SK had a post recently about a new way she discovered to prepare kale: drizzled with olive oil and salt and baked. I admit, this makes some freaking delicious kale chips. If you've never had kale, or haven't liked it in the past, try it that way.
However, kale is equally as delicious (and undoubtedly better for you) when consumed raw and in salad form. I'm not saying this is the healthiest salad you'll ever eat, but it is damn good. And there are lots of nutrients! Win/win people. I'm also going to apologize for the lack of pictures. I am just so happy to make and eat this salad, I forget to take pictures, and then I remember while I'm spooning the last bits into my mouth for lunch at work, and think to myself: "Oh well, guess I'll have to make it again next week." You see the problem.
Key facts about preparing kale for salads:
1) After rinsing, strip the leafy part from the stalk and discard the stalk. You can either do this with a knife, or just rip it off with your fingers.
2) Marinating is key.I like to think of this as the vegetarian version of marinating salmon in such a way that cooks it (only without that pesky risk of food poisoning!) It doesn't take long though, so don't worry if you're hungry when preparing your kale salad. You can eat it as soon as you're ready.
3) Even if you neglect your kale for a while and it gets a little wilty, it'll still be awesome in salad form.
4) There are a ton of varieties of kale. I've been favoring the curly kale with purple stalk variety, but I think this would work with any type.
What follows are three different recipes that incorporate kale.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Let's Talk about Kale
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Pasta Salad w Chicken/Spinach/Peppers
As i said below (if you read bottom up), i made two things tonight, here's the second. much more chopping involved. nothing like a pasta salad for a potluck.
The recipe is from about.com, it came out pretty decent i think. I followed it fairly loosely, don't think it really matters in pasta salad and i definitely went a little lighter on the Mayo.
* 8 ounces fusilli or rotini pasta
* 1 cup coarsely chopped spinach
* 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
* 1/4 cup diced onion
* 1 medium clove garlic, finely minced
* 2 to 3 cups coarsely chopped chicken (i boiled it)
* 1 to 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
* 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon Dijon or a favorite gourmet mustard
* 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon dried leaf basil
* salt, to taste
Cook pasta following package directions; drain and rinse well.
Toss cooled pasta with the spinach, red bell pepper, onion, garlic, and chicken.
Combine 1 cup of the mayonnaise with wine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, and basil. Toss with the pasta mixture. Add more mayonnaise, if needed. Taste and add salt, if desired. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving time for best flavor.
and since i'm proud of all my chopping, here it is:
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Sometimes, Turning on the Oven Is Too Much to Ask
In addition to my work potluck, I went to another, much stranger potluck more recently. But I'd been doing a lot of cooking for DB, so I the thought of making something complicated was more than I could handle. Instead, I made this salad, which I believe HEB inspired from her favorite at Cosi. It's not hard, it's not complicated, but it took nice pictures and tasted good...
For the dressing:
- one part balsamic vinegar
- one part olive oil
(I start with 1/4 cup each of oil and vinegar and then decide if I have enough dressing for the amount of salad I have.)
- 1 teaspoon of mustard
- 1 teaspoon garlic
- pinch of salt
Someone once told me that if you slowly drizzle the oil into the vinegar as you're wisking it will separate less, so I do that. Not sure if it actually works.
For the salad
- Mixed greens
- Colored Peppers
- Carrots
- Cashews and pistachio nuts
- Grapes
- Craisins
- Blue Cheese
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
test run
After having the best salad of the summer at a friend's house, I couldn't wait to recreate it. 
Here's her recipe:
eggplant: cubed, tossed with garlic, olive oil and salt and roasted at 425 degrees
cucumbers: peeled, de-seeded, sliced
tomatoes: from the farmer's market, chopped
red onion: thinly sliced
fresh field greens
feta
tossed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil
Here were my mods:
Used a fig/walnut balsamic salad dressing because I discovered that I had no balsamic vinegar.
Used a crumbled goat cheese rather than feta because I like goat cheese better and they were sampling a particularly tasty one at the grocery store.
Didn't peel or de-seed the cukes because I'm lazy.
Here's the verdict:
Dressing: I'd use balsamic in the future. The fig/walnut flavor was unnecessary and got lost.
Goat cheese: fantastic.
Cucumbers: being lazy is okay.
Proportions: I definitely didn't master the proportions, and I also ended up making about three times as much salad as I could eat. Next time, I will add more greens and fewer tomatoes/cucumbers. Also, probably less cheese.
Overall: still delicious. The eggplant really makes this special, well worth the roasting time. (However, I think that my roommate might not think that it's well worth heating up our too-hot apartment...)
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Asparagus Salad
I love asparagus, and they are in season now. But, I never know quite what to do with them. Turns out, you can do just about anything with them, which includes putting them in a salad. The recipe below is super easy, and not all that original. However, it is post worthy because it taught me a new technique - to boil my vinegar before adding it to salad dressing. The result, according to the original recipe, is that the dressing is less bitter. The result is also that you need less oil AND it doesn't separate as easily. Magic.
Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- 2 pounds asparagus, tough ends trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 1/3 cup chopped almonds, toasted (recipe originally called for pecans, but I don't like pecans so much).
- Feta cheese to taste
Preparation
1. Boil vinegar in heavy small saucepan over medium heat until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Pour vinegar into large bowl.
2. Whisk in oil, mustard, and garlic. Season dressing to taste with salt and pepper.
3. Cook asparagus in large pot of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, (original recipe said 4 minutes. I think 2 is more like it).
4. Drain asparagus and rinse with cold water. Pat asparagus dry.
5. Toss asparagus, carrots, and pepper with dressing.
6. Sprinkle with nuts and cheese and enjoy.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
wheatberry salad
After visiting the Washington Hotel Coffee Room over the holidays (better known, perhaps, to some of you as the coffee shop attached to the amazing yarn store in Madison), I've been itching to try to recreate their wheatberry salad. Luckily, my mother gifted me a bag of wheatberries, as they are relatively hard to track down. Also luckily, I found this recipe online. 
It's a fairly flexible recipe, so I modified it to get closer to the salad I remembered. Here's how: 1 cup of each carrots and celery, diced; used chickpeas; omitted parsley, onions and fennel; topped with feta cheese. Super easy!
And, oh man, is it tasty! It is also incredibly hearty. Even though I was eating dinner after 9 pm having daydreamed about this salad most of the day, I still only made it through about half of what I'd served myself. All in all, this recipe is definitely a winner. (Although the next time I make it, I will use about half as much olive oil, since there was a lot left in the bottom of the bowl after I'd dished out lunches for the week.)