Category: Kale

I am a bean evangelist (delicious, inexpensive, shelf stable, etc.) I love adding whatever cooked beans I have in the fridge to salads made with whatever I have on hand. It’s an excellent template. This is a favorite lunch or quick addition to dinner. Quantities and ratios are up to you.  ... Read more »

Give chard leaves a quick blanch and make a savory treat you’ll want to spread on/dress everything or just eat by the spoonful. You can mix chard and kale leaves here as well.   It’s a very adaptable recipe. It's wonderful, loosened a bit with warm water, tossed with boiled or roasted potatoes and/or carrots. I also use the pesto, stirred in to scrambled eggs or a savory bread pudding, as a sandwich spread, on quesadillas, as a dressing for pasta or roasted vegetables (be sure to loosen it with a little hot pasta cooking water before tossing it with pasta). You can mix it with fresh goat cheese for a lovely little crostini.   Like many of my recipes, the quantity of ingredients can be adapted to your taste and what you have on hand. This pesto keeps well in the fridge for 4-5 days so feel free to make a bigger batch if you have everything on hand.... Read more »

  Serve this hearty gratin as a main dish with a big salad. This a good dish to use up leftover rice. I always cook more than I need for one dish and then freeze the rest for dishes like this. You can also use less rice and more vegetables,  more leeks, less cabbage. Make it work for what you have/like. ... Read more »

As is often the case, this is more simple technique than real recipe. It easily scales up and down and you can change the ratio of kale to cabbage so use however much you want. The below quantities are just suggestions. ... Read more »

--adapted very slightly from Tender by Nigel Slater   Savoy cabbage is very good in this traditional Portuguese soup but regular green cabbage or any kind of kale works just as well as does a combination of kale and cabbage. One fresh chorizo sausage (about 4 ounces) is enough to flavor this soup but if you have meat lovers at the table feel free to use two. You can substitute plain/Italian pork sausages if you don't have chorizo. If you’d like to make this without meat add 1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika (Pimenton) and another clove or two of garlic at the beginning. This soup is even better the next day even though it’s not going to win any beauty contests.   Serves 4... Read more »

Common varieties of kale are Lacinato (Dinosaur/Cavolo Nero/Tuscan), Red Russian and the curly Redbor kale. They are certainly interchangeable--all working well in braises, soups, stews, stir fries, in pestos or raw, in salads or as chips. I do particularly like Lacinato kale for salads and in the beloved Tuscan bean and vegetable soup ribollita. Kale has rich culinary traditions all over Europe and Russia and South America. The famous Portuguese soup caldo verde is a favorite.   I almost always use the stems. Many recipes advise cutting them out but they tend to be quite tender and delicious and chopped finely are easily integrated into most any dish. Kale keeps for about a week in the fridge in a plastic bag. If it dries out you can revive it by soaking in cold water. When the leaves start yellowing it's beginning to turn. Remove any of those leaves and use the rest post haste.   Kale is often touted for its nutritional benefits and it certainly has many, containing lots of calcium, betacarotene, vitamin K and C, and the anti-cancer chemical sulforaphane.... Read more »