summer salad template: warm asparagus kale salad

Salad doesn't interest me very much.

Usually, I just think, hmmm, fresh vegetables, nice. At home, we make perfectly nice lettuce salads with a simple vinaigrette . . . but I almost never go back for seconds.

Occasionally, and I mean occasionally, a salad makes me sit up straight and look at the big blue glass salad bowl to make sure I can eat some more.

Tonight, we happened upon one of those salads.

We had tender young kale and some local asparagus that needed to be eaten stat. I ripped up the raw kale and tossed it in the bowl, while I set the asparagus to boiling in salted water.

While the asparagus was simmering away, I pulled out a mug and made the vinaigrette. I wanted fairly strong flavours since I knew the asparagus would be sturdy and assertive.

I pulled out the Japanese ume plum vinegar from the back of the cupboard because it has a special kind of round salty flavour to it. Put a splash of that in the mug – maybe one tablespoon? Pulled out the grainy mustard and dropped in a teaspoon or so. Ground salt and pepper over. Drizzled as much maple syrup as I could get from the end of the syrup bottle – maybe three teaspoons?

Whisked it all together and started drizzling in fruity olive oil. I would say I used about three tablespoons of oil all together. Tasted and added another teaspoon of grainy mustard. Tasted again.

When the asparagus was bright green and tender-crisp, I chopped it into inch-long lengths and threw it on the kale. Spooned some vinaigrette over and sent it to the table.

It was absolutely heavenly. Suddenly we had a new summer salad template: raw kale with something steamed or boiled or roasted thrown on top and mixed with vinaigrette. I remembered to take a picture about 30 seconds before we ate it all.

With our bumper crop of kale, we will do this throughout the summer. I think you should, too.

You can make endless variations on the vinaigrette. Start with some kind of vinegar – red wine, sherry, rice – and mix it bit with a bit of mustard and something sweet, like maple syrup, honey or sugar. Grind a good amount of salt and pepper over it. Then slowly whisk in any kind of oil you like, about three times as much as the vinegar you used. Taste, season again, and toss with your summer salad.

Here's to summer salads!

Bonus photo!
North Saskatchewan River at 10:15 p.m. on the summer solstice.

one year ago: chewy granola bars and longest day link love
two years ago: hop & go fetch it: pacific rim edition and penne with sausage and greens
three years ago: tomato cheddar soufflé with asparagus and kathleen claiborne's hot cakes
four years ago: chilli pasta

black-eyed peas with kale and bacon

I am a reformed vegetarian.

Between the ages of 12 and 28, I followed various denominations of vegetarian: full, pescetarian, chicken-atarian . . .

Then I lived in a house full of people from Oxford, England and Atlanta, Georgia. Suddenly, bacon was frying in a heavy black cast-iron skillet all the time.

And the smell – well, the smell was irresistible.

Needless to say, bacon was my gateway meat.

Now, I am a proud omnivore and no denomination of vegetarian will describe me at all. Of course, we still do eat a lot of vegetarian meals . . . old habits die hard.

Which is why I'd like to offer you this almost-vegetarian dish – a dish whose genius lies in its use of bacon.

You see, you start with just a few slices of bacon and fry them up, until they're crispy and you can't resist doing a few taste-tests while they're draining on the paper towel. But – and here's the genius – you leave the little bit of bacon fat that has seeped out in the pan.

Yes, exactly! And then you cook your onion and carrot and celery and garlic in that bacon goodness. The veggies soak up that bacon goodness like a sponge and become glistening and full of flavour – all ready to hang out with their good friend, the black-eyed pea.

Do you know the black-eyed pea?

It's my favourite bean, possibly because it's my favourite card in my favourite card game – Bohnanza – but also because it's so tender and beautiful at the same time.

The black-eyed pea is yet another bean that is so much better bought dried, and then soaked and cooked. You know that strangely slimy, gushy texture canned beans have? Well, dried beans don't get that (unless, I suppose, you cooked them forever and ever). Instead, a dried bean plumps up and maintains its shape even while it gets tender on the inside. To say that I like dried beans would be an understatement (see, the vegetarian in me lives on).

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you don't have time to deal with dried beans. That's what I thought, too – I'm never on top of life enough to soak dried beans over night. But it turns out you can cut that time right down to an hour with the same results as soaking: just bring them to a boil, turn them off and let them sit for 1 hour.

Anyway, back to this black-eyed pea dish. I call it a dish because I like to leave just a little liquid to dip my bread in, but otherwise I like it thick and substantial. Magical things happen here: with that bacon and the cumin and these beans and even the kale.

This is, unapologetically, a deep-winter dish that you might find yourself waiting for all year round – vegetarian or not.

one year ago: lemon syllabub
two years ago: rosemary gruyère baked eggs
three years ago: shortbread in january

black-eyed peas with kale and bacon
adapted from eating for england and for the love of cooking

feeds 4

2 c. dried black-eyed peas
5 – 7 slices bacon, chopped (easiest to do frozen)
1 small onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
15 oz. canned whole tomatoes, best quality you can get
salt and freshly-ground black pepper
1 tsp. cumin
pinch of crushed red pepper (or Korean red pepper)
3 1/2 – 4 c. chicken broth
2 – 3 c. kale, chopped finely

First, prepare the black-eyed peas. You have two options.

