Kale, Kale, Kale

In a comment to our post of January 21 of this year, our good friend Lévana Kirschenbaum suggested that we discuss the different types of kale available on the American market. While it’s more easily found in autumn and winter, you can still find it even now.

The most commonly found is the Curly Kale sometimes known as Scottish Kale…

Kale, Curly Kale, or Scottish Kale

For a delightful vegetarian recipe made with this version of kale and a meat variation of it check out our Caldo Verde.

Another fairly common variety is Russian or Red Kale…

Russian or Red Kale

Red or Russian Kale has a softer texture, is slightly sweeter than Curly Kale and has a somewhat buttery taste. When used together with the more common variety it produces a nice color combination while adding a subtle sweetness to the dish.

For tomorrow’s breakfast I will use Red Kale to make this delicious sounding recipe which I just found (on Kalyn’s Kitchen…

Photo from: Kalyn’s Kitchen

The most delicious kind of kale, however is Tuscan Kale or Cavalo Nero…

Tuscan Kale or Cavalo Nero

Used mostly in Tuscan dishes, it’s hard to go back to any other kind of kale after savoring this tender and nicely flavored variety.

Kale is descended from the wild cabbages of southern Europe. It thrives in cold weather but grows successfully all over the world. The addition of some baby kale juice will spruce up any raw carrot juice drink. Kale is an excellent source of beta carotene and vitamin C; it is a good source of folate, calcium iron and potassium; it contains bioflavonoids and other substances that protect against cancer. It’s only known drawback is that it may produce gas in some people.

When you make a salad, a soup, a fritata, don’t forget to use kale for a superbly delicious and healthy addition.

CS

This Evening’s Kosher Scene’s Internet Radio Show

Our guest for this evening’s special show at 8:00pm (Eastern Time) is Avi Gantz, the General Manager at Pomegranate Supermarket (1507 Coney Island Avenue – corner of Avenue L – Brooklyn, New York 11230; Tel: 718.951.7112). We will be discussing Pomegranate‘s special offerings for the Nine Days.

With many new items and some items specially made for these Nine Days, meals need neither be drab nor boring. Avi will tell us how we can avoid meat and still have delicious, healthy, meals.

Partial views of the Salad department (above) and the Sushi Department (bottom)

Meanwhile in case you missed it, please listen to our show with Naomi Sugar, ice cream confectioner extraordinaire, blogger at 365scoops.com.

Don’t forget to tune us in this evening, at 8:00pm (Eastern Time), when our guest will be Avi Gantz, the General Manager at Pomegranate Supermarket (1507 Coney Island Avenue – corner of Avenue L – Brooklyn, New York 11230; Tel: 718.951.7112).

Egg Salad

I like egg salad, it is one of my favorite breakfast foods, and even part of a fast lunch.  When I came to these shores in 1962, I soon learned to enjoy it with mayonnaise as opposed to my mother’s spartan combination of chopped hard boiled eggs with small amounts of salt, pepper, and a bit of olive oil. Egg salad comes in many variations, but, David Lebovitz‘ recipe is superb:

Enough for 2 or 3 sandwiches

My uncle once told me a funny story: about forty years ago, he once set out to make a recipe that called for capers and he thought that he would use fresh, rather than something from a jar. He looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find fresh. He could only find the pickled ones, which he later realized were how capers were prepared and sold. And now, every time I open a jar I think of his story. I like a little bit of chopped capers in my egg salad, or something a bit vinegary. You could also use some chopped cornichons or pickles – and their juice – in place of the capers.

You can use any kind of pepper powder that you want. Note that if you use a red one, it will turn the color of the egg salad a somewhat fiery shade of red.

6 hard-boiled eggs
1/3 (70g) cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon (drained) capers, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons caper juice
3/4 teaspoon pepper, such as Isot (Urfa), black pepper or red pepper powder
sea salt
optional: 3 tablespoons sunflower seeds

1. Peel the eggs and chop them into pieces.
2. Mix the eggs in a bowl with the mayonnaise, mustard, capers, caper juice, pepper, and a good sprinkle salt. If desired, add the sunflower seeds.

To serve, spread on toasted grainy bread, then garnish with additional salt, pepper, and some chopped chives.

Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy!

