Leafy Greens

Have you been eating enough leafy greens?  Can you ever eat enough?

I made a kale salad tonight, that I rendered from memory based on a kale salad of my mother and father’s making, which was in turn adapted from Diabetic Monthly.  I know, I know, Diabetic Monthly.  But SERIOUSLY.  You have to try this.  Anyone who has ever had a plate put in front of them at my family home knows we don’t mess around. 

What I did:

Ingredients:

Early Girl Tomatoes (3 medium sized, diced), 1 Large Bunch Curly Kale, kalamata olives, shallot, sunflower seeds.

Dressing: Mustard, garlic, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, olive oil

In a large bowl mix a dollop (approx. teaspoon or larger) of mustard with a generous splash of soy sauce and one large minced clove of garlic.  Add a generous splash of rice vinegar.  Taste.  Adjust soy/rice vinegar ratio to taste.  Add about a tablespoon of sesame oil for flavor (it’s too thick to do for the entire oil portion of the dressing).  Add olive oil so that the oil to other ingredient ratio is approximately 1:1.

Then strip the kale from the hard center spines of the leaves.  Wash, dry, and chop roughly.  Put in the bowl with the dressing.  Chop tomatoes, add to bowl.  Dice about a third to a half a cup kalamata olives (depending on how salty or olive-y you like things).  Throw those in the bowl.  Dice one shallot, add to bowl.  Throw in a third to half a cup of sunflower seeds and toss.  

Let sit for about 10 minutes for the kale to absorb the flavors of the dressing and other ingredients (kale is like the opposite of any lettuce you would usually use for a salad, it will stay crisp and absorb flavor rather than wilt under dressing).

Those Early Girl tomatoes were AMAZINGLY sweet.  I mean really sweet.  Like let’s make a tomato crisp for dessert sweet.  Wow.