Tuscan Kale Crisps

In my previous research for nasturtium recipes I also discovered that Kale Chips are allegedly addictive.

I have some Tuscan Kale (Cavolo Nero) coming up in the back yard, so I thought I'd give it a go out of curiosity.

So, as per the recipe, I chopped out the stems, then mixed up the leaves in a freezer bag with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and ground sea salt. Then I popped then into the oven on 200 degrees, admittedly a few minutes too long out of absent-mindedness.

I'd aim for ten - fifteen minutes but they were in for about 20 by accident, and turned out a touch too browned/black.

They came out crunchy, salty and delicious, but the bitterness of the Tuscan cabbage and the "furry tongue" spinach after taste were a bit too much for me, I only ate about a third of the batch before feeling overwhelmed. Fortunately they keep perfectly fresh and crispy in a zip lock bag. That was Friday, today is Monday/Tuesday (night) and they are still there as a handy zing of texture and flavour to have when I get home from late shift. If you love bitter greens and that spinach-y/dark-greeny flavour, I can see how they'd be morish, but unfortunately it is just too much for me.


I have a feeling the curly kale used in the recipe will be a more mellow bite, and I've seen bunches of curly kale in the local grocer's so I've got that as another option to try, I'll let you know!

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!