marinated kale parmesan salad

marinated kale parmesan salad

• 6.27.2016

Oh you sweet beautiful salad.

I guess not sweet because it's kale. But sweet in the sense of victory... because it came from my garden. After watching only two Youtube videos about how to harvest kale, I felt ready to actually do it. I used to get this awesome kale salad from B. Good that was pure heaven. A large part of the heaven came from the "marinated kale". Thus, marinated kale was the inspiration for this dinner. 

The other inspiration came from the fact I needed more crushed egg shells in my garden. The egg shells allegedly protect the tomatoes from bugs and give them calcium. It seems to be working but that could just be a fluke. The rest of the salad ingredients just came plucked from my oddly stocked kitchen cabinets. 

I did have this odd realization when I was plucking the kale. I only wanted to pick exactly what I would eat. The idea of wasting any of this kale would have been heartbreaking especially since I've been growing it since March in my garage. When you pick each salad leaf individually, the gravity of how many you use really hits you. I would think nothing of tossing a bunch of kale in the blender for a smoothie. Man, things have changed. I won't be wasting a drop of smoothie / salad / quiche this summer. Or at least I hope.

Here's how it goes. As an fyi, the ingredients noted are approximate. Just use as much as you want to eat. I noted about how much I used for one "small / medium" salad but use your own judgement on how many chickpeas you want to eat.

(Step 1) Combine lemon juice and olive oil in a bowl. Mix and season with a bit of salt and pepper. Add roughly chopped kale to the bowl and mix well to cover all the leaves. Ideally, let this sit for an hour or more in the fridge. 

(Step 2) While you are marinating the kale or just before you want to eat, you can make the pepitos and hard boiled egg. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and toss in some pepitos. Cook over medium heat, shaking skillet gently, until the first few pepitos start to pop. Remove from heat, toss with a big pinch sea salt and set aside. I'm not going to explain how to hard boil an egg. Just google it.

(Step 3) Ready to eat? Pull the salad from the fridge. Add parmesan and toss to evenly distribute across the salad. Add in the chick peas and diced avocado and mix well. 

(Step 4) Plate in the bowls you want to eat from. Sprinkle with pepitos and sliced egg.

(Step 5) ENJOY.

Shopping List (for 1)

1 lemon, juiced

1 Tbsp (or a heavy drizzle) olive oil

salt and pepper

Kale, cleaned and roughly chopped (a generous handful)

1/8 cup parmesan
1/4 of an avocado, diced
1/4 cup chick peas, rinsed (like a third of a can?)
1/8 cup pepitos
1 egg, hard boiled