So, this week in cooking-away-my-CSA news, I’m excited to share one of my favorite new recipes for spring greens. It’s a new use (for me anyway) for Swiss chard.

All winter, I’d been trying to get myself to like wraps made of collard greens. Basically, you put together a wrap and instead of encasing it in a tortilla, you encase it in a collard green leaf. It seemed like a good way to get in some extra greens aside from my beloved kale salads (One of which, I’ll probably share next week, FYI).

But, honestly, I wasn’t that much of a fan. The collard greens always seemed so tough and it always seemed like a chore to eat anything more than the insides of my wraps. Yes, even I, Miss Veggie Queen, could not handle the greeness of the collard wrap.

However, I liked the idea.

So, when I got some Swiss chard in last week’s CSA bag from Rolling Prairie — along with more paté, eggs, green onions, spinach and pea greens — I immediately thought I’d try out the chard as a wrapper. I really wasn’t sure if it would work. Last year, I stir-fried all the chard I could from my CSA and my garden or used it in smoothies. So, basically, I wasn’t really sure how “strong” the leaves were on their own.

But you know what? They worked perfectly. In fact, I ate the whole bunch on back-to-back nights by making little chard roll ups. Yep, they were GOOOOD.

First, I picked out a couple of large-ish Swiss chard leaves.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213610/

Next, I cut out the hard stems to make leaves that look like tuxedo tails.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213611/

Next, I picked from my fillings, in this case, homemade hummus (the recipe of which I plan to share once zucchini is in season), red pepper and cucumber.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213612/

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213613/

Then, I folded it end-to-end and rolled it up like a burrito, using the “tails” as an insulation of sorts to keep the hummus from oozing out (but it did anyway).

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213614/

Because my hummus recipe makes A TON, I served my rolls with some more cut up cucumber and red pepper (I used one each for the whole meal).

http://www.lawrence.com/users/shenning/photos/2011/may/10/213615/

And ta-da! A yummy, healthy dinner that is very easy to customize. You could fill it with cheese or beans or chicken or what have you, though remember the leaves are thin and they can’t support a ton of weight.

Now, if you aren’t happy with your wrapping job or your chard leaves are kind of small, you can always serve them as “boats” filled with toppings rather than rolls. Heck, most of the time my “rolls” are more form than function because I’m still working on technique. Good thing we should have lots of chard coming in the near future!

In my CSA this week: Rhubarb(!), spinach, salad mix, kale, onions and homemade pesto.