kale & molasses
I've been away for a bit due a cold, some problems with our site host that had my site down for a few days, a relapse into my junior high days of inhaling trashy fantasy novels, and just plain winter laziness. Sorry about that! So, here's a tasty link for you and some food news.
I love love love kale. I haven't always, but in the last couple of years, it's become my second favorite green vegetable (just after spinach). However, this dish may be pushing it into my top spot: boiled kale with a fried egg and toast, from Orangette. It's super easy--maybe 20 minutes of prep work and another 25 minutes or so just to cook by itself; it's quite healthy; and it's tasty far past what you would imagine. I keep meaning to take a picture of it, but I always forget when it's in front of me, because I start to eat immediately. Even if you're not a huge kale fan it's worth checking out.
In other food news, one of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a guided tour of the produce section at Whole Foods, led by Steve, who has just finished a season working on an organic farm. Dave and I came home with a slew of new vegetables that we never cook, including delicata squash (amazing!); fennel (raised soup to a whole new level!); and collards (his suggestion that we braise them with sweet potatoes turned out awesome), as well as some new ideas for stuff we make all the time. We also came home with some new spices to try (rice plum vinegar and gomashio) and some new types of rice (forbidden rice!). I've been cooking a lot more since we moved, and my cooking skills are improving rapidly, so I'm pretty excited to have some new things to try.
And in the sort-of-food-news and sort-of-bizarre-historical-anecdote-leading-to-public-reform folder, today is the 90th anniversary of the Boston Molasses Disaster, in which 2.3 million gallons of molasses flooded the North End after a storage tank burst, killing 21 people and injuring 150. The wall of molasses that exploded out when the tank's rivets failed was moving at 35 mph and was between 8 and 15 feet high, with 2 tons of pressure per foot. The disaster eventually lead to better building regulations. I learned about this as a small child, but I'm not sure it made it into history books outside of New England. You can read about it at a historian's site and on Wikipedia.