nothavanas | Chard and Pasta and Tomatoes

This was from Alton Brown.
While the water boiled, I chopped the chard, separating the stems and leaves, onions, and garlic. The chard leaves blanched for 3 minutes, then I fished it out and put the pasta (stripy bowties!) in the same pot. I cooled and chopped the chard, then sautéd the aromatics (including the chard stems, which were yellow) in some olive oil. I added a paste of equal parts butter and flour, cooking that for about 5 minutes, and then added lots of canned diced tomatoes. The next step was to add chicken broth, which I substituted with my homemade vegetable stock. I will be sad when I use all of that up. Then I added the chard and the pasta and tossed it to warm everything up, and finished with probably more Parmesan than it called for, a little rosemary, and some salt and pepper.

This is fantastic. The sauce has some of the same tomato-garlic flavor that makes our pasta sauce so amazing, but it's tempered by the roux and the stock, so it is a little creamy and the bitter chard really shines.
I did a lot of the prep in advance, as the water heated and as the chard and pasta cooked, so the actual cooking part went very smoothly.