The recipe is more attractive made with red chard than with white.
(An excellent version made with Swiss chard can be had at Al Di La in Brooklyn, where it has been a blockbuster dish for nearly a decade).
As I said, this was to be made with Swiss chard stems, but it would have been excellent with, say, fennel or leeks (or, of course, potatoes).
Now it is found in lots of cookbooks and made with cultivated garden chard or spinach.
Pilafs, omelettes, gratins, salads, fritters and pies were made with green vegetables such as chard, spinach, broad beans, green peas, green beans, courgettes and okra.
If you don't happen to have a convenient stash of beetroot leaves to hand, then you could also make this with chard or cavolo nero – just cook until tender.
You can buy torta con becchi (bird's beaks, because of the peaked shape of the crusts), in many bakeries; these can be made with almost anything, though they're usually seen with either chard or chocolate (sometimes both).
But Jackie and I were looking forward to a gratin made with the fleshy stems of a big bunch of Swiss chard whose leaves had gone into a stir-fry a couple of days earlier.
Similarly, there's nothing much new about a tart with potatoes and chard, but Bastianich wraps hers in a crostata dough made with flour, olive oil and water — no leavening, no butter.
