Kale Chronicles

We grew kale this summer, so it has been our default vegetable for the past month.

Kale is extraordinarily easy to prepare. Here's a 20-second video (my first cooking show) showing how to quickly remove the stem and break up the leaf, all without the use of tools.

This is one of my favorite kale dishes: sauteed kale, with roasted squash. The kale is riched up with bacon, walnuts, garlic, shoyu, and olive oil.

The challenge is to keep kale interesting. How about kale braised with (pink) turnips, apple, and a ham hock?

Or curried, with garbanzo beans, red pepper, tomatoes, and onions in coconut milk, finished with cilantro?

I tend to improvise my curries. Fresh turmeric and fresh ginger (both from the freezer), and garlic are mandatory; the rest are a bit of this and a bit of that. I try to go for depth of flavor, rather than heat, so in the following photo you're seeing paprika, rather than cayenne or chili.

Then there's good old comfort food, in this case a cheese bake:

I substituted kale for cauliflower in this cauliflower cheese recipe.

I predict kale dinners are very much in our future: yesterday I harvested, blanched, and froze all our kale. 

[Braised Greens with Turnips and Apples Recipe]

[Cauliflower Cheese (substitute Kale) Recipe]

[Disclaimer: I have a huge respect for food photographers and food stylists; I ain't either.]