Recipe: Greek rice with Swiss chard and dill

[sonia]

I ran across this Greek rice recipe by Mina Stone when I happened to have long grain brown basmati rice and rainbow chard on hand, so I gave it a try and it turned out great. Of course I made other substitutions, see below.

Ingredients
6 cups (175 g) Swiss chard leaves, roughly chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 bunch fresh dill, roughly chopped (or dried dill, estimated 2 tsp)
1 cup (200 g) long grain rice, rinsed
1 lemon (or lemon-dill vinegar, which is what I had)


Time
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes according to original recipe, 1 hour if using brown rice.

Tools
Large pot for chard. Large saucepan or rice cooker for rice.

Methods
1. Put 1 cup long grain rice in rice cooker and add amount of water as directed for your rice cooker and kind of rice. Add half of fresh dill, or add dried dill with a free hand (1 tsp?). Add 1/2 tsp salt. Add 1 Tbsp of olive oil. Start cooker.

2. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the chard leaves and cook until bright, 2 minutes. Drain and set aside.

3. When rice cooker is done, stir in cooked chard, add rest of fresh dill or more dried dill (another 1 tsp?), and lemon juice or lemon-dill vinegar (estimated 1 Tbsp). Let it sit for 10 minutes and steam together.

Serving
Tasty enough to eat on its own, or use as a side dish.

Storage
Airtight container in the fridge. Should keep well.

Notes
Differences from the original recipe: It expects the rice to cook in 8-9 minutes in a saucepan. If you have quick-cooking rice, you could give that a try. It also says to pour in 3/4 cup of olive oil at the end. I'm pretty sure I didn't do this, since it was tasty enough already. It also has scallions, which I skipped entirely.

Comments

[loligo]

I make a very similar recipe that adds onion, garlic, cumin, and a can of chickpeas. It's one of my favorites!

[sonia]

Sounds good! Do you add the chickpeas at the end?