Pasta with Kale

On a recent visit to One Star Farm in Baltimore County I picked up this suggestion from owner Joan Norman for using kale: cook the kale in the pasta pot with the pasta. When the pasta is done, Joan said, so is the kale.

We have a couple of gorgeous Tuscan kale plants in our garden begging to be used. The leaves have great flavor, but they do cook a while before they are tender. So I applied Joan's suggested method to whole wheat pasta and you see the results here: Tuscan kale with whole wheat rotini and fresh goat cheese.

Prepare the kale as usual, stripping the leafy part away from the stem. Roll the leaves together and chop into a chiffonade. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the pasta (1 pound for six large adult servings) plus chiffonade from several kale leaves. When the pasta is done, drain, plate and garnish with goat cheese and freshly ground black pepper.

(The other side in the photo is our go-to smothered okra. We are harvesting lots of okra these days and making lots of smothered okra.)

Happy Birthday, Tomeika!

Yesterday we celebrated our friend Tomeika's twenty-seventh birthday and my wife spent the day making Tomeika's favorite foods so we could enjoy a lovely meal together on the terrace.


The menu: crab cakes, macaroni and cheese, braised kale with bacon, followed by a German chocolate cake.


German chocolate cake happens to be my favorite as well and I'm told our 7-year-old daughter helped in the baking. At a certain point, she was instructed that some of the eggs needed to be separated. Her solution to that request was to begin placing eggs in different parts of the kitchen: an egg on top of the microwave, an egg on the kitchen table, etc. It sounds to me like the eggs had plenty of separation...


At this point I need to interject that my wife makes probably the best crab cakes anywhere. For those of you who think crab cakes are something pounded out with lots of bread crumbs, then tossed in a deep fat fryer until the resemble something close to a horse turd, I have news.


My wife makes her crab cakes much more in the style of Maryland's Eastern Shore, where the large pieces of premium crab meat are just barely held together with a little mayo, a little mustard and a little fresh bread crumbs (not the stuff out of a can). At the Captain's Table in Crisfield, they are made in just this manner--more a tall pile of crab meat than anything--then finished under a broiler. Or at least they were the last time I was there years ago.


My wife prefers to fry her crab cakes in a heavy iron skillet until they are just browned on either side. And, yes, they do sometimes want to separate around the edges, there's just no helping that.


One of our favorite places to eat in the District of Columbia is The Diner in Adam's Morgan. I should amend that to say this is one of the places frequently haunted by my wife, my daughter and our friend Tomeika, often as a group. They particularly favor The Diner's macaroni and cheese and my wife was shooting for something approximating that, but wanted all you readers to know that the recipe she used came from Martha Stewart's website.

This is a dynamite macaroni and cheese, with both sharp cheddar and Gruyere cheeses in it and a wonderful crustiness owing to the bread crumbs my wife made fresh from a rustic loaf purchased at Whole Foods. After assembling the dish she poured it into one of our ceramic ovals and baked it earlier in the day. Then just prior to serving she placed it back in the oven to warm and develop that beautiful brown top. My wife used a round pastry cutter to place rounds of macaroni and cheese on the plates.

Finally, it turns out Tomeika is a big fan of greens. But greens prepared a certain way, which is the slow, Southern way that just so happens to be my favorite way with greens as well. These greens in fact were the dark Italian kale I harvested and cooked some weeks back. While they were defrosting, I sauteed a quarter-pound of slab back, roughly chopped, in some olive oil. When all the grease had been rendered, I removed the bacon and sauteed a whole Vidalia onion cut into thin strips. Then I added back the bacon and about seven cups of chopped kale along with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and let everything cook very slowly in a heavy pot for about 45 minutes to meld all the flavors.

It's a long walk from the kitchen to the terrace. My wife plated the food restaurant-style and we walked the plates out there and had a beautiful meal. Our friend Darren joined us and we topped it off with the German chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and candles. I think Tomeika was pleased.

Golden Days

Enough talk. Let's eat.


All told, I've been away from the garden a full month this season. Long enough for the cucumbers to swell to bursting, the okra to get tough as wood, the beans to shrivel on the vine.


But last night we cut through all the whining, determined to make a meal of our labors. First, the carrots. I used to just scatter the carrot seed in patches, but I was never one for thinning the sprouts. So I've gotten smarter and started poking small holes, adequately spaced, in the soil with my finger, then planting the seeds one-by-one.


