chard
Pluralchards (some meanings)
- 1A leaf vegetable, Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla, whose edible leaves have a mildly bitter flavor.
Cooks often pair chard with olive oil and lemon to soften its bitterness.
We harvested chard from the raised beds all through the summer.
Note
The name comes from a thistle, not a beet. Earlier card, from Middle French carde and Latin carduus, 'thistle', was respelled with ch after chardoon, an old form of cardoon, its doublet. The plant is a beet grown for large leaves and fleshy stalks rather than a swollen root. In cooking it is usually a mass noun, so you buy a bunch of chard.
- 2Artichoke leaves and shoots that have been blanched so they can be eaten.
Old kitchen gardens grew artichokes partly for the chard their blanched shoots provided.
Once blanched, the chard from the artichoke beds was simmered until it was soft.
Note
Blanching here is a gardener's technique, not a cook's quick dip in boiling water. Light is kept from the growing stalks and young shoots until they turn pale and tender, and only then are they cut and cooked. Unlike the leafy beet, this chard can be counted as well as used as a mass noun, so chards of artichoke is possible.
Practice
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Origin
From an earlier form "card" (reshaped after "chardoon", an obsolete form of "cardoon"), from Middle French "carde", from Latin "carduus" ("thistle"). It is a doublet of "cardoon".