What the Kale?

Sorry, I do not get kale.

Have had it at least palatable in the odd salad, but categorize it like I do zucchini - anything that tastes good with it will taste just as good or better if it weren't in the recipe. I now make an exception for the raw zucchini run through a mandoline and dressed with hot pepper flakes, melted butter and anchovy - in that instance is still adds zero flavour, but it does supply needed texture.

My other half for reasons best known to herself, came home with a packet of kale snack - dried kale with some salt and sesame stuck to it - and asked me to try some, on the theory that 1 - kale is good for you, and 2 - there aren't any number of other things that are just as good for you that taste better.

Always trying to please her, I agreed to try a small piece. It both smelled and tasted (at least I imagine so) like the grass clippings I occasionally forget to clean out of the lawnmower, on a hot day.

Clearly I just do not get the attraction - kale continues to leave me cold.

Anyone experienced it as a food to be desired and sought out rather than simply endured?

[Robin Garr]

I'm with you on this, Bill. Mary grew up with kale and collards, but I did not, and I've never developed a taste. We have it sometimes for her benefit, and I find I'm happiest when it's well "hidden" - chopped finely in an Indian saag or similar dish, or processed with equal amounts of spinach or basil to make a pesto. But nah, I don't like it much. "Grass clippings" is a fair description for me, although it has a kalish stench all its own ...

Anyone experienced it as a food to be desired and sought out rather than simply endured?

Me! I used to be not very enthusiastic about it until I tried this recipe for sautéed kale: http://forums.wineloverspage.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=51723&p=423182&hilit=sauteed+kale#p423182. The fried onions, red pepper flakes and red wine vinegar really make it. It's a great alternative for sautéed buttered spinach.

Most of the kale we eat is the "dinosaur kale" or cavallo nero, if that counts. I really like it in various guises, particularly in caldo verde. Can't say I've had that much experience with other types of kale.

For a while, my wife was making kale chips (which sound like what your wife picked up, Bill), and I liked them a lot. They didn't taste at all like lawn clippings to me, but I don't know which type of kale she used for them.

Yeah, I taste kale and collards and all those other dark greens once every five or ten years. Then I go happily back to eating spinach. ::popeye::

I've always loved Jim Gaffigan's take on kale, which is that it proves that Whole Foods is just screwing with us now.

"What else can we sell these fools?

How about kale. It's sort of bitter spinach with hair on it.

Sounds great. Charge them $20. They'll think it's good for them."

Love it!

[Jenise]

Robin, can I opine that the "I didn't grow up with it" excuse is just that? That is, the fact that you were denied something as a child is just as valid a reason to love it to death now that you've discovered it. I didn't grow up with either, and I adore them both. But I have since very early childhood had an affinity for all green foods--green bell peppers were a favorite snack--which more basically probably indicates that I was born with an affinity for chlorophyll in general. I wouldn't be surprised to know that something in female DNA leans this way.

I don't know what the rest of your habits are, but I eat some kind of green fiber every day of my life. My refrigerator is 48" wide and there's a drawer that spans it's width that's always full of green food. Cucumbers, celery, zucchini, broccolini, various lettuces and braising greens--always there, always not only desired but necessary. And Bill, I've spent enough time at your house to know your refrigerator's vegetable drawer is full of cheese. Whatever the taste for green food I have (and Sue seems to have somewhat, though she's less familiar with the variety I know) is, you clearly don't share it. But tasteless, it's not.

One of the best things that can happen to kale is to get cold-cooked with lemon juice and olive oil and combined with cold wild rice for a great salad. Pieces of boiled potato or leftover roast chicken are great additions. I'm also crazy about it tossed with olive oil and baked with squares of butternut squash or pumpkin. When the kale turns crisp, the dish is done.

Anyone remember an old episode of Cheers, in which Woody is in a commercial for a health drink with a hefty dose of kale? Everyone who tastes it immediately grimaces and says something like, "Wow, you can really taste the kale".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfv_E5KKrY

I've never understood the hate. Mustard greens (bitter and pungent) and collard greens (tough) seem to be much more of acquired tastes. But kale is straightforward greenness that takes very well to salt and acid. Plus there are many different varieties that have many different textures. I love the silkiness of spinach but it doesn't stand up for all preparations.

However I fully agree about zucchini. So bland that it rarely excites.

[Jenise]

I've never understood the hate. Mustard greens (bitter and pungent) and collard greens (tough) seem to be much more of acquired tastes. But kale is straightforward greenness that takes very well to salt and acid. Plus there are many different varieties that have many different textures. I love the silkiness of spinach but it doesn't stand up for all preparations.

However I fully agree about zucchini. So bland that it rarely excites.

But it's a good blank canvas. Dip slices in flour, then scrambled raw eggs, drop into a skillet and fry lightly on each side. Sprinkle with salt--divine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfv_E5KKrY

That's the one.Pretty funny clip!

I've never understood the hate. Mustard greens (bitter and pungent) and collard greens (tough) seem to be much more of acquired tastes. But kale is straightforward greenness that takes very well to salt and acid. Plus there are many different varieties that have many different textures. I love the silkiness of spinach but it doesn't stand up for all preparations.

