Kale Salad with Lemon-Honey Dressing showcases a nutritional superstar from the garden
Kale Salad with Honey-Lemon Dressing
Peggy Lampman | Contributor
The kale I'm using for this salad was planted a year ago. That's right. It made it through our mild winter intact. Its frilly leaves froze over the holidays and now have thawed, without so much a trace of frostbite!
I'm a survivor! (Kale that was planted last spring, and made it through the winter.)
Massage dressing into leaves.
A superfood is a food rich in phytochemicals: Chemicals that have disease-fighting properties. Curly leaf kale, packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals, make it one of the most nutritious green vegetables around.
A friend, Rebecca Bawkon, shared this "cleansing" recipe with me several years ago. Here's another recipe for Tuscan Kale with Oranges I've enjoyed.
Yield: 4 servings
Time: 12 minutes
Ingredients:
1 bunch small-medium curly green kale, washed
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons honey or agave
Instructions
1. With a sharp knife, remove tough center ribs from kale. Discard ribs or reserve for another use. Chop leaves into 1-2-inch pieces.
2. To make a dressing, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice and honey or agave. Massage dressing into kale leaves. Season to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. (At this point, I let the salad "marinate" at room temperature an hour or so; the extra time seems to tenderize the leaves.)
Comments
DBH
Sat, Mar 24, 2012 : 2:29 a.m.
From a nutrition newsletter (Environmental Nutrition), kale's "health benefits significantly increase when it's steamed, says a study published in the June 2008 Nutrition Research. Compared to its raw state, steamed kale leads the team of leafy greens tested for its ability to bind bile acids, which can lower blood cholesterol levels. Regular consumption of steamed kale is linked with lowered risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer."