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There have been a lot of these, floating around the blogosphere, in raw blogs. While it’s a good idea, the thought of eating raw collard greens is a little, um, bitter? However, swiss chard, blanched for a minute or two, makes a wonderful sandwich wrap.  

Ingredients:

1 bunch of regular, but large-leaved swiss chard

1 small tomato (or leftover chopped tomatoes from tacos or nachos)

3 pieces of turkey bacon (if you’re veggie, this could be barbecued baked tofu or tempeh)

1/4 cup of iceberg lettuce

2 quarts of water

Kitchen apparatus:

stove

(This will also work in a microwave–run the microwave in a 2 quart bowl on high for four minutes, and then drop the chard in for one minute for each leaf, one leaf at a time.)

2-3 quart pan

knife

cutting board

tongs

microwave (for cooking bacon, only)

plates

paper towels

Directions:  Put 2 quarts of water in a pan. Put the pan on the stove, and turn the heat to, “medium-high.” While the water is warming up, rinse the chard, and cut the stems out of the center of each leaf. If you like, you can save the stems for swiss chard refrigerator pickles.

Not every leaf will be large enough for a wrap, once it has been cut in half. The strips of chard need to be at least three inches wide and six inches long to make a good wrap. Save the smaller leaves for salad add-ins–raw swiss chard is a nice bitter salad green. When the water is boiling, put each leaf in, one at a time–the leaves float, and it’s difficult to make sure they are cooked, but not too cooked, if you put them in all at once. Let each leaf boil for one to two minutes. (Smaller leaves should only take one minute. Larger leaves will take up to two minutes to soften, adequately.) The longer you cook the chard, the sweeter it will be.

When each leaf is done, with the tongs, take the leaves out and place them on a plate. While the leaves are cooking, rinse and chop 1/4 cup of iceberg lettuce, and dice the tomato, in large dice. (And if you hate multitasking, just boil the chard, and do the chopping at the end–the leaves will need some time to cool.)

If you’re using bacon, put your turkey bacon on a plate with a paper towel under and on top of it. Put the turkey-paper towel plate in the microwave, and run the microwave for 1 minute and thirty seconds, to two minutes.

Let everything cool enough that you’re comfortable handling it with bare hands. (Supposedly it’s a cook’s badge of pride to show all the burns scars, but I’m a wimp, and I’d rather wait for it to cool.)  If anything is too hot, use the time to chop the rest of the chard into three inch pieces–you can either use it in soup or stir fry, or make chard refrigerator pickles.

Then, put about a tablespoon of lettuce, one teaspoon of tomato, and half of a piece of turkey bacon in the center of each strip of chard. Fold 1/2 inch of the chard up over the ingredients, and then roll from one end of the strip of chard, until you have a roll.  When you’re finished, they should look like this. 

Four wraps will serve two people as a light lunch.

Cost for the entire recipe: about $4.50