toss the chard with the egg-cheese mixture until it appears most of the leaves are coated. Toss it as you would a salad, except from time to time you will use the bottom of your spoon to spread the egg mixture over the leaves before continuing to toss.

Now that you have a big enough bowl, toss the chard with the egg-cheese mixture until it appears most of the leaves are coated. Toss it as you would a salad, except from time to time you will use the bottom of your spoon to spread the egg mixture over the leaves before continuing to toss.
This is how it should look when you finish tossing.
Now turn the mixture into the baking dish and spread it evenly.
Spread the bread crumbs or wheat germ evenly so they cover the mixture. Put in oven and cook for 45 minutes or until firmly set and brown on top. Today when this was cooked, I opened the oven door, tested to make sure it was done, and then turned off the oven and left it there until my husband came home for lunch about half an hour later.
Cut into squares and serve. Makes about eight squares. Adults will probably eat two each. Serve with bread and a non leafy salad.

Swiss chard is packed with nutrients.

Chard is a good source of Vitamins A, C. E, K, and B6, Thiamine, Folate, Phosphorus, Zinc, Dietary Fiber, Riboflavin, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Copper, and Manganese.

What to Serve with Barb's Cheese and Chard Squares

Since there are plenty of greens in this tasty main dish, you will probably want to serve with a salad that features other types of vegetables. We served this with Barb's Favorite Carrot and Raisin Salad, which I invented just to go with this. It is shown in the picture beside the cheese and chard square on my plate. It would also be good with Serbian Tomato Salad.Which ever salad you choose, you will probably also want to serve a crusty loaf of your favorite bread. Enjoy!

Do you have the equipment that will make preparing this easier?

No one has to have all the things below in order to make this recipe, but having the right gadgets can sure make life in the kitchen easier. I lived for years without these things, but now that I do have them cooking is more fun, takes less time, and is easier on my arthritis. I actually got the food processor because a physical therapist told me I needed to stop doing so much hand chopping and grating and other sorts of motions with my hands because of a neck problem.
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More About Swiss Chard

Nutritiional Data on Swiss Chard
This will tell you all you might want to know about the specific amounts of important nutrients you will find in cooked chard.
How to Grow Swiss Chard
If you'd like to grow your own chard, this will tell you all you need to know to get started.
363 Recipes Using Chard
Some of these look really interesting. I have a great chard crop and need all the help I can get.

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Lots of Rocket Moms are great cooks.

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BarbRad

In my life I've been student, public library clerk, English teacher in public school, elementary teacher in private schools,card buyer for Logos Bookstore... more »

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