Silverbeet: a Superfood (and Some Other Stuff)

Can I share my new obsession? (Not forgetting my other new obsessions — knitting, following hashtag #masterchef as the show screens, pears, Phillippa's spiced nut mix, shelter magazine porn, Single Origin's Mexican blend...) It's called Hipstamatic and it's the first app I downloaded when, as a very late adopter, I got an iPhone a month or so back. (How did I live without it?) As if there weren't enough grainy, crapola pics clogging up cyberspace, I'm throwing a few more in. "Digital photography never looked so analog," boasts Hipstamatic, which has given anyone with an iPhone the capacity to shoot pics that look like they've been dug out of a shoebox from the back of your mother's closet. Indulge me:

Haymarket, Friday, 6 o'clock, winter, rubbish weather, soup for supper.

Niece, a child who knows how to work a camera.

Sunshine Beach; Japanese surfer girls.

Staying at Mum's place.

'A Plate of British Charcuterie' at Arras. Bloody brilliant meal.

Buddha head with candles, pretentious still-life, circa 2010.

Surry Hills lane. Yet another rainy night. Sun's out now but won't last.

Silverbeet segueway.

The gardening gene might not be in me: Exhibit A: years ago, my mother read about the health-giving properties of pawpaw and, ever since, a creature of habit, she's eaten a bowl of the stuff every morning. Imagine her surprise and delight when she discovered that Carica papaya will self-sow in her Sunshine Coast sand-soil. Imagine her delight when her tree grew tall and strong and developed fruit. Fifty or 60 sturdy little pawpaws. Breakfast for a year. Imagine her pangs when my father said "I won’t be here when your pawpaws ripen". Imagine her mixed feelings when she plucked the first pawpaw from her tree and ate it for breakfast, alone. Imagine her horror the day, not so long ago, when she goes into her garden to discover that her precious tree has toppled in the night under the weight of all those pawpaws. As if things aren't tough enough for her already. Exhibit B: My rosemary. Can't remember how many pots of the stuff I've bought and how many have died. The last one seemed to develop some sort of white mouldy problem. The one on my balcony now is drying out — yes, I do water it — its leaves steadily falling. Exhibit C: My dwarf lemon tree. Every year it develops a profusion of heavenly blossoms which turn into tiny fruit. Then all those tiny fruit buds drop off. Exhibit D: My basil. Withers and dies, withers and dies. Exhibit E: The caterpillars. They suck the life out of anything that hasn't already died

I consider ringing ABC 702's Saturday morning gardening program. I consider giving it all up and using the balcony as a storage space instead. I consider becoming buddies with broadcaster Indira Naidoo, who evidently does have the gardening gene: her productive-garden-with-a-harbour-view is something to behold. (See her blog, Saucy Onion, if you don't believe me.) I consider talking to Meredith Kirton, one of four women behind the beautifully photographed grow*harvest*cook.
But I'm forgetting my silverbeet.
A friend who turned the backyard of her rented Annandale house into an edible wonderland persuaded me of the merits of silverbeet in an email last year: “If you grow only one vegetable in your garden, make it silverbeet. It's the vegetable equivalent of an old friend: it's generous, easy-going and prolific, and the more time you spend with it, the better you feel.”
And, she’s right. Sometime after that email came late last year I hastily planted some silverbeet seeds. They're still going. I was away for two months over Christmas. Came back, the silverbeet was still alive. Caterpillars ate into it. It survived. I cut all the leaves back, use them in a stir-fry or a soup or a Japanese rice dish, they regrow. It just keeps coming back for more pain. Sharing a recipe for chickpeas and silverbeet, my friend wrote: “This recipe happens to contain a whole lot of superfoods. It's low in fat and very high in nutrition, but that's not why I like it. I like it a lot for its texture: the brown rice and the chickpeas become quite starchy, almost creamy, when they're cooked together, so they're deeply satisfying. Just quietly, I use Vegeta vegetable stock powder in place of the salt. It's cheating, I know, but oh how delicious it is. The almonds give a lovely crunch and the taste of toasted goodness, and the yoghurt transforms the whole thing from hippy slops into really quite photogenic, on a good day.”
I’ve been cooking a bit of Japanese at home — simple, ad-libbed stuff … perhaps genmai rice with teriyaki-sauced chicken, or soba noodles in broth with an egg. I’ve found that a snipping a few stalks of silverbeet off just before serving and throwing them into the rice pot or soba broth at the last minute results in lovely wilted greens. Other silverbeet recipes I’m keen to try include Tea’s Chard Tzatziki (her soba recipe is one I’ve used a bit for my version); Gourmet Traveller’s Baked Eggs with Chickpeas and Spinach; Stephanie Alexander’s Silverbeet and Potato Torte; and Gabriel Gate’s Silverbeet Gratin.
And perhaps this weekend I’ll even give my silverbeet a bit of water…


Kerryn's Chickpeas with Silverbeet

Serves 4

1 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight in cold water, then cooked until tender in salted water
1 cup brown rice
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bunch silverbeet (about large 12 leaves), stalks removed, coarsely chopped
Juice and finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1/4 cup natural almonds, toasted in the microwave on high for 2 minutes, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup parsley, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup natural yoghurt

Combine chickpeas, rice and salt in a saucepan and add enough cold water to cover by about 3cm. Bring to the boil over high heat, then cover, reduce heat as low as possible, and cook until rice is tender (about 1 hour). Meanwhile, combine olive oil and garlic in a frying pan over medium heat and saute for 1 minute. Add silverbeet and saute until tender (1-2 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in lemon rind and juice, almonds and parsley. Serve rice and chickpeas topped with silverbeet and a large dollop of yoghurt.