Mediterranean Kale is one of my favorite side dishes. Tender ribbons of kale in a lemony dressing toss with bell pepper, pine nuts and olives. It’s absolutely delicious.
There are two secrets to getting a tougher dark leafy green like kale taste as flavorful, tender and delicious as if it were cook. The first step is you want to cut the kale into really fine pieces so that it’s softer and more palatable. And I'm going to show you how to do that in just a minute. And the second step is that instead of just gently tossing the kale in a dressing the way you might gently toss a green salad because you don’t want it to wilt. You actually want the kale to wilt. So instead of a gentle tossing, you’re going to get in there with your hands and massage that kale and that’s going to soften it right up. So with those two tricks, you can take any tougher vegetable, cut it fine, massage in the dressing and make it really tender and delicious. So let’s get started.
Here we got some kale. This particular variety of kale is called dinosaur kale. It’s also sometimes called lasonado kale. And it’s a wide, flat, dark green leaf. Another variety you might be familiar with is curly kale. And that will work for this salad to. But the shape of dinosaur kale makes it particularly easy to cut into thin strips. So first I’m going to remove the stems from this kale. The stems are a little bit tough for a salad, but I can go ahead and save them for my green juice in the morning. So I’ll make a tear on either side of the stem and then strip it with my thumb and forefinger. Little more stem to remove and we’ll save that for juicing.
Once you got a couple of leaves destemmed, you can stack them and begin to cut them. I’m just going to stack them and if any bits tear off, you can go ahead and stack those inside. And then I’m going to fold it in half lengthwise. And then begin rolling it into a cylindrical cigar shape. I’m starting with this ends because they’re loose and I want to just get those tuck in. And I’m just rolling, creating a nice tight cylinder. And that’s going to make it easy to cut in to thin ribbons. This cut in French is called a chifonad cut and it just means thin ribbons.
So now using my chef’s knife, I’m going to use a down and through slicing motion, pushing down and forward with the middle portion of the blade, cutting strips as thin as I can. You can use this same cut with other greens. Spinach, chard and basil all look beautiful cut into a chifonad. If the strips are too long, just go ahead and cut it in half once. Add that to the bowl of chifonaded kale.
Now I’m going to make a simple lemon dressing directly in this bowl so it couldn’t be easier. I’m starting off with some extra virgin olive oil, that’s going to soften the greens as well. Adding a little bit of lemon juice and the acid in the lemon is also going to soften the kale. And a little bit of natural sea salt. All of these ingredients, olive oil, citrus juice and salt have a softening action. So they’re good to use as a dressing whenever you want to soften a tougher vegetable. And this is the fun part, I'm going to get in there and massage these greens vigorously with my hands. Really want to get in there and rub them down. And I’m breaking down the tough fibers much in the same way that cooking or steaming does but without losing the flavor or the color or the nutrients.
This is a great tip. You can do this with carrots to. There’s a recipe in my book I love called Moroccan spice carrots. And it’s made from ultra thin sliced carrots. You just slice them as thin as you can and you massage them in a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, cayenne pepper, curry powder, cinnamon, cloves, hardimon. Add a little bit of parsley, a little orange juice in there to. And it’s just delicious.
Look how much this kale has broken down just in a couple of minutes, not even that long, of massaging. And it’s just like I steamed it, just really condensed down. And see it’s like giving off juice. Alright. So we soften the kale, I’ll go ahead and rinse off my hands now.
It’s really fun to get in there and touch the food to, I like that. So now I’m going to add a few different ingredients to add some color and different flavors to this salad. I’m going to start with some finely diced red bell pepper, and you do that just by julianing the pepper the way I did for the sushi. And then you can cut it into a dice, which just means a fine cube. So we’ll go ahead and add the red bell pepper. I’m going to add some pine nuts. This salad is so colorful. It’s great for the holidays. Bring it to a party. People will really appreciate having something green at their party. And they just can't believe you can make raw kale taste this good. And some finely sliced olives. I sliced the olives rather than leaving them whole, because if you live them whole it’s a little bit too much olive flavor. But now we’re just going to get subtle hint of olive in every bite.
This is just one of many variations of this kale salad. Another one of my favorites is leaving out the olives and the bell pepper and adding some golden raisins. And that adds a nice sweetness to this dish, just the pine nuts and golden raisins. So that’s another variation. Give this a toss. That just looks beautiful. I probably eat this salad about three times a week. So good for you, the kale is so nutritious. It’s loaded with calcium. It’s got protein in it. Really healthy green to eat.
And there we got a colorful, beautiful, delicious Mediterranean kale salad. It’s hard to believe that anything so good for you can taste this amazing.