Out of the comfort zone

The great NaBloPoMo marathon has kicked off and I've got to confess that I'm too chicken to sign up. Partly this is because I'm going to be away for a couple of days this month and may not be able to post, but mostly it's just that I'm a whole barrel-load of lazy. OK, I'll commit to writing for as many days of the month as I have access to a computer. (I don't think they have a blogging group set up for the partially committed...) Although, much like Hellojed over at It Had Better Be Good, I'm not sure what I'll be writing about. Guess that's all part of the fun!

So here's the first post of 30(ish).

Something magical happens when you drop kale into a saucepan of boiling water. Almost instantly, the dark green leaves take on a striking emerald hue, becoming a little transparent in the process. In fact, they wouldn't look out of place in a stained glass window. (Hmmm - a great vegetable window anyone? No?) How can eating in winter be considered dull or a deprivation when you have such wonderful produce to play with? And I love playing with my food :-)

This dish was my lunch the other day (and the day after - it reheated well). I had to fiddle with the recipe a bit to suit what I had in the house (not enough kale, basically) but I think it worked out ok: the higher bean-to-kale ratio made it more of a main course than a side dish.

Kale with cannellini beans adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Provides 2 main course portions

You'll need:

250g kale or mixed greens, stems and ribs removed
Salt and pepper
1 small onion, finely diced
1½ tablespoon olive oil
2 plump cloves garlic, minced
Pinch red chilli flakes
2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
½ cup white wine or water
1 x 400g tin cooked cannellini beans, rinsed well
Freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
Croutons to serve

1. Simmer the kale in salted water until tender - around 7 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve the cooking water, and chop the kale.

2. In a large pan, sauté the onion in the oil with the garlic, pepper flakes and rosemary for about 3 minutes. Add the wine/water and cook until it's reduced to a syrupy sauce.

3. Add the beans, kale and enough cooking water to keep the mixture loose. Heat through, taste for salt and season with pepper, and serve with a dusting of Parmesan.

Cook's notes

Just for interest, Deborah specifies 1½ to 2 pounds of kale, in order to serve 2 to 4 people. The rest of the recipe is exactly the same as shown above.

I didn't have any white wine around, so I just used water. Sounds dull but worked well. But I'd like to try the wine version at some point - it probably adds an extra savoury note.

Eat your destiny

Time to use up some of that produce I dragged home from the Temple Bar Food Market the other day…

First up is some lovely-looking kale from McNally’s Farm, North Co. Dublin. The lady at the stall suggested that all I needed to do to keep the kale fresh was trim the stalk ends and plonk the lot in a jam jar of water - no need to bother with the fridge.


And she was right. The kale was a bit limp after the trip home but perked up when I gave it the recommended treatment. That's osmosis at work, folks.

Unusually for me, there was no dithering over what to do with this bunch of kale. It was always destined to become soup.

A couple of weeks ago, we were in Limerick to visit some good friends, M. and S.. S. is also a keen cook, so talk inevitably turned to favourite recipes, new cookbook finds and what we'd both been making recently. Unsurpisingly, I raved about Dorie Greenspan at great length. When I finally stopped to draw breath, S. took the chance to recommend an excellent recipe from The Soup Kitchen, a book we'd both picked up for a song in the bookshop bargain section. No idea why it was going so cheap as it's a great book, full of interesting recipes - ranging from the simple and comforting to the ridiculously complicated/slightly intimidating... Oh... Maybe that's it.

Anyhoo, colcannon soup has been on my hitlist ever since that chat with S.. It's one of the easier recipes from the book - much more my style. But simple doesn't mean that it isn't good. And it makes the perfect lunchtime meal to combat the chillier weather that's creeping in.

Sometimes less messing around leads to better results.

Colcannon soup - recipe donated by Darina Allen to The Soup Kitchen, edited by Annabel Buckingham and Thomasina Miers

(Serves 4 to 6)

For the soup, you'll need:

55g butter
450g floury potatoes (I used Roosters), peeled and diced
120g onions diced
salt and pepper to taste
1.1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
130ml creamy milk

For the buttered cabbage/kale, you'll need:

450g Savoy cabbage/kale
40g butter

1. Melt the 55g of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. When it foams, add the potatoe and onion and toss in the butter until well coated. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and sweat on a gentle heat for 6 to 10 minutes. Add the stock, increase the heat and cook until the vegetables are soft.

2. Meanwhile, make the buttered cabbage/kale. Remove any tough stalks or leave and then cut into fine shreds. Put 2 to 3 tablespoons of water into a wide saucepan with 20g of butter and a pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, add the cabbage/kale and toss constantly over a high heat, then cover for a few minutes. Toss again, add salt and pepper as needed and then stir in the remaining butter.

3. Purée the potato and onion mixture in a food processor/blender and return to a clean pan. Add the cooked cabbage/kale to the soup. Taste and adjust for seasoning. Thin with milk to the required consistency.

Cook's notes

OK, I did mess with it a little bit. Colcannon is traditionally a creamy mashed potato dish with cooked cabbage mixed in. Kale is sometimes substituted but cabbage seems to be more usual.

And, when I weighed the kale, it turned out I only had about 250g rather than the 450g specified. Oh well, I could always bulk out the greens with some spinach that only had a couple of days left before it started going mushy. But it turned out that I wouldn't need it. Although the kale cooked down, it was still pretty bulky and filled the soup nicely (see pic above). So I'm not sure what 450g would look like. Maybe it would be more cabbage/kale with a bit of soup at the bottom of the bowl.

There's a lot of butter in the recipe. I balked at just how much to start with but then shrugged my shoulders and thought,'Try it this way first, then adjust later (and go for a run in the meantime)...' So if I work out a way of reducing the fat without compromising the buttery flavour, I'll update this post.