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Since I hear kale is trending, I didn’t want to miss out here on TheAlbrecht! To me, kale seems like a hardy green that requires a little extra care and cooking. So it is perfect for fall and winter when I want to eat cozy food. I love to sauté it, stir it into soups and add it into any number of pasta dishes.  However, since I think spring might officially be here, and kale is giving way to everything else that is fresh and tender, I thought I’d better share this recipe before it was too late.  It’s a salad, which might be even more trendy than any other kale preparation and might just fit the bill for spring.

But before I jump to the salad, I should tell you a little bit about our weekend. Around these parts, the second weekend of May is pretty special. Weather permitting, dozens of hot air balloons launch early in the morning. This year we got to see the balloons floating by every morning. And despite slightly different air currents this year, or so it seemed to me, we could still get a nice view of things from our house—even better when it is an early morning launch! So, here is a view of one of the balloons that passed over our house this year.

But back to the kale, I was lucky enough to find some at my local farmers market. While it was a little early in the season and pickings were a little slim, there was enough kale to choose from, so I snatched up a few small bunches for the week. It was too pretty to cook, so a salad seemed to be in order. Happily for me,  I’d been thinking about a kale salad I tasted a few weeks ago while lunching with a friend.

Yes, I know that everyone seems to have a kale salad on their menus these days. But this one caught my attention because of the raisins. Yes, that’s right, raisins. For me, raisins in my salad was a foreign concept until I spent some time in France. Here and there, my salads seemed to be perked up with a little bit of sweetness from the raisins. I don’t know that there is anything inherently French about the addition of raisins, just new to me. Then this winter, Nigel Slater suggested in his book that sautéed greens could also benefit from the addition of a few raisins. So the raisins have been making appearances in my green since then!

So there you have it, an easy salad that is just as happy in a picnic basket as it is alongside a weekend barbecue. It actually benefits from sitting in its dressing for a little while, which makes it perfect to take along where ever you might need a little salad. Enjoy!

Kale Salad with Radishes and Raisins

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6 to 8 radishes, sliced and cut into thin strips

1/4 cup golden raisins, chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped Parmesan cheese

Zest and juice of one small lemon

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Dry the kale and chop finely. Place in a bowl along with a generous pour of olive oil and a little sprinkle of salt. Mix well to coat and let sit for at least an hour.

Chop radishes and raisins, along with the Parmesan cheese. Zest and juice the lemon. Add  to the salad and stir well to combine. Adjust the salt and pepper seasoning to your taste.

This salad keeps well, so serve immediate or take it with you. By next day, the kale will have softened a little more, but is still perfect for a little lunch.

I took a slightly new twist on gardening this winter. While wintertime does not seem like the season for much of anything fresh, I brought my garden indoors. Yes indeed, I started growing sprouts. I chalk it up to spending just a little too long in the grocery store one afternoon. I happened upon the sprouting supplies and things have been a little crazy since then.

I’m perfectly happy to take the seasonal approach to my vegetables. And while my fall CSA boxes transitioned to heartier greens and roots, I happily cooked along with all of them. But I do like a salad, even in the winter – some shade of green, leafy and full of crunch. As you may have seen earlier, I’ve dabbled with other greens for my riff on a Turkish Salad. But sometimes, you want something other than a standard head of lettuce. And here is where my little sprouting box in the window comes in.

I started out small with alfalfa sprouts. That is what I was most familiar with as a kid. But after seeing a few of the other choices – clover, radish, fenugreek – I went a little crazy. I even went online and found a few more adventurous blends. But of everything I have tried, I think my favorite has to be a combination of radish and clover sprouts. The radish has a nice zing to it and the leaves get nice and big for sprouts.

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B has even taken a little interest in what I’ve got growing. He likes to stand at the sink with me while I am rinsing out the sprouts in the evening. Some days we’ll pick them out of the trays, one at a time, and snack on them. Yes, that delights me!

The best part about this kind of gardening is that you don’t need dirt or even a well-lit window. Just a little spot on the counter in the kitchen will work just fine. I bought trays, but some people just do their sprouting in jars or other containers. With little attention and a few days, a little green goodness can be your in the midst of the chilly winter.

