Kale (my way)

I love me some kale.

Not the soft, tender kale with bacon fat so customary on soul food and comfort food menus. (Not that I haven't bellied up to that counter more than once.) I want my kale to have a little fight left in it. A little less fat. Tons of flavor. And I ain't afraid of that other F word either. (Fiber -- what were you thinking?)

If you've been known to reach past the velvety, baby spinach leaves for that wrinkly, full-bodied curly spinach, then keep reading. This toothsome recipe is for you.

Clean and dry one bunch kale, and discard the thick center stems. In a hot pan, drizzle about 2 TBL olive oil. Let it get hot, and then add as much kale as will fit. Turn it over with tongs, and as it shrinks in your pan (amazingly, I might add) add the rest of the kale.

After about 5 minutes on medium heat, clear a spot in the middle to add 1 - 2 cloves chopped garlic. (I usually add a bit more olive oil with it.)






Once the garlic is golden brown, sautee everything together, adding salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste. (It's dangerous to salt kale too early -- the sheer volume at the start practically guarantees over-salting.) When the bottom of the pan developes a good color, you know it's time to de-glaze.

I used about 2 TBL balsamic vinegar, and a dash of hot sauce isn't a bad idea at this point.

The finished product...

If you don't enjoy quite so much of that delighful texture, top it with a lid after the de-glazing, and let it steam in very low heat for 5 - 10 minutes. Enjoy!

Garden Updates:

Still cleaning up and discovering what has come back. I found this dill...



the sage flowers

Here is the herb garden, ready for new plantings.
The weeds and thistles filled my wheelbarrow (but not my assistant's...hmmm). Here is a newly-tilled patch, ready for tomatoes and...we'll see. I'd better get busy -- as usual, I'm a little late.

My Garlic Jar

This little jar is one of my most favorite things.

When I moved from New York to Seattle years ago, I took what I could carry with me on Amtrak, and I also stuffed a few large boxes to follow me via UPS. As you can imagine -- pots, pans, and other matters culinary were not the bulk of "what made the cut." As I finally got settled, it was like starting from scratch when it came to my little apartment kitchen. What fun that was. Really.

There was a fantastic business in my Capitol Hill neighborhood called Chicken Soup. Donated items were sold and the proceeds went to support AIDS patients in the area. Someone had donated a set of glass canisters -- in graduated sizes -- and I just had to have them all. One for pasta, one for rice, one for flour, one for sugar... The price was right. It was for a good cause. And they were so darned sweet! But I'm getting too far from my topic.

This jar was the smallest of the bunch. It's plain old glass; nothing fancy. The little dome lid fits perfectly inside the lip. It doesn't have a rubber seal to retain the garlic ... perfume. There are only 2 ingredients that ever go in it -- real chopped garlic and olive oil.

I'm not talking about that pre-diced stuff you find at the store (laced with who knows what). Frankly, that doesn't taste remotely like the real thing. It may even suffer from CAS (Canned Asparagus Syndrome -- the canned stuff becomes different enough to actually be considered a separate food). And it's packed in a watery, briny liquid. Water and oil don't mix. Think about that when you're adding that wet stuff to hot oil in a saute pan. One more negative: it's too finely minced. There's no wiggle room to play around with the strength factor. (A larger dice will tolerate more time at center stage in your saute pan, allowing a milder, sweeter flavor to develop.) About once a week I chop a lot of garlic, put it in my squeaky clean jar, and top it off with extra-virgin olive oil. I keep it in my fridge, and every time I get to cookin' -- out she comes. Need a bit of fresh garlic? Need a drop or two of garlic oil? No problem.

I fight the urge to keep it on the counter. I love to look at it, sitting pretty next to my favorite pepper mill and my olive oil carafe with the shiny stainless steel pour spout. But I'm heartless; I stick it in the cold, dark fridge. Refrigeration does solidify the oil a bit, but a minute or two at room temp and she's back in business. Plus, it's hardly worth playing around with the whole botulism thing. Once the garlic is covered with oil, it becomes anaerobic (no air is moving around it), and that means refrigeration is key. Keep it fresh, keep it cold, and keep yourself alive. If I'm not going to be using it as quickly, I sometimes skip the oil and store it dry. Works great -- I just don't have any oil to drizzle about.

