Gateway Salad

Kale is certainly having its 15 seconds of fame isn't it?

Kale, aside from being touted as a superfood, is a reliable garden standby in so many zones it seems to be popping up everywhere.  Food blogs, garden blogs, nutrition articles, lists of healthy foods....  It is ubiquitous.

Before it became the most popular kid in the vegetable class, I'd planted kale in stabs we made at a vegetable garden.  Unfortunately we never mustered enough shared enthusiasm for kale to justify the expense of keeping it watered. Nope.  Kale, even in the highly touted chip form, never found more than one fan in the family.

Trust me, there's kale in there somewhere.

Readily available in local grocery stores and farmer's markets, kale for us is simply one of those easy to grow but not so easy to palatably prepare vegetables that is best relegated to the "I'll buy it when I need it" category. When I needed it was just about...never.

The Hub's reaction summed it up nicely when I proposed trying a salad recipe I'd saved.

Me:  (brightly) Hey honey - how'd you like a superfood salad with dinner sometime this week?
The Hub:  (suspiciously) What superfood?
Me:  (mumbling) kale
The Hub:  What??
Me:  Kale!
The Hub:  (Long pause.  Grumbling...) I don't know - so many of the superfoods just don't taste very good.

And there you had it.  Embodying our prevalent attitude towards anything with a purported medicinal or healthy aspect, ("if it is good for me it has to taste bad"),  kale had fallen into the nutritious-not-delicious abyss, taking its place alongside fish oil, eggplant, and the peels of various fruit and vegetables.

Not wanting to admit to the Hub I'd already bought ingredients, I pressed on.

Keeping my tone light, I offered this was an experiment with no potential blowback.  He likes it, great, he hates it, no harm done. I pledged not to take his reaction personally, whatever it was.  I stated in so many words up front, "This is not a hidden relationship test - if you don't like it I will not get mad and/or hold it against you."

(Why should I need to make such a promise?  You figure it out.)

I rushed to further reassure the Hub this particular kale salad specifically was going to taste good due to the inclusion of recently banished-from-our-premises carbohydrates called for in the recipe.  "Just imagine!" I told him, "it has nuts in it and golden raisins and bread crumbs!  Those carbs are going to hit your palate like dessert!".

And so we boldly went.

Side rant here.  It annoys me no end when I run up against recipe comments on a food blog that praise or condemn a recipe when it becomes clear on reading that the commenter didn't actually come anywhere close to following the recipe itself.  "I tried this for dinner last night but didn't have a pork roast so I substituted ground turkey and instead of chicken broth I used almond milk and I don't have a slow cooker so I used my electric skillet and I subbed in bell pepper because I didn't have any garlic on hand and I thought it turned out dry and sort of bland, so I'm only going to give it two stars!"

Honestly, people.  If you don't bother to follow the recipe you can't really comment ON the recipe, now can you?  

So let me say this about that.  This kale salad (what I kept referring to as a "gateway salad" in my head) we ended up with did not precisely replicate the posted recipe though I state with no embarrassment that my substitutions and alterations stuck very closely to the spirit if not the letter of the original.

Instance the first: I could only find finely grated pecorino.  My cheese was not amusingly nubbly like the recipe's author's was but it was pecorino and I submit the flavor was there.  Only the texture was different.

Also?  I did what I always do and substituted roasted Texas pecans in place of the toasted walnuts called for.  This is a salad, not a cake, so a toasted nut is a toasted nut.  I like my salads the way I like my bars and my garden beds - filled with locals when I can get them.  No apologies or excuses there.

The final deviation?  I can't recall ever seeing how many servings the online version of this recipe states might result from following the directions.  I can recall quite clearly that after I chiffonaded up my first bundle of lacinato kale (which weighed in around 6 ounces, or roughly half what the recipe calls for) I could tell I already had gracious plenty kale ribbonets for the two adults who were the subjects of this mad experiment.

I decided then and there that if that meant I had twice as many carbohydratically delightful plumped golden raisins, pan toasted garlicky bread crumbs and chopped roasted pecan bits, then so be it.  Did I use the full amount of finely ground pecorino cheese?  No I did not.  I halved that and tasted.  Half was juuuust right.  Don't want to get carried away with all this doubling stuff, yes?  Certainment.

OK.  After all this folderol and fiddle dee dee you may be wondering how it all came together.  I must say that under these elevatedly dressed  circumstances the salad was quite enthusiastically received.  I would not dare to prepare it with a reduced level of carb goodies for at least three to four more tries, until the very idea of kale ribbons as salad greens ceased to provoke the slightest shudder.  This is to be a gateway salad after all, not a palate trial by super food.

Here's a link to the original recipe for Kale Salad with Pecorino and Walnuts on the ever delightful food blog, Smitten Kitchen.  Perhaps you already like kale and know that about yourself and won't feel the need to bump up the funsies parts as I ended up doing.   Perhaps like some of the rest of us all you need is a little coaxing and in that case, please go read about the salad and see if you aren't at least tempted to give it a try.  I know I feel just that much more virtuous today, now that I've got the first kale salad under my belt.

