ALL HAIL THE KALE
The latest food trends usually pass our columnist by, but this one is a real blast from the past
Alan Cochrane is up to speed with the latest superfood trend
There’s no escaping it. Every piece of dietary advice as we enter a new year insists that there’s one essential ingredient without which we’d all fail to lose as much as an ounce. Kale.
Here’s what one glossy food magazine said about this evergreen miracle worker: ‘If you don’t like kale, coax yourself with small morsels. Pair it with other foods that you like – the dark mineral taste goes well with chorizo, or as puree stirred through pasta.’
Last year Jamie Oliver published what he called ‘ Eight Killer Kale Recipes’. The chef described kale as a ‘superfood’ and as ‘a great source of vitamin A, which helps to keep our eyes functioning properly’. But wasn’t it carrots that were supposed to help you seen in the dark?
To put it mildly I’m amazed at the reaction from the world’s trendiest foodies to what I’d always thought of as an extremely modest vegetable. And the word ‘modest’ doesn’t really do it justice, either. When I was a lad I thought the stuff completely disgusting. My keen gardener father grew kale, as well as Brussels sprouts, and both found their way into the soup that my mother made.
His generation’s cultivation of kale was probably a hangover of wartime rationing when the government’s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign encouraged the population to plant this easily grown and highly nutritious vegetable. However, as a result of my early exposure to both kale and sprouts I couldn’t face either for decades. I’ve rehabilitated sprouts to some extent and can manage three or four on Christmas Day.
Moreover, and contrary to popular opinion, I have been eating my greens in recent years, including kale – steamed or lightly boiled – even if the rest of the family have steered clear. But the almost celebrity status of brassica oleracea, to give this veg its Sunday name, has taken me by surprise. For instance did you know that it has its own website, entitled ‘Discovering Kale’?
Even more surprising is that I appear to be alone amongst my wider circle of family and friends in being thus ignorant. For instance, my extremely well-travelled and worldly-wise nephew lives in San Francisco and appears to adopt all of the mores of a Californian lifestyle – most of the time at least.
When I last saw him a few months ago and praised him for not displaying any of the least attractive of West Coast traits, he explained: ‘Look, during the week I’m an American and eat kale. At weekends I’m a Scot, drink beer and eat square sausages.’ I was so astonished by this admission that I clean forgot to ask him where on earth he got square sausages in San Francisco.
Then there’s my sister-in-law – a lady of impeccable culinary credentials and expertise. On a recent visit to the brand new kitchen in her Surrey home (where else) I offered to help prepare supper and was about dump the kale into a pot of boiling water when she gave me a look of quite withering scorn and relieved me of the task. She then spread the leaves out in a roasting tray, sprinkled them lightly with the best olive oil, a bit of salt and pepper, and heated them briefly – producing an exquisitely tasty and crispy accompaniment.
When I mentioned my growing interest in the kale phenomenon to the esteemed editor of this magazine the great man was not at all surprised. He informed me that he’d once lived in a Dumfriesshire farmhouse where there was a plethora of the stuff. So much so that his lady wife believes that it was the consumption of kale that accounts for the healthy physique of her son. Mind you, from the look of him, her other half probably had his fair share of the green matter too. So much for it being a diet essential.
Still, I’m delighted that a vegetable that I’ve grown to like has become fashionable – an extremely rare occurrence. Just as long as nobody expects me to ever enjoy surely the most foul tasting foodstuff known to man: courgettes.