Kale as comfort food

I'm sitting here with a bowl of Kale. I'm lucky I can even find it in Wisconsin. My mom used to grow it, then boil some up with a ham hock.

You Northerners will know it as the garnish around salad bars. It has that cool crinkley leaf that looks nice.

But it's kind of a weird comfort food, eh?

In the cabbage family, so it's packed with vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants.

I have heard that it's possible to grow it for most of the year, even in fairly cold areas (if you can make a little greenhouse or something). Hardier than lettuce, anyway. It overwinters where I am, on the west coast (still a bunch of it in the garden).

Would you believe -- a few years ago, someone was going around stealing herbs and ornamentals out of people's gardens around here -- I'd planted some of the colored kale in an attractive border, and the thief actually dug up several of the plants and took them (along with my rosemary bush).

That's why many folks don't know it any other way than as a garnish. It's purdy.

I tried some out of the grocery store, semi-fresh. The taste wasn't right. Now I mostly buy it canned, Glory brand mixes in spices. Quite tasty.

Geez though. A veggie theif? How weird!

just need a can opener...

That's not something mom did. But it's good.

Until now, I had been eating it out of a sense of duty, chopped up small in salads or sometimes cooked in pasta sauce. Most of the stuff in the garden is the plain green kind, so it wasn't even that interesting to look at, once it was on the table! I hadn't even thought of cooking it with spices. Wonder if caraway seed would work (that's just about the only way I can eat cabbage).

ornamental type (mine were the pink/green sort).

http://www.walgreens.com/store/product.jsp?CATID=100640&navAction=jump&navCount=0&id=prod401635

So you might try that. I've also had it mixed with turnip greens, which was pretty good too.

and have the right taste, kale needs to be in the ground until it frosts. The frost layer seems to kill the bitterness.

Sopa da Kove (Kale Soup) and Sopa Galina (green soup)

Hmm.

for the pot-likker!

Yum!

Do you put vinegar on yours?

with the Jiffy mix.

No I never tried it with vinegar. I'll have to now.

I think it reminds me of when I grew up in Virginia. Mom, a Wisconsin person, learned how to cook down South while dad, a Virginian, was stationed there. So she was good at fried chicken, something she called waffle-weave potatoes (cut like a tic tac toe board, then smeared with Crisco, and salt and pepper.

She used alot of something called "Pleasoning" that nobody up here seems to recognize.

I bonded with a woman from Kentucky up here because I knew about greens, and shared some with her. She'd do some home cooking and share it with me. I never could eat the fat meat she liked, but she snuck me some chitlins once and didn't tell me what it was, and I liked it. Surprised me.

as long as (a) you don't know what they are and (b) don't watch them being prepared.

I *love* all greens, but especially kale and turnip greens.

Mom got me started with the malt vinegar. I expanded into a little Frank's Original Red Hot Sauce. Mmmmmmmmm!

Wilted mustard greens tossed in mustard oil and braised with slivered onions are delicious as well.

To many good ideas to lose.

I think it was either an onion or a potato that my co-worker puts with it to take the smell away. And yeah, hearing about how they have to make sure all the crap is out of it kinda turned me off.

She mixed it in a potato dish, and I was none the wiser.

Oh yeah, Franks is good stuff as well. I put it on a ridiculous number of foods.

generally preceded by beer-sodden nights, when I wake up in the morning and just take a long swig of Frank's. Seems to do something to counteract the morning-after toxicity of a blood-curdling hangover. Used to do the same thing with kimchee.

Yeah it's got sugar. So sue me. ;-)

It's a cold weather veggie...I'm surprised you can't find it there.
When I was more attentive to my garden, I had cabbages and kale until about mid-January, here in the DC suburbs. Sometimes longer if we didn't get a hard frost.

Enjoy!

They grow it, but they think it's a garnish, not food.

It's a southern thing, I think.

Greens grow so fast that they're a popular early and late season crop. In Maine for example beet greens and chard are part of every home garden. My mother was thrilled when the chard showed up at the farm stands. My grandmother ate turnip greens and flat leaf kale growing up on a farm.

I love kale. Kale combined with sweet veggies like sauteed onions and diced carrots is really good plus as you noted, give it a little smoked pork flavor and it's delicious.

Boerenkoel met wurst. Kale with sausage. Mixed with mashed potatoes and the sausage on top of a well of bacon grease. Crisp thick bacon on the side.

Good stuff. Once every 2 years or so due to the fat content. (And it's not something you use substitutes for)

is that creepy or what?

it was delicious.

1/2 c dried black-eyed peas
2 1/2 c water
1 1/2 lb kale, finely chopped
1/2 c coarse wheat (bulgur)
1 c diced onions (2 medium onions)
1/2 c olive oil

I thought it had said "Kate as comfort food". :wow:

No joke either and I hope I didn't make you puke.

I am more of a Mustard, Collard, Turnip green man myself. Can't forget the Poke salad either, nor the Dandelion greens.

Here in the south greens are a big item for meals. Most of it eaten here is of the Collard, Turnip, Mustard variety. Kale does not do so well down here and is not ate much, which is most likey why i never liked it having not developed a taste for it.

The classic sotuhern meal would consist of Pinto bean soup, fried potatos, greens and cornbread.....yum yum!

Also beet greens (I like the greens better than the beets themselves) sauteed with a little white onion.

I don't think it's weird at all!

Funny how they seem to taste so much better than swiss chard (which was apparently developed from the same plant as beets, only emphasizing the leaves rather than the roots). I've started growing the kind of chard with the red stems -- it does look prettier than the ordinary white-stemmed kind -- I'm hoping that it will taste nicer too.

p.s. there are types of beets which aren't red -- white or yellow instead -- and can be eaten sliced raw in salads. I'm going to try those next summer (less messy to prepare).

Or put some M&Ms on the kale

Too fibrous, chewy, and bitter for my taste. Every other veggie, though, Yum! :P