Who would have thought I’d be tracking down a salad at this time of year? Here it is, the holiday season with all of the merry and bright business, and I’m seeking out a salad! I suppose it makes some sense, with all of the fancy meals and sweets that seem to take over at this time of year. A crisp salad might just be the ticket.

But I should note that I’m not talking about just any lettuce and tomato salad. Those are best saved for the appropriate seasons, which usually does not pair the two together in my little summer time. Lettuce is at its prime in the spring when small, delicate leaves are a chore to pick, but so worth it! I know that the baby lettuce salad mixes are available at any grocery store, in any season, but more on that later. And tomatoes, let’s just save those for late July or August. They are better that way. In the meantime, I’ll tell you about the salad.

One chilly evening, I sat down with a friend to share dinner. We’ll often share a few tapas to start and just happened upon a Turkish Salad on the menu. A few ingredients were listed – endive, pomegranate, parsley and hazelnut toffee. Could I really have been hooked after that brief description? Seems so…

The salad was so perfect, a balance of everything I could want in a salad. The greens are seasonally appropriate, for me anyway. Somehow the bitterness of endive and frisée speaks of cold weather. The pale greenish yellow is a color that somehow brightens up a winter day, but at the same time, reminds me that sunlight is not the most plentiful! And crunch, so much crunch! The tart pomegranate, the rich green flavor of the parsley, salty olives and my favorite part, toffee! Yes, I may have wanted to get away from the sweet, but a little sprinkle of toffee in my salad was amazing.

I left the restaurant wanting more. Knowing that I’d be tracking down ingredients and recreating that flavor in the weeks to come. But let’s be honest here, I live in a small town. Finding ingredients for something called Turkish Salad certainly wasn’t going to be so easy.

Belgian endive, sure, I can find that. Frisée? Who shops for frisée on a regular basis? I knew I’d seen it before but what were the chances that anyone would be stocking it when I was looking for it? Well, let’s put it this way, I went to every grocery store in town. Some of them multiple times. I talked to anyone working in the produce section, sometimes having to explain just what it was I was looking for. One guy suggested I buy a couple of bags of salad greens and pick the frisée out! It amused me, but it turns out he couldn’t find any bagged greens that included it! At another store, I had a lengthy discussion about the difference between curly endive and escarole. I am not an expert, but it turns out the produce guy might not have been either! In the end, frisée was substituted for the pale inside leaves of curly endive. I wish you more luck!

And don’t let me forget about the pomegranate molasses. It doesn’t really sound like an exotic ingredient, does it? I think anything with the word molasses in it just sounds warm, dark and cozy. But pomegranate molasses is not something in ready supply around here. Lucky for me, I shared my delicious tale of the salad with a friend traveling to Portland for the weekend. And happily, she was willing to go on a mission and came back with supplies for me.

Olives, pomegranates, flat-leaf parsley, homemade toffee, those were the easy ones. Although if I had a little bigger selection of olives, I’ve likely be a little happier. But I had gathered enough ingredients to take a shot at the salad. But before I did that, I wanted one more taste.

So off I went, out for lunch by myself. OK, I took my camera along because I really wanted to take a picture of how lovely it all looked, stacked up on a little plate. The restaurant was empty and I got a table by the window all to myself. Since it was early, the waiter was happy to help with my interest in the salad, answering questions about what type of olives they used, the vinegar and such.

And good thing I went, because I had forgotten a few little details, like the finely diced shallots that spiked the dressing or the fresh green flavor the liberal dashes of parsley left. And I wouldn’t have gotten to taste the golden beets with house made yogurt, citrus and the finest dusting of coriander. But we can talk about that some other time.

This salad might take a little shopping around to compile all of the ingredients depending on your location, but I think it could be just the thing to cure the winter grey. Fresh, crisp and bright, it might even find its way into a holiday meal and be perfectly at home. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

Happy holidays!

