When I
told my wife that I was cooking some gigande beans with lacinato kale for our
Tastebuds blog, she informed me that Emily Weinstein had that same day written about
kale in Mark
Bittman's popular New York Times blog. I was struck by
something that appears early on in that piece – that people visit the farmers
market and wonder how to cook kale. Many fine cooks have found that a
simple sauté with a slight braise in a flavorful liquid brings out the rich and
meaty flavor of this most wonderful of vegetables.
Lacinato kale, Tuscan kale, or dinosaur kale
(probably its most common moniker in the fancy grocery stores – named for the
pebbly reptilian like appearance of its leaf) is of Italian origin.
Cavelo Nero or black kale, as it’s known in Italy, first started appearing on
menus in the Bay Area about 10 years ago. And what a revelation it
is. Growing up in the South, I was familiar with the regular garden
variety of kale; while that variety has its merits, I would tend to lump it in
the family of collards and greens that are best served by relatively long
braising in a flavorful ham hock or bacon infused stock. Ultimately the
final taste of these dishes, while delicious, reflects the taste of pork much
more than the flavor of the vegetable. No such preparation is necessary
with Tuscan Kale. Its flavor is extremely rich and quite meaty and often
needs nothing more than a little garlic and lemon to complement it.
I wanted
to introduce a less common way to prepare lacinato kale that also showcases
this vegetable’s extraordinary flavor and versatility. It involves a
technique to which I was first introduced at the wonderful and famous
restaurant in Florence, Cibreo. It was simply white beans that had
been cooked with some onion and garlic in chicken stock – there was no addition
of pork flavor whatsoever. Right before serving, some finely cut lacinato
kale had been swirled into the beans and the entire dish finished with lovely
Italian extra virgin olive oil. In a sense the kale had been
treated like an herb, as it had been added to the dish right before serving,
and, like an herb, its aroma and flavor had permeated the dish. I
wouldn’t have thought of using the vegetable in this way, as a longer cooking
time brings out more flavor. But in this case, the fact that the kale had
been so finely cut allowed the heat to essentially cook the vegetable almost
instantly, so that the dish retained the raw aromatics of the vegetable but yet
cooked the kale enough to bring out its fully developed flavor. I
recommend using a very sharp ‘Santoku’ style knife to chiffonade
the kale without bruising and leeching flavor onto the cutting board.
Click here for a simple and wonderful recipe
for gigande beans with lacinato kale:
Lacinato Kale is available at most high
end markets in the Bay Area these days (Whole Foods,
Adronico’s,
Bi-Rite).
However, I highly recommend purchasing it at any of the farmer’s markets in the Bay Area. The fresher the kale, the
more and meatier of a flavor it has and purchasing it directly from the farmer
is the only way to guarantee it just came out of the ground! Or, grow your own!
Tuscan Kale grows incredibly well in the Bay Area microclimate!
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