Vegetables – What would give Swiss Chard a gritty texture

Blanching briefly does an excellent job of neutralizing bitterness, or more precisely, astringency, even if the blanched spinach is recooked.

Basically, boil water, add washed spinach until submerged (5-30 seconds depending on preference; chard could go up to a minute or so depending on the target texture desired). Drain quickly. Submerge drained spinach in a bowl of ice and water to rapidly chill. Press spinach to remove excess water.

Recooking, even in applications like quiche, will do a very nice job of retaining the bright green color and generally astringency, if present at all, is minimal. If I am not recooking in some way, I often just dress simply in something like fresh ginger and soy sauce or a ground sesame, mirin and salt based sauce without reheating.

Variants of tofu skins are great for meat-like textures. If you look up chinese buddist cooking or monastery cuisine, you will find many imitated meat and poultry dishes that are often called "vegan duck roast", "vegan abalone" etc (probably by non-practising consumers). One of the best for this is dried tofu skin sticks (not promoting the seller, just a random search result for a picture). Fried tofu skins pockets and pressed tofu also work pretty well. You will need to cut them into tiny shreds or chop them up coarsely to get the effect. These ingredients have plenty of surface area and are great at taking up seasoning and sauces to mimic meat juices.