Personally, I didn’t know what all the fuss about Kale was about. My mother and grandmother never cooked with Kale (or any other greens except iceberg lettuce and cabbage). And, while my own cooking repertoire has expanded over the years to include many, many items, I had never tasted — let alone cooked — with kale. Oh, it looked OK. Dark green, leafy and curly, and enjoying a great reputation for its antioxidant and nutritional value. But what exactly to do with it? I hadn’t a clue. Hmmm … internet time.
Martha Stewart and other culinary sites added that Kale turns sweeter in cold weather – that it is best from mid-fall through early spring, to avoid wilted leaves and yellow spots, and to store it in the coldest part of the refrigerator, loosely wrapped in a plastic bag. Most important, she stressed, eat it while very fresh before it wilts and turns bitter. Other sites instructed me to look for the dark, crisp leaves and to remove the leaves from the tougher stocks, and the heavier veins from the leaves before cutting into bite size pieces.
More Google searching informed me that this dark, leafy green has been on dinner plates since Roman times, that its botanical name is “borecole” and that it is part of the cabbage family that includes broccoli, cauliflower and collard greens. I learned that kale was first cultivated from wild varieties by the Greeks and Romans, and later spread throughout Europe, where the leaves were called “coles,” and then to the British Isles. From there it was transported to the Americas. The first time it was recorded in the U.S. was in 1669, referred to as “colewarts.”
Evidently, you can add kale to your winter soups, sauté with a splash of olive oil, chopped onion or garlic, serve raw as a salad, stir fry, use as a pizza topping, add to smoothies or bake into kale chips with drizzling olive oil and kosher salt. Who knew?