The hot weather today made me crave something light, fresh and green. Here’s what I came up with from the nearly empty fridge. It was a surprising hit and was deemed ‘blog-able’.
A few handfuls of gorgeous local kale from
1 Fuji apple, thinly sliced
a handful of natural sliced almonds
some shavings of parmesan
a couple of glugs of olive oil
juice of 1/3 of a lemon
freshly ground pepper and sea salt
I bought the kale yesterday from the Greener Grocer and it hails from Green Edge Gardens in Athens. Green Edge is wonderful farm that we toured with Slow Food Columbus back in 2008, as well as a wide variety of greens and micro-greens they also grow lots of mushrooms.
AD plucked a piece of kale from the salad spinner, tasted it and made a face. ‘It’s good for you,’ I said, to which the response was ‘yeah, tastes like it’. He was won over by the finished salad though, licked the plate clean and I am sure he will be asking for it again.
While I heated up a cast iron skillet, I washed, spun and then finely shredded the kale and then washed and sliced the apple. I lightly toasted the almonds until they were fragrant and added them to the salad, I shaved some parmesan from the block that lives in our fridge and dressed and tossed the salad. Voila, a lovely spring salad: sweet apple, a hint of acidity, salty cheese, crunchy almonds and verdant kale. One of the nice things about using kale in a salad is that it doesn’t wilt as easily as lettuce, so leftover salad will keep better.
The salt I used is ‘Fiori & Salt’ an Italian blend of sea salt and dried flowers. It’s so pretty and has a wonderful floral aroma of which I mostly detect chamomile, it is especially good on eggs.
