Kale Salad with Togarashi, Apples, Pecorino, Sweet Almonds and Dried Cranberries
This is one of my favorite salads. With Kale being one of the highest nutrient rich foods (and ANDI score of 1000), I try to squeeze this in my dinners as often as possible. The most important thing with kale is that you can’t have it dry, it really needs a lot of love, which translates to oil! First you needs to make sure your kale is washed, which sometimes, takes wiping down the front and back of every leaf. You then need to completely dry it, because as well all know, oil and water don’t mix. Next you have the remove larger ribs that run down the center. Then you cut all of the leafs off. Try to keep them in large pieces. You then stack a series of leaves and roll them, like rolling a cigar. You will have a tightly wound up spiral of leaves. You then cut ⅛” thick (or thin) so you have small strands of leaves, like in photo above. Once all of the leaves have been nicely cut into thin and long pieces, place them into a bowl. Now you give it some love, pour in the EVO Oil into a bowl and toss around so that all of the pieces get a nice coating of oil, this is what softens it up. Next add apples, dried cranberries, chopped sweet almonds, pecorino and toss well to cover all ingredients in oil. Your last step is to add the Japanese red pepper (Togarashi). I would add this slowly, then toss around and see how much is enough for your individual taste. Some people love the red pepper spice, others have less tolerance for hot foods (like my husband). It does contain a bit of salt, so just keep tasting to see if you need additional salt in your salad.
Ingredients:
- Large bunch of Curly Kale
- 2 tbsp EVOO (olive oil)
- 1 Gala Apple (thinly sliced)
- ⅓ cup Dried Cranberries
- ⅓ cup Sweet almonds (chopped)
- ½ cup of shredded pecorino cheese
- ½-1 tsp Togarashi (Japanese Spice)
- ¼ tsp salt (optional)
Curly Kale
Kale with ribs removed
Rolled Kale leaves rolled
I also found some interesting information about Kale from Dr. Perlmutter (author of Grain Brain). I have included it here, but you can also visit this link to read the rest.
Kale, a member of the cabbage family, is power packed with vitamins A, K, C, with meaningful amounts of B vitamins as well as trace minerals. It’s low in carbs and calories. Kale is rich in a chemical called sulforaphane, and this may be one of kale’s most important health attributes.
Sulforaphane is a sulfur-rich chemical that activates a gene pathway in animals as well as humans called Nrf2, and when Nrf2 is turned on by consuming sulforaphane rich foods, several important health-promoting mechanisms are accentuated. These include a reduction in inflammation, enhanced antioxidant protection, and powerful amplification of our ability to detoxify potential damaging chemicals.
