Bladbete around the world

Tourte de blettes

A Niçois specialty that comes in two versions, a savoury one with cheese and a sweet one with raisins, pine nuts, apple and cinnamon. The sweet version is the stranger of the two: silverbeet baked into a sweet pie dusted with icing sugar, a combination that sounds wrong until you have tasted it.

The sweet version is traditionally served around Christmas in Nice and is counted in some places among the thirteen desserts (les treize desserts) of Provençal Christmas Eve. The recipe has been written down since the 1500s.

Torta pasqualina and erbazzone

Two pie traditions. Torta pasqualina from Liguria is an Easter feast of thin pastry layers, ricotta, silverbeet and whole eggs hidden under the top sheet, so each slice reveals a yolk. Erbazzone from Reggio Emilia is plainer: silverbeet, parmesan and a little lardo inside a flat pastry shell.

Pasqualina appears in Ligurian cookbooks from the 1400s and was originally a monastic and peasant fasting dish. Italian emigrants carried it across the Atlantic, and it is now an obligatory Easter dish across the Río de la Plata region.

Acelgas con garbanzos

Silverbeet and chickpeas simmered together with cumin, garlic and olive oil. A simple, filling fasting dish common across Spain, especially in Andalusia and Castile, often finished with smoked paprika.

The dish has roots in Sephardic and Arab Andalusia and shows up as a standard fasting recipe in Spanish cookbooks from the 1500s. Today it is a tapas regular as «acelgas rehogadas», or a side for fish and lamb.

Hortopita

A phyllo pie of mixed greens, in which silverbeet is one of the most common headline ingredients alongside spinach, dill and fennel fronds. No tomato, no cheese in the classical Cretan version, only green leaves, oil and herbs.

The hortopita tradition comes from the Greek concept of hortophagia, eating what grows wild, and silverbeet is often grown as a garden version of the wild leaf flora. The pie shape is the same as spanakopita, but the contents change with the season.

Pazı dolması and pazı kavurma

Pazı dolması is silverbeet leaves rolled around a filling of rice, minced meat, herbs and pine nuts, simmered in tomato and lemon broth. Pazı kavurma is a quicker variant: the stems and leaves sautéed with onion, garlic and butter.

Silverbeet has been in Turkish and Levantine kitchens since Ottoman times, and the dolma form is the same base recipe used for vine leaves, cabbage leaves, and silverbeet, depending on the season. Silverbeet gives a milder, less acidic version than vine leaves.

Warak silq and silq bil-ads

Warak silq is silverbeet rolls filled with rice, minced meat and pomegranate molasses, packed tight in a pot and simmered with lemon. Silq bil-ads is a one-pot peasant dish: silverbeet with brown lentils, garlic and coriander, often dusted with sumac at the end.

Silq is the Aramaic and Arabic word for silverbeet, the same root that turns up in Sephardic Jewish tradition (see the symbols section below). In Lebanese home cooking, silq bil-ads is a classic fasting dish during Orthodox Lent, when animal fat is avoided.

Capuns and Mangoldwähe

Capuns from the canton of Graubünden are small spätzli dough balls wrapped in a silverbeet leaf together with cured Bündnerfleisch, then simmered in cream and broth. Mangoldwähe is the Swiss silverbeet quiche, baked on a thin, salty crust.

Capuns is one of the few dishes equally well known across all of Graubünden regardless of language (German, Italian, Romansh), and every valley has its own version. The silverbeet must be large enough to wrap around the dough, one reason Bündner farmers let their plants grow solid before harvesting.

Tarta de acelga and empanadas de acelga

Tarta de acelga is a mild, creamy pie of silverbeet, garlic, egg and a little nutmeg, baked in a ready-made pie shell. Empanadas de acelga are the pocket-shaped version: small half-moons of silverbeet, onion and sometimes ricotta.

Italian emigrants in the late 1800s brought the pasqualina tradition, and acelga became one of the cheapest and most reliable vegetables in Argentinian kitchen gardens. Today tarta de acelga sits on weeknight dinner tables across the Río de la Plata.

Silverbeet and feta pie

A phyllo pie of silverbeet, feta and sometimes ricotta, seasoned with dill and lemon zest. A direct inheritance from Greek migrants who arrived in Melbourne and Sydney in the 20th century and found silverbeet thriving in a Mediterranean-like climate.

Silverbeet is the most common English-language name in Australia and New Zealand, and the plant is treated there as an everyday vegetable on par with spinach. In Pacific Island cooking the leaves are also used palusami-style, wrapped around onion, coconut milk and meat and baked in an earth oven.

Chard and the home-growing renaissance

British silverbeet culture is primarily a garden culture rather than a cookbook culture. It shows up in allotments and in newer recipes like chard-and-cheddar tart, browned chard with raisins and pine nuts, or simply as a side with butter and lemon.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the River Cottage movement brought chard into mainstream British cooking in the early 2000s, and bright rainbow varieties are now a standard sight at British farmers' markets.

The garden vegetable still waiting for its dish

In Norway silverbeet is best known as a reliable, easy-to-grow vegetable for home gardeners who want something a little more interesting than spinach. It shows up at some farmers' markets and in organic vegetable subscriptions, but it does not yet have a signature dish that «everyone» can make.

The New Nordic kitchen, in particular Maaemo in Oslo and Noma in Copenhagen, has used mangold as a seasonal element, but mainstream Norwegian food culture is still getting used to it. It is a vegetable waiting for its signature dish.