Kale

I find kale a little daunting sometimes. When it is big and old and leafy it's just not worth the effort. But when it's young, you can treat it much as you would any other vegetable. With that in mind, I bought a large bunch the other day at the 19th Avenue Farmer's Market on Woodbine and 19th, along with some onions, apples, plums, peaches and a basket of sweet cherry peppers that I am still deciding what to do with. More on those later though.

This morning, I was going to make some salmon for Serena's lunch, but realized I didn't have any around. There came a brief thought of just handing her $ 10 and letting her buy her own, the kind of thought that comes by frequently when it is 7:30 in the morning. But I pushed it aside and remembered the kale.

First, I deveined and finely shredded a few leaves, wilted it in a pan and then added it to a fine clear chicken soup with carrot I had made the day before.

Next, I did the same with a couple more leaves, diced a tomato and minced a garlic clove. As a portion of penne was nearly done, I tossed the kale in some olive oil, added the garlic, salt and pepper. Into that went the tomato and simmered on a medium heat till they started to break down.

At that point, the pasta was almost done, so I drained it and added to the kale/tomato. Tossing it in the hot sauce would cook it the rest of the way, though I still wanted it a little undercooked as it was for lunch - as it would keep cooking in the thermos. I added a little pasta water and olive oil to make more of a sauce.

Finally, in with a few cubes of feta and it's done.

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I still had a good couple of handsful of kale left, even after my attempt to get Serena to eat it all this morning, so I decided to use more of it for lunch.

The salmon I was going to make this morning had defrosted (I usually buy large pieces, cut it up into single portions, vacuum seal it and freeze it). That was easy - salt, pepper and a nice hot pan, deglazed at the very end with a splash of lemon juice.

The kale - I deveined it and tore it into rough pieces and followed much the same procedure as this morning except there was no pasta and it became just a vegetable dish. I also splashed in some balsamic right at the end.

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Relaunch!

Hello everyone. You might have noticed I took a short break in between posts. About a year to be precise. That doesn't mean I stopped making and eating and thinking about food - far from it. But I felt things were getting repetitive - after all you can't eat something new every day which is what I thought a food blog was supposed to be. 

Clearly it's not, but even so I don't know how professional bloggers do it. Most of my time each day is taken up with wife, dogs, children, some time for me, errands, wife (yes I know she is in there twice .. love you honey!), stressing about piles of junk in the garage and not doing anything about it, planning things and then seeing the plans go awry at the last minute (case in point - I was going to mow the lawn today but as I sat down to write it began to pour down), travel, work ... and so on. Who has time after all that to research new recipes, visit new restaurants and supermarkets, revisit and rework old recipes - you don't just make something once and then cross it off the list. There is always some improvement you can make and I'd say you would try a dish at least a dozen times before you can safely say it's done. Then again, that may just be me, but I'd be very disappointed to find out that any of the sites I read engage in anything less than scrupulous testing and re-testing.

So, here we are looking ahead. I do have quite a few new things to write about: I have got a dry rub mix I really like for barbecues, as well as a very tasty sauce that goes well with ribs; I've been playing with pork belly a fair bit, and venturing out more into the world of desserts - not having a sweet tooth makes desserts drop all the way to the bottom of the list of interesting things to try. having said that, I found a chocolate cake that has turned out really well each time I tried it - courtesy of smitten kitchen. I've also been dipping into Gordon Ramsay's playbook from time to time and been very happy with the results.

What else? Well, we got a new dog, making three in total. His name is Charlie Brown, he is a chocolate brown toy poodle and he is 8 months old. I'll post one or two pictures of him later.

So until next time. 

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