A Kale and Heartly Veggie

There’s a curly green out there that is jumping off the shelves of health food stores. It’s inexpensive, perfect for soup season and has real nutritional clout – were talking kale.

At the Big Carrot Natural Food Market, kale flies off the shelves. Produce manager Grant MacKinnon says he sells 250-300 bunches of the curly green in a week.

That’s a lot of kale for a relatively small produce section. No doubt health-minded shoppers at this store are savvy about kale’s nutritional reputation.

A cup of cooked kale delivers almost a day’s supply of vitamins A and C. Kale is a veritable cornucopia of other nutrients, such as vitamin E and B6, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, thiamine, riboflavin and folate.

But that’s not all. Kale was recently ranked by a research team at Tufts University in Boston as the antioxidant king among veggies. In other words, kale may help protect you against age-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, cataracts, even memory loss.

Of course, throughout the Mediterranean they’ve been merrily dinning on kale for centuries.

Kale figures prominently in caldo verde, the national dish of Portugal. The leaves are sliced filament-thin and added to a hearty soup containing potatoes, garlic and vegetarian linketts. Kale is perfect contender for the soup pot, since its shape and flavour stand up well to long cooking times.

It comes in several varieties. The most common sports big, dark-green, sturdy leaves with curly edges. Most bunches are so voluminous, you’ll need to cover both ends with plastic bag when storing.

Ornamental kale, also know as salad savoy, is popular garnish used by caterers and rarely found in supermarkets. These striking kales are usually two-tone, such as light green and cream, or violet and maroon. All are edible yet their taste is much stronger than ordinary kale.

And there’s a new kale in town known variously as Tuscan kale, black cabbage, dino kale, lacinato or palm tree kale. In Italy, they call cavolo nero (black cabbage) and toss it into rustic preparations such as ribollita, a hearty bean and bread soup.

This kale doesn’t look like it’s frilly cousin. It has long, narrow, dusky blue-green leaves that are 20-30 centimeters long. Aficionados say it delivers an earthy sweetness unparalleled by common kale.

Choose kale that’s perky with rich colour.
You can boil, saute, braise or microwave it. It takes longer to cook than greens, usually 10-20 minutes, depending on the size of the leaves. The stems and mid-ribs are edible, but are often removed since they take longer to cook than the leaves.