Braised Tuscan Kale

I had potted some Tuscan Kale seedlings on the balcony which did very well until the plague of white butterfly caterpillars pillaged them to the stem. As is my way, I chopped off their heads and left them there to see what would happen. Lo and behold each stalk bore two new mini-kale heads, but unfortunately, mini is where it stopped as the winter frost and lack of sun stunted their growth to a rather sad point.




The first time I ever had Tuscan Kale was on a photography camp, where one of the lecturers happened to also be an amazing cook, and he made a dahl/curry/chickpea/tuscan kale extravaganza one night that will always be stuck in my head.

Margaret Fulton's Encyclopedia of Food has a pretty good generic recipe for dealing with all the leafy greens (which I will have to dig out to post here) which I vaguely remembered and re-used:

Melt butter in a pan
Add (tiny half cm squares) chopped onion and garlic, heat until onion is translucent
Add thinly sliced bacon, heat until cooked
Add sliced tuscan kale, heat until wilted and cooked through
Add pinenuts
Nom.

Unfortunately with such a tiny harvest (both in leaf size and number) I got the ratios a bit wrong as you can see, but was a good excuse to have an excessively buttery bacony side dish to go with the bangers and mash Chris was making!

Watercress... it's the best!

(Backdated entry)

I've been going to the exact same fruit'n'veg stall at the markets since forever. A scavenge and a scrounge recently unearthed the fact that they don't stock watercress! Disaster. My balcony used to be my sole supplier of watercress for my many salads, soups and sandwiches cravings... in fact, I need to get my Dadsy's Chinese Watercress Soup, that reminds me...

Anyway, a walk across the way and I suddenly discovered the neighbouring stall, previously overlooked, has watercress in abundance! At only 1.99 per large box!

If you've never used watercress before, it's a peppery, crunchy treat raw in salads and sandwiches - in particular the tender baby leaves; or a beautiful, tender treat in soups and stews with a milder, robust "Chinese vegie" nommage to its stems and base leaves.

The markets that day had the most luscious looking rare roast beef I've ever seen just down "meat alley" as the other half calls it, as well as the standard olive bread, so here's what became of that (slathered with Philly cream cheese):



My all-time favourite is smoked trout, watercress, boiled potato & goat cheese salad. Here was my first attempt, well before the great balcony aphid plague of 2010:



Let me know if you have any other inspired watercress recipes!