greens & kale

I love both of these and I don't really know how to prepare either. Does anyone have recipies to share? I was at Dixie Kitchen Saturday and I get a craving for their greens (topped with some of their pepper/vinegar). I'll post another request in the restaurant area to find your favorites when you go out to eat. Thanks.

janeyb:

David Hammond started a thread about greens ("Mess o' Greens") not too loing ago which includes several cooking suggestions for greens, including kale, I believe:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=541

A

Thank you for the link. Still a few questions. Can you prepare kale the same way as the Swiss Chard? How much olive oil? What do you used for the smoked turkey? Is there any pre-cooked sort of meat I could get at the deli? (I'm not a big meat eater, so I would be getting the meat specifically to toss into the greens.)

Kale comes in several forms. All are best when the plants have been exposed to cool if not freezing weather. The flavor is milder and often sweeter then. Winterbor is a common type and the only one you are likely to find in the supermarket. The plants grow several feet tall and can be cut whole or as cut and come again. Vates type is small and can take temperatures down to about 20 degrees. I have harvested this when snow had to be removed to find the plants. If the leaves including stems are under 6-8 inches at a farmers' market, they probably have a Vates type. Grab it if you can in early June or October, which are peak season in the Chicago area. Red Russian looks pretty but is a little bland and definitely less cold hardy. This is usually a home garden or farmers' market type but may crop up in a specialty store. I don't have enough experience with the large-leaved Italian types to comment on them.

We prefer tender kale lightly cooked (maybe quickly in microwave with very little water) and may finish it in a pan with a little olive oil and garlic. The big stuff will take quite a bit more cooking. Kale and sausage soup is a Portuguese winter standard. You can cook kale much like Swiss chard except use only leaves stripped from the stem and discard the stem. In the summer you will probably be a lot happier with Swiss chard than kale.

Mustard greens can be eaten raw at the baby stage. I have seen them in mesclun, but otherwise they are a reason for a home garden. Greens from plants 6-8 inches tall can be cooked like spinach. In fact, my wife often mixes them in May and early June. As the weather warms up, mustard's flavor becomes strong and the leaves toughen. I took out the last of our second planting this morning and expect that they will be quite zingy even though the leaves are still pretty tender. The big ones will need a lot of cooking. A fall crop can yield the tender type in October. Again you are not likely to find them in supermarkets.

Collards are a form of open-headed cabbage. All of the leaves are pretty tough even on young plants. Long cooking is needed. Collards are sweetened by exposure to cold. In parts of the South they can be grown all winter.

If you can get golden beets, the greens are even better than red beet greens. Neither needs a lot of cooking. Wilting is sufficient for the greens from baby beets, but greens from beets larger than golf balls will take moderate cooking in water. Many Swiss chard recipes will work as they are closely related.

In my cafeteria days down in Virginia, we served a different green (kale, collards, mustards, turnips, turnips with roots, spinach, chard) every single day. The southern ladies tought me how to do it pretty well. See teh link above.

I do NOT agree that collards need to be cooked long. What I do is to remove the last 1-2" of stem and cut them into strips. Saute them with a whole mess of sliced or chopped garlic in a wok with olive oil. I had this dish in that bastion of southern cooking, Salt Lake City at Rodizio's Grill and have duplicated it at home sucessfully on numerous occasions.

Glory Foods and there is another African American owned company that makes some phenomenal green seasonings.

Hi- On one of the couponing blogs that I post on, I just posted yesterday that Consumer Reports does not recommend the Nutribullet any more, and instead recommends Vitamix or Ninja Master Prep. They had problems with the bowl cracking on the Nutribullet when they tried to crush ice. Somebody else just posted that she can not see herself making kale smoothies, but she was looking for more ways to incorporate kale into her diet. I suggested that she branch out to less common variates of kale such as Red Russian, which are going to be more mild. I told her that places like Jewel do not carry those variates of kale though, and she would have to go to place like Caputo's or one of the farmer's markets. She said that she shops for veggies at Joseph's, which I believe is in Crystal Lake. Does Joseph's ever carry nontraditional kale, such as Red Russian or some of the Italian kale, or is there a farmer's market in the area that might? I know there are a few people here that live out that way. Thanks, Nancy

I like greens chopped very fine and sautéed with olive oil and garlic, salt and pepper. Sprinkle on parmesan cheese. I particularly like swiss chard that way. I also like to chop kale fine and blanch for a few seconds in boiling water and then making a kale salad with vinegar and oil dressing, a bit sweet...add raisins and nuts too.

I'm bumping this up again. Nobody here knows where you can get nontraditional kale near Crystal Lake such as Joseph's or a farmer's market. I am talking about Red Russian or Italian or another nontraditional kale? I am not familiar with the farmer's markets there. I worked one summer out at Camp Algonquin back in 1977, but that area has grown considerably since then. Thanks, Nancy

I don't know anything about the varieties of kale, since I can't stand it... except when it's roasted into crispy kale chips. These I could eat all day. Washed and thoroughlydried, stemmed, tossed with just a little EVOO (some garlic doesn't hurt here,) sprinkled with some designer salt; spread a single layer in a pan, and slow-roast about 300* for 25-30 minutes.

A good recipe is

http://ohsheglows.com/2014/03/12/6-tips ... ps-recipe/

and there are many more via Google.