I love my little garlic jar. It has a wide mouth -- I can easily fit a soapy dishcloth into it. It's glass -- I can put it in my dishwasher. There isn't a speck of plastic or rubber to retain any smell -- not that I mind, but the whole squeaky clean thing is important to me (did someone say OCD?). About once a week I start fresh. All the oil and garlic get thrown into a dish that can take it, the jar gets back to squeaky clean, and then the wonderful chopping and filling process begins again.

Rachel Ray can have her garbage bowl. I wouldn't trade my precious garlic jar for anything.

Springing into the herb garden...

This is going to be one of those posts without recipes. Lazy perhaps, but a little brave, because I am going public with my "before" picture before I've snapped the "after". I work much better under pressure.

After a winter and early spring of neglect, here is what my poor little herb garden looks like. Warts and all.

This spearmint is coming back nicely; no surprise there. Especially outside the make-shift brick border (which seemed like such a good idea last summer). Again, no surprise there.

Welcome back lovely sage! This looks like it is getting ready to bloom, and I need to decide if I should let it. It was planted after the spring last year, and I think this is the first time I've had sage come back (I haven't grown it often)...stay tuned!

My dependable thyme.

This voluptuous lavendar amazes me every year. It turns from silvery-gray to green without dropping so much as a needle. I'm almost afraid to touch it -- the stones under it have been there much longer than I've been admiring it. Luckily, it appears to thrive on my neglect.

This patch already smells of chocolate -- the chocolate mint is spreading like...well, mint. I may need to transfer this to a container. I'm also thinking of "gifting" some of it... (fair warning!)


If you're wondering why my herb garden isn't further along, here are a few photos of my springtime distractions...

"After" photos soon. And perhaps a recipe as well. Happy spring!

Sesame Vinaigrette

Sorry. I ate it all before I could get a picture. It didn't even get to a plate. I think salad just tastes better right out of the bowl anyway.

I've been buying spring mix at Sam's lately. A person really can't eat too much salad, right? I love sesame vinaigrette, and until recently I've mixed it in a bowl, tasting and adding a little of this, and a little more of that. As a favor to my mother, I finally took notes. Here is a basic, easy recipe:

Simple Sesame Vinaigrette

2 Tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce

1/8 cup sesame oil

1/2 cup canola oil

I place the first three ingredients in a tightly sealed jar and shake it like the dickens. When the sugar is dissolved, I add the oils and shake some more. Voila! (It will settle -- who cares.)

This recipe has the four corners covered: sweet, salty, tangy and slick (the oils). Don't get me started about those fat-free dressings...boring! If you pay attention to those things (as I should) simply use less dressing on your salad. This is also a great recipe to adapt. Add fresh ginger, garlic, peppercorns, crushed red pepper flakes...go wild.

Soba

I've had a couple of cravings lately.

Years ago, there was a fabulous restaurant here in Lexington called Ed and Fred's Desert Moon. I used to sneak out the back door of Cafe Jennifer to get my fix of their Chile Lime Pesto Linguine. I'd devour it in the office, check my smile in the mirror for tell-tale cilantro, and then sneak back out front. That's one craving.

Soba noodles have also been on my mind lately. These hearty buckwheat noodles are a great option for those of us who aren't fond of whole wheat pasta (a taste I can't seem to acquire) and still want a healthier alternative to the white stuff.

I haven't been able to get my hands on the recipe Ed and Fred used (help would be welcome!), but I'm pretty sure they used regular linguine. However, I had soba in the pantry, cilantro in the fridge, a lime in the fruit bowl, and a little time on my hands. An experiment was in order.

I had a couple of little red peppers, some left-over pecans, and of course garlic. I gave it all a rough chop, and processed the heck out of it. I added salt and pepper, squeezed fresh lime juice, and drizzled in olive oil as it whirred around my machine.

