Be Nutritious

Swiss chard is such a marvelous vegetable. Not only it looks beautiful with its colorful stalks but it also is extraordinarily healthy. Just one cup of raw, uncooked chard gives you 4 g of fiber, over 700% of daily requirement for vitamin K, 100% for vitamin A, 50% for vitamin C, almost 40% for magnesium, 27% for potassium and 23% for Iron. It really is exceptionally lot for just 1 cup. It also gives you a decent 15% of Calcium but since it contains oxalic acid, the nutrient is not as easily accessible because oxalic acid binds to Calcium preventing it from being fully absorbed. It is the case for most of the green, leafy vegetables like spinach and collard greens and when eaten in excess, it might cause kidney stones so you should watch your intake of green leafy vegetables if you think you’re prone to kidney stones. One school says that cooking helps neutralize oxalic acid but there really is no definite answer to that. Oxalic acid also binds to Iron preventing it from being absorbed but by consuming vitamin C together with chard, you greatly improve Iron absorption. It is especially very important for vegetarians to take vitamin C every time we eat non-heme Iron from vegetables, because we usually get less Iron than meat eaters and we are more prone to anemia.

Ok, that’s enough of the scientific talk. Lets get to the cooking part. The tart I made is with whole wheat flour but if you want to achieve smoother texture, use regular all-purpose or pastry flour. I used whole wheat because I wanted my tart to have more fiber, besides I never had tart on a whole wheat dough and wanted to give it a try.

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A recipe I made today comes from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book and in spite of the fact that I’ve been wanting to make it because it looks delicious I also want to submit it for the contest on Mixing Bowl. If you like my version of a vegetarian quiche you can vote on it here. The contest ends October 9th and you can submit one vote per day. It’s the first time ever that i take part in any contest so I’m pretty excited. Next week I’m planning to submit for the same contest my version of Mango Chutney which also comes from this book.

The recipe was very good but I added some more vegetables to make it more substantial and nutritious. The original recipe called only for 1/2 cup shredded carrots and some green onions. I added 3/4 cup shredded carrots, 3/4 cup peas plus green onions so my version has twice as many veggies. Also next time when I’ll be making it I will add a little bit more flour to the pastry crust. I added 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour as the recipe said but it was barely enough to fill my 9 inch pastry dish so next time I’ll add 1 1/3 or 1 1/2 cup flour and a bit more butter. Also in my version I used reduced fat milk because I’m a bit of a calorie phobic (like milk makes any difference when you used almost whole stick of butter) but if you want to make it creamier you can easily use whole milk or half-and-half.

When making this dish I could not stop wondering what is the difference between quiche and tart. I read Julia Child’s description but somehow they seem the same for me. I’ve made a recipe for mini leek tarts before and seriously I haven’t noticed any difference. I also ate quiche many times in the past and it always looked like a tart so if any of you could explain the difference to me I would gladly appreciate

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