Option 1: Put the black-eyed peas in a big pot with lots of water. Soak them for at least 8 hours.

Option 2: Put the black-eyed peas in a big pot with lots of water. Bring them to a boil. Turn off the heat, cover and wait 1 hour.

Drain your prepared black-eyed peas and rinse them well.* Set aside.

Put a big heavy-bottomed pot (like a Dutch oven) over medium heat. Cook the bacon until it's just cooked and a bit crispy. While it's cooking, prepare a small plate with a paper towel on top. When the bacon's done, use a slotted spoon to take it out and put it on the prepared plate.

Add the onion, carrot and celery to the bacon fat left in the pot. Fry for 2 – 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the tomato, salt, pepper, cumin and crushed red pepper and cook for 2 – 3 minutes. Break up the tomatoes with your spoon a bit while everything's cooking.

Pour in the chicken broth and prepared black-eyed peas. Bring to a simmer and cover. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes, until the black-eyed peas and veggies are tender, but not too soft.

Stir in the kale and bacon and simmer for 5 more minutes. Serve – we like this with crusty bread or homemade cheesy garlic toast and a glass of red wine.

*Apparently, if you rinse beans, they are less likely to cause gas.

penne with sausage and greens

This was the winter of kale.

This was the spring of kale.

This is the early summer of kale.

We have learned how to make kale chips and we have learned the secret to enjoying kale: chop it into very small, tiny, miniature pieces. Chopped like that, we ate it almost every week and hardly noticed.

See those fine bits of kale and chard?

You may be a kale fan.

You may enjoy eating tough pieces of the same green leaf over and over again.

We're not and don't.

But we do, of course, want to eat local vegetables in season, which is why we're still eating kale six months after we learned to chop it very finely. (When does the season end???) And now Swiss chard is joining the kale ranks.

We've also sought out new recipes to use this everlasting vegetable, which leads me to today's offering: penne with sausage and greens.

Dear Ricardo calls for arugula, but I knew kale would work. Turns out, so does Swiss chard. All these green options make it a very flexible recipe for the whole year long. I like that, since it also comes together quickly – 35 minutes or so – so it's easy to make after work.

I seem to be using "fun" as a prerequisite for recipes these days – remember the potato chips in the lettuce wraps? – and this one definitely measures up. Because you actually get to snip open your raw sausages and squeeze that tasty meat right out! How fun is that? Let me tell you, it's pretty darn satisfying.

Using sausage meat like this is brilliant, really, since the meat is already seasoned and ready to make me a quick dinner. No fuss, no muss (except for the fun squeezing).

What more can I tell you?

Oh, right, about Ricardo. Do you know this dear man? We haven't actually met him, but we are addicted to his cooking videos.

Apparently, he's quite famous in his native Québec. A little while ago, he started recording "Ricardo and Friends" in English. Every episode, he has people come over and he cooks for them with great enthusiasm in his big Montreal kitchen. Sometimes, he cooks for the workers re-paving his street, sometimes he cooks for his friends' kids, but usually, he cooks for two or three good-looking Montréalais friends. (Why are French Canadians always so much more chic than English Canadians?)

The friends all ooh and ahh over the meal and we invariably wish he would invite us over.

Sometimes, we watch him in French to practise our French, but he seems to speak a lot more quickly in French. It's like his whole personality changes, which is fascinating in itself.

But anyway, back to this recipe. It works! It makes a great dinner! Don't worry about that whole cup of red wine – it cooks right in and helps finish the sausage-y sauce.

Bon appétit!

One year ago: Kathleen Claiborne's hot cakes
Two years ago: Chili pasta

penne with sausage and greens
adapted from Ricardo Larrivée
serves 4 – 5 

 


375 g. (3/4 lb.) penne pasta
30 ml (2 tbsp.) olive oil
450 g. (1 lb.) good sausage meat, pork or turkey, squeezed out of the casing
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp. Korean red pepper flakes or hot pepper flakes
4 plum (or any) tomatoes, diced
500 ml (2 c.) Swiss chard, kale or baby arugula, chopped finely
250 ml (1 c.) red wine
250 – 500 ml (1 – 2 c.) Asiago cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in salted water until it's al dente. Drain and toss with 1 tbsp. olive oil. Set aside.

In the mean time, heat a heavy-bottomed skillet or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the other 1 tbsp. of oil. Brown the sausage meat, garlic and pepper flakes, breaking up the meat into small pieces as you please. This will take about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes. If you're using chard or kale, add it now. Stir often until the liquid has evaporated, about 7 minutes. Pour the wine in and try not to panic about the amount of liquid you now have in your pan. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the pasta and stir until everything is hot. Taste for seasonings and add salt and pepper if necessary. If you're using arugula, stir it in now.

Serve in wide, shallow bowls with lots of Asiago cheese.