Kale. The first time my brother mentioned it to me, I thought to myself: “What the hell kind of green thing grows in the middle of winter?” It must be disgusting.
Chuck is into really out-there things (this is the first blog post. I’ll tell you more about this later. It’s mostly a good thing). Then, one day, I had a miso soup with Kale in it during an illness at what I would later learn was the infamous “Sun in Bloom” café in South Brooklyn. Miraculously, I was healed. I felt intrigued by this new discovery.
Like any nervous and sweet young lady, I didn’t want to be too aggressive with this mysteriously handsome new vegetable but I found myself titillated. Once the summer came, I looked up a recipe for kale chips and since then, our love affair has “bloomed.” On sunny weekends, we would meet at afternoon farmer's markets and walk back to my place imagining our lives together in between the covers of a fresh baked loaf of bread. Later that summer, we moved in together in Brooklyn.
Below is my simple recipe that does the trick every time:
A bunch of kale
2 cloves of garlic (minced)
Olive oil (2-3 capfuls)
Salt and pepper to taste
Making kale is a sensuous experience. Start by rinsing your kale first. Cleaning your vegetables before you chop them helps to retain a certain supple nutritional quality. Then, tear the leaves right off your kale. Put into a bowl and pour the oil all over your leaves. Add salt and pepper as you feel is appropriate and massage the oil and garlic into the kale until you feel it is sufficiently moist. Then, put on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.
*Any resemblance to 50 Shades of Kale is completely coincidental.