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Organic A-Z: Kale
I love a challenge! And Kale gives me one 'coz there are a lot of fools out there who say they hate kale. I blame execution and bad childhood memories. I am here to tell you this is one delicious leafy green! It's also crazy good for you. In fact some nutritionists say it is THE HEALTHIEST VEGETABLE OUT THERE! Protein, fiber, calcium, iron, copper, vitamin A, B, C, K, antioxidants...the list goes on an on. And did I mention it tastes good too? Oh yeah!
I recently checked out the Environmental Working Group's list of MUST EAT ORGANICS (the list changes every-so-often so you gotta keep on it) and was surprised to see KALE on there. So yo, gotta go ORGANIC! Don't even touch the non-OG stuff.
No matter what type of kale you buy you are in for a treat. I love all of them but tend to favor the Lacinato for it's sweetness and minearlity and the Red Russian varieties with it's scraggly leafy fingers. They're all good. I save the tough stems and use them for making stocks. Speaking of soups, there's a classic Portuguese dish worth investigating called caldo verde--a kale, potato and chorizo sausage soup that rocks.
I didn't grow up eating kale and I'm not sure why. Too bad my parents never served it at home. It wasn't until my friends in Japan cooked it up that I fell in love with it and started to feast on it regularly. With great fondness and pride, I share the recipe for Molly and Nabe's Super Kale with you.
Molly and Nabe are very cool, very bohemian, very hard working organic rice farmers on the remote island of Sado in Japan. They grow THE MOST AMAZING RICE IN THE WORLD, it tastes like gold! My wife and I took a trip to Sado when they got married back in 2001. Off the coast of Niigata, full of farms, bamboo groves and eccentric people, Sado is an amazing, lovely and intriguing place!
On our last night there we cooked up a crazy feast--grilled sardines, a salad made with greens and veggies grown in their garden, their incredible brown rice and the SUPER KALE DISH with locally made tofu. I was blown away when Nabe taught me the dish. I thought he was nuts for adding red wine to all these other traditional Japanese ingredients and flavors, but it works so well. Something crazy good is going on when the tannins from the red vino hit the wheat from the Japanese soy sauce...it's deep and earthy, bold and killer and bounces off the garlic, ginger and kale. Amazing.
Since mastering this dish, I've learned to prep kale in many other ways. I'm now a huge fan. My kale smoothies are an unexpected twist you must try! At a farmer's market in Berkley I ate a vegan burrito that used a giant leaf of green kale as its tortilla--awesome! My sister-in-law, Karen, throws chopped kale into a gratin dish, seasons it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasts it in a hot oven till tender and fantastic. I love to reduce a big batch of leaves in wine or stock and serve them on soft polenta or thrown into a pot with Israeli couscous or larger shaped pasta. No matter how you do it, this is a very tasty, very healthy, killer green.