Pary Baban’s published chard-and-eggs recipe brings together caramelised onion, spiced greens and separately poached eggs, served with flatbread. It offers a specific example of Kurdish home cooking carried into a chef’s published work.

Bunches of Swiss chard with broad green leaves and thick red stalks on a grocery display
Red-stemmed Swiss chard, photographed by Jeffery Martin on 19 December 2013. This is an ingredient photograph, showing the leaves and stalks used in chard cooking. Jeffery Martin · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons.

Baban’s published method

Baban’s recipe for four uses 600 g chard and eight eggs. She cooks sliced onion in olive oil and butter over a gentle heat for 20–25 minutes. The chopped chard is boiled separately for four minutes, cooled, drained and squeezed. It then joins the onion with chilli, turmeric and cumin for five minutes of stir-frying. Eggs are poached in a separate pan until the whites set, drained and placed two per portion over the greens. Toasted mixed seeds, garlic granules or garlic oil, and optional dried rose petals finish the dish; warm flatbreads accompany it. [1] The sequence gives the onion time to sweeten and removes excess water before the greens enter the frying pan.

Understanding the chard

Chard is a leafy crop closely related to beetroot. Its varieties can have white, yellow, orange or red stalks, with much of the colour carried in the stems, ribs and veins. The Royal Horticultural Society distinguishes tender young leaves used for salads from larger leaves suitable for cooking. The thicker stalks take longer to become tender than the leaves. Plants can also provide repeated harvests when outer leaves are picked and central growth retained. [2] These characteristics help explain chard’s usefulness as a cooking green and why both parts of a bunch deserve attention.

Recipes collected during displacement

The publisher’s account of Baban’s life describes her flight from Qaladzê and a nine-day journey between villages, where she collected recipes from people she encountered. It says a lost recipe notebook was recovered 27 years later and helped inspire the family’s south London restaurant. [3] This is the documented background to her broader cooking work. The chard recipe gives readers one concrete, attributed preparation within that career: a cook’s choices of method, seasoning and presentation, available in a form others can follow.

From a notebook to Nandên

Nandên: Recipes from my Kurdish Kitchen appeared with Ryland Peters & Small on 10 March 2026. The official publisher record lists 176 pages and ISBN 9781788797467. Its account describes a collection spanning dolma and dumplings, soups and stews, rice and bulgur, pan-fried dishes, breads, pickles and sweets. [3] That range places a plate of greens and eggs within a much larger repertoire, while the published recipe preserves the detail of this particular dish.

Sources and further reading

  1. Pary Baban, Kurdish poached eggs with swiss chard, delicious. magazine: the chef’s recipe, quantities and method.
  2. Royal Horticultural Society Advice Team, How to Grow Chard: varieties, edible leaves and stalks, harvesting and cooking characteristics.
  3. Ryland Peters & Small / Simon & Schuster, Nandên: Recipes from my Kurdish Kitchen, Pary Baban, 10 March 2026: official book and author background.