Are you a kale fan?  If so do you have some other "meh" ingredient that everybody else simply can't get enough of?  I'll confess - aside from the pickled ones - I am apparently the last person in the free world having a hard time warming up to beets.  I know I must be crazy because there are beets on offer in restaurants, delis and in recipes everywhere these days.  And maybe that's just it.  Like this kale salad, perhaps I just need to find the right recipe to educate my taste buds.  Anybody got one of those?  I'm all ears.

Carvey

[A word from our sponsor (aka:me).  I realize I write a lot about meaty topics. By that I do not mean I write serious thoughtful pieces, but rather about meat. Cooking and eating meat. I also realize there are many out there who do not eat meat for their own reasons. I respect that and I respect them. I too eschew meat at times. But I am not only cooking for myself in this lifetime so my vegetarian meal opportunities are few and far in between. That said, the following would make a lovely entrée served up with some nice chewy artisanal bread and lovely glass of wine (if you allow a bit of egg and dairy). What? You don't drink alcohol? Have a glass of iced tea. No caffeine either? Oh just read, for heavens sake and you can serve this up any way you like.]

This all started May 11th, 2009.

I had two heads of beautiful organic broccoli in the refrigerator that wanted to become some sort of fabulous broccoli salad when they grew up.

I had the remnants of a carton of buttermilk, purchased to prepare something I don't even remember (I'm sure it was delicious?).

I had an even more beautiful knife, a real knife, a true chef's tool, which was a Mother's Day gift from ChefSon.

I saw this post from SmittenKitchen and it was Crave-at-First-Sight.

Then why did it take me nearly two weeks to get around to making it? I don't know, honestly. I do this all the time, see something that looks delicious and I have ingredients on hand or readily obtainable and I print the recipe out and at times even start talking about it as something I am "going" to do, and then I don't.

I have no reasonable explanation. Strike that, I have no explanation at all, reasonable or otherwise.All that is moot at the moment because this morning, I drew a deep breath, got my workspace ready, assembled my ingredients and the necessary tools and made Broccoli Slaw.

I followed Smitten's recipe exactly. I too used the stems as well as the flowrets because broccoli is broccoli folks and if you like the way one end of the stalk tastes there is no reason to believe you won't like the other. Plus it all gets chopped up, so there is not a hugely appreciable difference once you start to munch.I originally thought to myself I'd prep this with the amounts called for and then throw in more everything-that-wasn't-broccoli. What could be wrong with more onion or more dried cranberries or more toasted almonds? I'll tell you what - nothing. Only once I'd tasted it (just to, you know, "correct" the seasonings. Three times. Silly seasonings.), this slaw wowed my taste buds as hitting pretty much close to the perfection mark at the proportions as called for in the recipe. I left well enough alone. [Score:One for the recovering perfectionist, vs. a gazillion for the universe]

This supposedly keeps up to a week in the refrigerator if, as Smitten Kitchen adorably notes, you do not have any pregnant woman nearby. I'd like to expand that caveat slightly. I am well at the opposite end of the reproduction curve and I will be shocked if this broccoli crack lasts more than 3-4 days around here. You don't have to be riding the pregnant hormone horse to appreciate this wonderfully crisp, slightly freshly greenly sweet amazingly crunchy combination. You only need to like broccoli, appreciate crunchy foods, and have working mouth parts.

I've read on a couple other food blogs where people are suggesting recipes be rated, rather than every blogger writing that every recipe is "fantastic!" every time. I tend not to blog about recipes that don't turn out very well although I did tell y'all about the braised rabbit dish that wasn't awful - it just didn't live up to my expectations. That was more the pasta's fault than the rabbit's I'd say and I don't want anybody to be discouraged from trying rabbit.On the other hand, if I were to rate this broccoli slaw recipe, I would give it 438 stars out of a possible 5. Truly. I have been craving broccoli salad of some sort for weeks now - you can ask the ladies I walk with for exercise. We spent the better portion of a half hour last week dissecting the reasons I might not have found a recipe yet to make a broccoli salad at home that I like as much as I typically like the ones I've gotten at restaurants or from the deli counter at my food co-op.

I like everything about this broccoli slaw. I like the way it looks. I think it is GORGEOUS. I like the buttermilk dressing in combination with the other flavors. I like the crunch. I like how fresh it tastes.I like that I got a red onion that was strong but in a good sweetly insistent onionly way, rather than the obnoxious red onions I get occasionally that remind me of why I used to never like uncooked onion in anything.

You can see, comparing Smitten's photograph to mine, that her salad is a leetle less chopped than mine is..

Above is mine.

And here is Smitten's. Please note - I am asking you to focus on the size of the pieces and not the fact that her photography skills are forty times better than mine. Let's just stay on topic, shall we?

Well there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that at least. New Knife! It took all my self control to stop chopping while the food was still large enough to see without a microscope. I won't apologize. When you have a sharp knife, as I now do for the first time in years, chopping is fun, people!I strongly suggest you do yourself a large favor and make this slaw. Proceed without caution to SmittenKitchen to get the recipe and get started. Stat! Stop reading and go go go!!!