Turkish Salad

Adapted from Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen with special thanks to Island and Chris
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Serves two

1 shallot, finely diced

4 Belgian endive, washed, trimmed and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces

Small bunch frisée or curly endive leaves, washed and chopped

2 tablespoons flat parsley, roughly chopped

1/3 cup chopped green olives, use a mix of moroccan olives, if you can find them

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

Dressing of olive oil, champagne vinegar and pomegranate molasses, to taste

2 tablespoons toffee, I used homemade almond toffee

Peel and finely dice shallot. Let sit for 15 minutes in cold water. Maybe a little red wine vinegar, if you are feeling generous. Drain and pat dry.

Combine the greens, parsley, olives and pomegranate seeds in a bowl. Toss to combine.

Whisk olive oil, champagne vinegar and pomegranate molasses together in a small bowl. Add shallots to the mixture. Adjust seasonings to taste. This will likely depend on your olives and how salty they are. Dress salad and combine well. Arrange salad onto serving plates.

Sprinkle with about 1 tablespoon of toffee per plate. Serve immediately.

There’s no doubt about it, Paris has officially stolen my heart. No matter that my French is nothing to be proud of and that my scarf tying techniques still need improvement. I can’t think of a better place to work on both of those deficiencies!

My only complaint about my last visit was that my sister was not with me. That was understandable, since my own plans came together fairly last minute out of sheer need to get away. And while the timing couldn’t have been better on that front, I realized that future trips need to include more planning time so we can spend that time together.

For me, travel is not so much about what I can see. Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to miss an opportunity to stop by the Eiffel Tower. But some of my favorite moments might include regular treks to a nearby market. Especially once you have stopped by enough times to gain a little recognition with a vendor. This time, my regular stops by the produce stand yielded me a fresh piece of fruit with each visit. Fruit, at the cusp of ripeness and perfection, gently wrapped in a paper sack with a little packing for the journey.

And with that daily selection of choice ingredients comes the need for some time in the kitchen. Simplicity is key when you are traveling – no fancy dinners here. Just plain fresh good food, with the automatic additions of a baguette and wine. That time spent standing over the stove, gazing off into the courtyard, makes me feel at home.

Tina and I are always cooking together whenever we get a chance. Paris is no different. We roll up our sleeves, turn on some music and pour a glass of something before setting into the task at hand. Suddenly, the generous basket of chanterelles doesn’t seem to daunting to wash. The salad dressing becomes amazing with two sets of tasters sampling it. Cooking is always better with someone else.

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All of that shopping around is bound to bring inspiration. This time, the Raspail organic market gave me some ideas for a salad. Of course, the Sunday market on Boulevard Raspail is a dream to most food-oriented folks. One after another, vendors line the street with a range of everything organic. I was hungry when I got there and couldn’t help notice the vendor with the little tubs of take away salads. A simple fennel salad caught my attention and I ordered a little to take with me. (Don’t you doubt it, the hot potato galettes at the start of the market had me standing in line straight away, but I am talking about the salad today!)

Shopping done, we wandered over to the Luxembourg Gardens and found seats by the Medici fountain.  The gardens always seem like a perfect spot for a picnic, and my fennel salad made for perfect picnic fare. This simple salad consisted of roughly chopped fennel, dressed with citrus and a more than generous helping of pink peppercorns. I savored the moment, and the salad, tucking away the specifics in my mind for recreation later.

Fast forward a few weeks and I am standing in my kitchen. It’s not overlooking a courtyard. I’ve gathered all of the ingredients, not from an organic street market, but I’ve done my best.

It doesn’t take long – I slice up the fennel, a little thinner than my original salad. A bulb will do, depending on how many people you are serving. A generous squeeze of lemon juice, followed by a drizzle of olive oil and you are just about done. Salt to taste and pepper with as many pink peppercorns as you dare. Initially, I was concerned about overdoing it with the pink peppercorns, but as I learned, they are not the same as our usual black and white peppercorns. Instead, pink peppercorns add a fragrant and distinctly sweet flavor for foods. And, it really shines in this salad.

So here I am, sitting at my table with my dish of fennel salad and tasting Paris. I might as well be sitting right back at the fountain on that beautiful fall day. Really, it’s the simple things that end up meaning the most.