Warm Kale Salad with Chilli and Ginger

Following another lovely New Year's holiday at my parents' place in Sweden, we are back with a new bundle of recipes. Lundulph is following the lead of his older brother, not by becoming vegetarian, but dramatically reducing the amount of meat he eats. So yesterday, I took the train in to our nearest larger town and did a full circle around the various food shops that cater for a more vegetable-strong diets and filled up my rucksack with interesting ingredients.

First up is this warm kale salad, which I spotted on the website of one of the Swedish breakfast shows. Lundulph has recently read that kale is one of the best vegetables to eat, so here goes. Unfortunately the recipe doesn't give the number of portions. The original recipe can be found here in Swedish. Also unfortunately whoever wrote the recipe, didn't bother with giving useful measurements on the vegetables, so below is what I got out of the packets I purchased from the supermarket, after washing and trimming. For the black cabbage and curly kale, I removed the stalk as it tends to be quite fibrous, then I cut in chunks. I shredded the red cabbage.

Ingredients

160 g black cabbage
160 g curly kale
160 g red cabbage
2 fresh red chillies
40 g fresh ginger
6 shalotts
½ dl sesame oil
½ dl grapeseed oil
½ dl soy sauce
6 tbsp sesame seeds
black pepper

Method

1. Peel and slice the shalotts; peel and grate the ginger; wash and finely slice the chillies.
2. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan, then transfer to a bowl.
3. Heat up the oils in a large wok pan. Fry the shalotts until soft and translucent.
4. Add the red cabbage and fry for a couple of minutes, then add the kale and black cabbage and stir until it starts wilting. You may need to do this in 2 - 3 parts.
5. Add the chillies and ginger and stir to distribute evenly.
6. When everything has started to soften, add the soy sauce and the toasted sesame seeds and stir through and it's ready to serve.

For carbs, I cooked quinoa and for proteins I steamed tuna steaks, very much like I've done previously, but without the marinating etc - I didn't have the ingredients, so I just sprinkled salt, pepper and 7 Thai Spice mixture on top of the steaks.

The combination worked really well. The chillies were graded at 2 out of 5, and were quite long in size, they were very tasty, but can be adjusted to what's available and the level of heat required.

The grated ginger didn't spread through as well for some reason, but formed a couple of lumps, inspite of my stirring, so maybe better to dice it very finely rather than grate.

Lundulph seemed to enjoy this meal very much, he ended up having his tuna steak and half of mine, though they were quite small, I thought. Also they were quite expensive, so we might use a different fish next time. But I'm pleased that I didn't over-cook them this time, they remained juicy and eaten in small pieces with the salad and quinoa, it was very tasty indeed.

As we're looking to move back to a better diet after Christmas, I saved all the stalks and used to make a vegetable soup, along with various other vegetables I'd saved, diced and frozen over the past few months. Another of our initiatives is to reduce our waste, so soups are very good in this respect.