my chard and chickpea tarte is again a chard variation of an recipe which originally uses spinach. i cook and love the spinach and chickpea tarte since years but facing the still huge amount of chard in our freezer i tried it with chard and it’s very delicious as well. the recipe is out of an excellent cookbook of german gu verlag die schlank & fit küche but unfortunately it is not published any more. maybe you can find it in an antiquarian cookbookshop if you like.

if you have the possibility to grow your own vegetables i really recommend to try chard next season, it is very easy to grow, very nice looking and very satisfying because you will harvest a lot of it. to tell you the truth, it will be more than you can eat, but you can blanch and quick-freeze it and enjoy your own chard even during winter.

175 g wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
75 g butter
250 g chard
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp turmeric
200 g chickpeas (tinned)
2 eggs
200 ml milk
1 pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper

to prepare the pastry, mix the wheat and the salt and combine it with the butter which you add in small cubes to the mixture. the most easiest way to combine the ingredientes is with your fingers. add 2 to 3 tbsp of cold water while combining, until the pastry is soft and smooth. form a ball and let it rest wrapped in cling film in the fridge for about 30 minutes. don´t forget to preheat your oven on 200° C on time.

inbetween wash the chard, remove the stalks and put the leaves in a large pan. heat slowly and wait until wilt. strain off the water, sqeeze out the remaining liquid and finely chop the chard. if you use frozen chard, just defrost, drain and chop it and continue the recipe. heat the olive oil in the pan, cut the onion into thin slices and sauté together with the crushed garlic and the turmeric for about 5 minutes. Add the chickpeas and the chard and remove from heat. combine the eggs, milk, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

roll out the pastry and place in a buttered tarte tin, prick with a fork, cover with aluminium foil, fill up with beans and bake for 10 minutes. than remove the beans and foil and bake for more 10 minutes until golden. now you can place the chickpea-chard mixture on the tarte case and douse with the egg milk. bake the tarte for 35 minutes until it will be light brown and enjoy.