However I fully agree about zucchini. So bland that it rarely excites.

But it's a good blank canvas. Dip slices in flour, then scrambled raw eggs, drop into a skillet and fry lightly on each side. Sprinkle with salt--divine!

I don't know about divine, but I agree it has a role to play. It also doesn't hurt that zucchini is cheap and easy/quick to cut/cook. Roasted and placed on pizza is another prep that gets my attention.

Favourite zucchini recipe:

Run a whole zuke with the ends cut off through a mandoline set with medium fine teeth - you get strips about the size of spaghetti.

Dress them with melted butter in which a few anchovies and maybe a small amount of finely chopped garlic has been added

Eat!

The zucchini adds nothing but texture but does a very good job of doing that.

Gosh, I don't understand the lack of love for zucchini. It's a worthwhile vegetable! You just have to decide whether you can work with all that water or you have to get rid of it first. Most recently, I have used zucchini strips -- as described just above -- to weigh down the middle of a slab of puff pastry in order to make a vegetable tarte.

I was just reading the latest IWFS magazine and it had an article on seaweed, stating that it was the new superfood, replacing kale.

I always have packets of Japanese seaweed in the cupboard, lightly cooked in sesame oil and lightly coated in sea salt - use them as junk food. Anyone else partake in those? Sometimes use ot to make miso soup.

Apparently with the health fans having acquired 'salt-ophobia', the iodized salt no longer is as effective in preventing thyroid problems in Western society - a problem which is almost non-existent in Japan due to the high intake of seaweed (they don't bother iodizing their salt).

Kale, with its frilly leaves and rich colors, is a gorgeous plant. Although officially a “dark leafy green,” it also comes in vibrant purples and dramatic winter whites. And kale's beauty runs deep: It is packed with powerful phytonutrients, minerals and fiber. Kale's complex flavor wins it fans at breakfast, lunch and dinner.Thriving even in frost, kale is an easy-to-grow green that keeps on giving: cut the smaller, paler green leaves to anchor or mix into fresh garden salad; use the larger, dark greens for stir-fries, pizza topping, or soup, while the plant keeps right on growing. One variety is known as dinosaur kale in Tuscan

Welcome, Jenelia

You make a good point, that 'kale' covers many different varieties.

I grew kale a few years ago, netting it against the butterdlies who wanted to lay eggs on them, chasing off pigeons who pecked them , and brushing off butterfly eggs laid by those who'd got through holes made by pigeons.

When finally I cooked the kales for a family dinner, they all took one bite and refused to eat any more, and I didn't blame them.

I brushed some leaves with oil, chopped and baked them, and as kale crisps they were OK.

I've never since grown or bought kale.

Love kale! An absolute must on the Christmas table. Cook it for fifteen minutes - preferably in the bouillon you used for your ham - drain, chop and fry with cream, treacle and salt and pepper! I am getting hungry as I write this!

Greetings from Sweden / Fredrik L

Heh, with enough cream and treacle one could eat, well...

The Gold Rush.jpg

[Jenise]

Basically, you either like the taste of choryphil-rich greens or you don't. If you don't like kale you probably don't like collards and likely only tolerate, vs. love, spinach. They have similarities.

yeah, I love spinach (when I can talk my wife out of cooking it to death) and am no fan of kale or any of that ilk.

Oddlly, I love cabbage, but am not such a big fan of Brussels sprouts unless allied with another ingredient - onion, bacon etc. On it's own, pretty uninspiring (for me).

[Jenise]

I love brussels sprouts if cooked well, and that includes plain with butter. Unfortunately, they are often poorly cooked such that they are bitter, not sweet, and in that event there's need for a cover-up. Btw, a few crushed cardamom pods in your finishing butter? Killer. That's what turned Bob from BS hater to BS lover.

I also love the entire cabbage family. Last night for dinner I had a pound of Argentine red shrimp (I'm currently trying to work down the freezer) ready to go. But we spent the entire day out*, so I was distracted and managed to end up back here at 6 pm with no plan and not a very well-stocked fridge. My only fresh veg on hand was a half head of cabbage and a basket of cherry toms. So glad, after all, that's what I had, because the shrimp got dressed with fresh garlic and EVOO, then grilled, and I put them atop a plate of warm cabbage salad (shredded cabbage, oil, vin, halved cherry toms and dried French basil). It was divine.

Point is: cabbage is a lot more versatile than most people think.

* These were my errands: take 347 empty wine bottles to the recycle depot in Surrey, have fish & chips for lunch on the beach in White Rock, pick up 26 bottles of wine from a friend who picked them up from his former employer for $199 total, incl tax, and pick up a 16.4 lb prime grade whole boneless Prime Rib at another friend's. My cost? $8.60 a pound, delivered. All in all, a pretty thrifty day!

The prime rib came from a Seattle meat supplier. I now have a commercial account with them and will be able to purchase at wholesale prices, including the pig we're going to roast in July. The prime rib cost is actually below wholesale--they have flash sales when they have more surplus than they can store which usually sell out to employees. But I got one, too!