CS

Chopped Vegetable Salad with Lemon-Garlic Dressing

David Lebovitz, is one of my favorite food bloggers. the San Francisco Chronicle named him one of the Five Top Pastry Chefs in the Bay Area, he’s been featured in every major food publication and most of the big newspapers. In 1999 he left the US and moved to Paris to write books (he’s written six, so far) and enjoy great food. I quoted his blog before about something I grew up with in Uruguay, something which if one of my South American cousins wouldn’t have sent me from time to time (until I found the recipe!) would have turned me into a desperate junkie in search of a fix. Yes, gentle reader, I confess I am a hopeless Dulce de Leche addict.

Today as I scoured David Lebovitz‘ blog, which I do periodically, I found a great salad recipe (which I made some slight changes to so as to make it kosher):

Photo by: David Lebovitz

Two servings

I guess I’m more French than I thought because I’m not a fan of very hard vegetables raw, like broccoli, cauliflower, or green beans. So if I use them, I blanch or steam the vegetables lightly, to make them a bit more palatable.

For the dressing:

2 cloves garlic, peeled and grated or minced
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup (60ml) olive or grape seed oil, or another favorite oil

For the salad:

6 cups (700g) mixed chopped vegetables and other additions, such as:

-Crumbled Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon Strips or Bacos, (both products are kosher certified by the OU)
-Diced avocado
-Batons of baked tofu
-Crumbled feta, goat, or blue cheese
-Shredded romaine, radicchio, or gem lettuce
-Sliced or quartered radishes
-Grated or julienne-cut carrots
-Shredded red cabbage
-Minced parsley or chives
_Lightly steamed or blanched broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, or asparagus
-Diced hard-cooked eggs
-Pumpkin seeds
-Quartered cherry tomatoes

1. In a large salad bowl, mix together the garlic, lemon juice, salt, and mustard with a fork

2. Add the olive oil and stir with the fork until the dressing is well mixed. (I don’t emulsify the dressing as I feel it gets too heavy and thick.)

3. Add the salad ingredients and toss well.

I fully realize that after the Nine Days a nice meat recipe, rather than a dairy one, would have been far more welcome, but this one is simple to make, healthy and delicious!

Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy!

I Like Salads…

For thousands of years salads have been recognized as an important part of a person’s diet. Lest you think that it was mostly peasant fare, let me disabuse you of any such notions, gentle reader. According to hungrymonster.com

Salad dressings and sauces have a long and colorful history, dating back to ancient times. The Chinese have been using soy sauce for 5,000 years; the Babylonians used oil and vinegar for dressing greens nearly 2,000 years ago; and the ever-popular Worcestershire was derived from a sauce used since the days of the Caesar. Indeed, early Romans preferred their grass and herb salads dressed with salt. Egyptians favored a salad dressed with oil, vinegar and Oriental spices. Mayonnaise is said to have made its debut at a French Nobleman’s table over 200 years ago.

Salads were favorites in the great courts of European Monarchs – Royal salad chefs often combined as many as 35 ingredients in one enormous salad bowl, including such exotic “greens” as rose petals, marigolds, nasturtiums, and violets. England’s King Henry IV’s favorite salad was a tossed mixture of new potatoes (boiled and diced), sardines and herb dressing. Mary, Queen of Scots, preferred boiled celery root diced and tossed with lettuce, creamy mustard dressing, truffles, chervil and hard-cooked egg slices.

Salad photos from around the web...

I always liked salads, not only are they delicious, most are also easy to make and the array of colors is almost always a feast for the eyes. In my search for a new salad I came up with this one, inspired by http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Scrumptious-Salad/Detail.aspx:

Insalata di penne, pomodori e formaggio

Ingredients

• 1 (16 ounce) package dry penne pasta
• 2 small tomatoes, cubed
• 1 avocado – peeled, pitted, and cubed
• 1 (6 ounce) can pitted black olives, chopped
• 1/3 cup chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh spinach
• 1/2 cup chopped portobello mushrooms
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I use Fittucci, an Argentinian Regianitto Parmesan cholov Yisroel cheese, distributed by Anderson Foods International. It brings back some of the flavors of my youth…)
• 1/4 cup basil pesto
• 2 hardboiled eggs
• 1 tablespoon of mustard

Directions

1. Hardboil two eggs
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add penne pasta, cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente, and drain.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
4. In a large casserole dish, toss the pasta with tomatoes, avocado, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and pesto.
5. Place the salad in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes, just until warm.
6. When ready to serve, cut each hardboiled eggs in half, lay around serving dish, add a liitle bit of mustard to each of the 4 eggs and sprinkle each lightly with paprika.