We have three carrot patches now, planted in succession with many different varieties, and the ripest one was in full bloom. For some reason, the yellow carrots are the first to bolt and the most temperamental where ripeness is concerned. So I went after the flowering carrots first and sure enough that yielded a bounty of goldens. These and the few traditional carrots I cleaned, peeled and grated into a curried carrot salad with apples.


The dressing is simply mayonnaise mixed with some homemade chive vinegar (or white wine vinegar), lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil (you could use a lighter oil, such as grapeseed or walnut oil), curry powder, sugar, salt and pepper. I usually add raisins as well, and you could throw in some toasted almonds or walnuts, but I was on a mission and forgot.


Note: Harvesting and cleaning carrots is fun but labor intensive. It helps to have a helper.


Next, the beets. I had wonderful success last year with fall Chiogga beets, but darned if I can get the spring-planted beets to do much. They only want to grow so large, then they stop growing and just sit there soaking up the sun. I think I need more organic matter in the soil. But in another area with well-amended soil, I planted golden beets and these have thrived. I started pulling a few of them and some proved to be enormous. After cleaning and trimming, I set them to cooking in a large pot of water until tender.


Remove the beets to cool. When they can be handled, rub the skin off and trim the remains of the green tops. Cut into slices or wedges, then dress with extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and chopped chives from the garden. Even better, add wedges of ripe red tomatoes and slices of red onion.


Finally, I have to say I am kicking myself a little over our dark Italian kale. It was doing fabulously--it was far and away the star of this year's garden--even after we'd been gone in Mexico for two weeks. That is, into the beginning of August. But a terrible heat wave descended on the District of Columbia lasting several days while we were away in Maine and the plants suffered a mighty scorching.


The harlequin beetles were moving in for a feed--a sure sign that the Brassicas are done. So I pulled all the plants out of the ground one-by-one and selectively culled the leaves that had not been too terribly affected. What I harvested was a mere fraction of what the plants had actually produced. But such are the consequences of being absent from the garden at the precise moment when it needs your attention. My timing, in other words, is pretty atrocious.


Nevertheless, what we had was enough kale for several meals. To salvage the lot, I just put a large pot of salted water on the stove to boil, trimmed the ribs out of the kale leaves, roughly chopped them, then cooked them at a very low boil until they were tender, about 30 minutes.

Most of the cooked greens I would pack and store either in the fridge or the freezer for later use. For our meal, I sauteed some onions from the garden, then some hand-crafted, hickory-smoked bacon. I then chopped the bacon and put that and the onions and three generous portions of the greens into the skillet with the bacon grease and heated it all through with a splash of apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper.


So much for cooking. Now, time to sit back and enjoy the view. Since starting the garden, we've had a family of goldfinches come to visit, now for the second year. One of them was perched atop the cone flowers, digging for seeds. When we sat for dinner, we noticed out the window that a squirrel had found a way to hang upside down at the top of the 10-foot-tall sunflower stem, and was munching away on the seeds.

Seems there's enough to go around for one and all. Bon appetit, everyone...

Spring Kale Harvest

A few snips here, a few snips there, and in just a few minutes we have a bowl full of kale, enough to feed four easily.

This is the kale I planted September 20 of last year. The variety is called Red Russian and it survived a balmy December and January, then a bitterly cold February. I could let it go a bit longer, but I need to start replanting this bed. Such is the life of a vegetable: It provides a few months of beauty in the garden at most, only to be cut down in its prime and wind up on someone's dinner plate. It is awfully convenient to be able to walk out the front door and gather dinner--or at least the side dish.

Tonight I am preparing this kale the same way I normally cook Swiss chard. I cut the greens into manageable pieces (about 10 ounces would be enough for four persons), then cook in a large pot of salted water until just tender, about 10 minutes. I then strain the greens through a colander, rinse with cold water and press the excess water out of them. Meanwhile, oil the bottom of a heavy skillet with extra-virgin olive oil and heat it over moderately high heat. Add 1/2 red onion cut into thin strips. Reduce the heat and cook the onion until soft and lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Now add the cooked kale to the skillet, mix well with the onions, add another tablespoon of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

I finish the dish with pomegranate molasses. If you are not familiar with this product, it is usually available in a small bottle at Middle Eastern groceries. It is a thick syrup with a strong flavor of pomegranates and a muscular tang. Use sparingly. I pour 1 or 2 teaspoons into the kale and mix. Serve warm, perhaps with a roasted chicken or grilled lamb.