Sorry -- I experienced a relapse here and fell back into the old habit of not measuring anything. Here are my estimates:

1 cup nuts (I had pecans, but walnuts would be delicious)
1 bunch cilantro, minus a bit for garnish
2 garlic cloves
Juice from 1 lime
Chiles -- I had these mild red peppers on hand, but I recommend using whatever you can take!
Salt, pepper, and olive oil (I used less oil than a traditional pesto because I wanted it kind of on the dry side.)

I had pulled some cod from the freezer earlier, so it was included in this experiment. I sprinkled it with salt and pepper and smeared some of the fragrant paste over it.

I originally set my oven to "broil", but soon realized that the nuts were browning much faster than the fish was cooking. I turned it back to "bake" and started the soba noodles.

I had fun making this up as I went. I didn't want to cook the pesto (surely that would soften that fresh bold punch), but I wanted the soba to pick up some kind of flavor in a saute pan.

So after boiling the noodles in salted water until just al dente, I tossed them with olive oil and sauteed scallions.

I tossed the warm soba noodles with the pesto, placed the fish on top, and we enjoyed a delicious and healthy meal.

I didn't quite capture the linguine from my memory, but that's okay. I'll just call this tasty adventure "Soba Experiment One." Now -- on to the variations!

Lighting the corners of my mind....

Memories...

Did you ever glimpse an image so simple yet strong -- an image which transplanted you instantly and completely back to another time in your life?


This simple image

stopped me in my tracks as I was washing dishes one night. This handy flat container was left behind in my fridge (thanks Jeremy!) after a very fancy dinner party which was an auctioned item at my son's school fund-raiser. The guest chef heard me lamenting about how I loved and missed those well-made, can stand up to a thousand commercial washings, just down-right practical containers. Once you're out of the restaurant business, they just don't come your way very often. Go to all the tupperware parties you can find -- you won't see this.

The funny part of this flashback was the frustration. Perhaps it's a rule -- maybe restaurant employees aren't supposed to remove the old masking tape label that might say, for instance, "chicken salad", when actually it's raw salmon. Or portioned sea bass. Or whatever.

Oh, if only I had a dollar for every strip of masking tape I've peeled off...

Cranberries -- Texas Style

If your family is like most, you have 1.5 members who actually like cranberries with all those holiday meals, and one person who eats fruitcake. My husband actually likes fruitcake. I know. I married him anyway. And my mother is our lone cranberry eater. Or rather, she was.

Christmas day (yes, it's a really late post), my mother laid out a spread of snacks to keep us from getting too famished (with all that unwrapping, and playing and so on). On that table was a glorious bowl of ruby red, glistening....something. With chips on the side. Could you resist?

We didn't. We dug in, and experienced a spicy, sweet, tangy concoction that was soon habit-forming. My mother had plates set out, but I didn't need one. I simply stood my ground by the bowl and dug in my heels.

My mom's friend Jackie -- a fun-loving blond from Texas -- made this glorious dish and shared the recipe. Try it...you'll like it. Really! No holiday required.

Jackie's Cranberry Salsa (straight from Texas!)

1 package fresh cranberries; rinsed, cleaned and chopped in a food processor.

(I have an unofficial rule about using my food processor. If the job takes less time to complete than it would take to clean the food processor, I tend to use my immersion blender. Note to self -- break that rule next time.)

1 cup sugar

Mix together, and chill for 2-3 hours. Then add:

1 bunch green onions, finely chopped

1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1 - 2 jalepenos, finely chopped

Mix it all up, and enjoy!

Okay -- confession time:

Mine wasn't as good as Jackie's. I called her up to chide her for keeping something from me -- or perhaps to correct a typo. Husband and I both thought that this post-holiday salsa was much sweeter than that the one we had originally fallen in love with. And no, it wasn't the margaritas.

Jackie and I surmised that my cranberries were riper. After all, mine were on sale (you now, the mad rush to rid the groceries of all holiday-related produce before it goes bad) and though I added a squeeze of lime to balance it a bit, it was too late.

Our advice to you -- add half a cup of sugar, taste after an hour, and then adjust as needed. And what the heck -- a margarita can't hurt!