It yields 8 portions or four hearty ones, if you do not plan to eat much else.

Enjoy!

CS

Jack’s Gourmet – Part 2

What I like about Jack’s Gourmet sausages most, specifically and because of their superb taste, is the many dishes they can be used in. This past Tuesday I made a Sausage Pizza using both their Sweet Italian and the Hot Italian sausages and I used SYR‘s simple recipe.

SYR's Sausage Pizza, "delicious" hardly does it justice...

SYR’s Sausage Pizza

Ingredients

• 9” pizza crust (I used a crust from Tradition, made with honey, with raised edges to avoid spillage)
• Pizza Sauce (enough to fill the crust)
• 1 cup shitake mushrooms, chopped (you may use any other kind of mushrooms as well)
• 6 Pearl onions, chopped (little, sweet, Vidalia onions might even work better)
• 1 elephant garlic clove, chopped
• 2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
• 1 cup fresh basil
• 10 grape tomatoes, sliced (you may use any other kind, including sun-dried tomatoes)
• 1 Jack’s Gourmet Sweet Italian sausage, sliced
• 1 Jack’s Gourmet Hot Italian sausage, sliced
• Oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 F.
2. Put crust in oven for 7 minutes to make it crisp.
3. Take out crust and pour in pizza sauce, thin and evenly.
4. Suatee the chopped mushrooms, onions, and garlic, lay them out on the sauce.
5. Sautee the spinach and the basil, add on the sauce.
6. Add the sausage slices, alternating each time between the Sweet Italian and the Hot Italian.
7. Sprinkle the whole with the oregano. salt and pepper.
8. Put in oven for 15-20 minutes or until sausage slices look slightly brown.

I washed it down with a glass of well chilled Bartenura Asti Spumante. Scrumptious and delightful pairing I would have enjoyed it tremendously even if I had ordered it in a restaurant!

As for tonight, I’ll be getting a little more adventurous by making this salad:

Radicchio, Mango and Pomegranate Salad with Sausage

Ingredients

• 2 medium shallots, sliced 1/8 inch thick (about 1 cup)
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon NatraZyle Xylitol (you may use granulated sugar, if you wish)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed mango juice
• 2 teaspoons whole-grain mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1pound radicchio and curly endives mixed, washed, dried, and torn into bite-size pieces
• 1 cup cubed mango
• 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds (from 1 small pomegranate)
• 1 Jack’s Gourmet Boereworks sausage, sliced
• 1 Jack’s Gourmet Mexican Style Chorizo sausage, sliced

Directions

1. Prepare an ice water bath by filling a bowl halfway with ice and water; set aside. Bring a small saucepan of well-salted water to a boil over high heat. Add shallots and blanch until tender, about 30 seconds. Drain shallots and place in the ice water bath until cool. Drain and set aside.
2. Combine vinegar, NatraZyle, and 1 teaspoon of the salt in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until the Xylitol, or sugar, has dissolved. Pour the boiling liquid over the reserved shallots and pickle until the shallots are slightly wilted and have lost any sharp taste, about 5 minutes.
3. Drain the shallots into a strainer set over a large, heatproof salad bowl, collecting any pickling liquid in the bowl; set the shallots aside.
4. Whisk the mango juice, mustard, remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper into the pickling liquid. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking until the vinaigrette is emulsified. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed.
5. Heat the sausages in a sautee pan with a small amount of oil until golden brown on all sides, approximately 4-6 minutes.
6. Add the sausage slices to the salad.
7. Add the radicchio, curly endives and mango slices and toss well to combine. Top with pomegranate seeds, pickled shallots and serve.

The contrast between the mild Boereworks and hot Mexican Style Chorizo combined with the rest of the salad should be very interesting. I can’t wait!

CS

RELATED POSTS

Jack’s Gourmet – Part 1

Sausage Pizza (Kosher)

Radicchio, Mango and Pomegranate Salad With Sausage (Kosher)