Thursday, February 26, 2009

Kale-alicious (No, Really)

I dropped my i-phone down the stairs yesterday, and a troubling lack of screen options has plagued me ever since. My screen looks like a Barnett Newman painting, one of the ones that is white with a black fuzzy line going up and down. Not good. 

So I have no pictures of this fabulous salad that my friend Liz showed me how to make. I was going to have a picture of Bragg's next to the Gomasio, two seriously hippie condiments that I normally try to avoid. Well, I love Gomasio (a mixture of sesame seeds, seaweed and sea salt), but Bragg's is usually in the wool socks-with-Birkenstocks category. I'm not going there. I already decided, a couple decades ago: not for me. 

I softened up a little on the Braggs a couple years ago when I taught a cooking class with a Jamaican woman who was a former raw foodist, and addicted to Bragg's, and very cool and interesting. She made me buy some for the class and we had to use it in a bunch of things. I had to admit, it was pretty good. It's a salty condiment, and how can you go wrong there? Well, the problem is, it's to hippies as Marmite is to Australians: a gross weird thing that people are bizarrely, annoyingly attached to. Then you try it, and then you realize the most annoying thing about it is how passionate everyone is about it. And you can deal with that. (Okay, I've never tried Marmite, but there is something kindred in the passion inspired by these two weird, umami-flavored cult foods; and, how bad can it be?)

Anyway, this was the salad that actually inspired me to buy a small bottle of Bragg's. 

If you kind of sort of like kale -- sometimes -- but you LOVE seaweed salad, and you wish you could figure out how to eat more kale, oh boy do I have the salad for you. 

Kale Salad

1 bunch kale. I have only used the purple kind, which is one of the more challenging kinds in my opinion, so I'm sure it would be even better with the friendlier lacinato/dinosauar kale
Juice of one lemon
Maybe a tablespoon of Bragg's Liquid Aminos
Maybe a tablespoon of gomasio (or just plain sesame seeds)
Maybe a couple tablespoons of olive oil

Cut the stems out of the (washed) kale and tear it into bite-sized pieces. Toss with the lemon juice. Add the Bragg's, to taste. Don't let it get too salty. Then add the olive oil and the gomasio. Toss it really well and let it sit for about ten minutes so it can wilt a tiny bit. It's really good, and weirdly like a seaweed salad. 

Then get your wool socks out and find a potluck to go to. There's  no way around it. This is potluck food. 

I will try to blog about the exact meaning of Bragg's, and how it is different from soy sauce even though they are both made from soy... but for now let's just it exist in all its strange and wild mysteriousness.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would SO love to have seen a picture of that salad...and I'd love to borrow Food Matters when you're finished with it!

Larissa said...

I'll try to drop it in your mailbox in the next few days.

Anonymous said...

Do you know about Crispy Kale? It's like nori crossed with a potato chip(sort of) : Heat oven to 350 and set a rack on the lowest level.
6-8 cups kale, stems removed
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp apple cider vinager
1/2 tsp sea salt

Spread kale on sturdy rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with oil and vinager and toss. Place on lowest rack and bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven and toss again so kale can get evenly crispy. Bake another 10 minutes or until kale is crispy.. It should be lightly browned and crispy to the touch...it should crackle, not bend. Remove from oven and sprinkle with salt. I can almost get my kids to eat this....

Larissa said...

Crispy kale is awesome! Thank you for posting that!