This was supposed to be the Roman version of a Burmese tea salad, but then my husband convinced me to add an avocado.

THE first time I tried a Burmese tea salad, I immediately started trying to figure out how to make them at my house all of the time.  They are amazing: you should go to a place that makes them and put said salad into your face at the first possible opportunity.

BUT I could not figure out how to buy high quality fermented tea leaves.  I gave up my hopes and tempered my love for these salads with the quite unreasonably long wait outside of the local Burmese place.  Very small tragedy.

HAPPILY, I started reading Apicus - a cookbook from ancient Rome. (There are a lot of great vegetable recipes. Every recipe marked "for vegetarians" has calf's brains in it. There are no desserts. Salt is always added as a brine.) What if I took some traditional Roman vegetables, and added a Burmese twist?  I could still use the fried shallots (fried shallots are the best) and the chopped romaine (for crunch: a salad is still delightfully crunchy if it is 10% romaine instead of 80%. Pro tip.) I could use kale instead of tea leaves, I could replace peanuts with walnuts, I could use parmesan instead of fish sauce (yes I know garum is very very Roman but it's a salad few people want fermented fish on their salad.) and cucumbers instead of tomatoes: it would be great!

THEN the spouse convinced me to add an avocado. It was an amazing salad entirely because of the avocado. You know what makes it more amazing? Abandoning the Roman thing almost altogether, and using chopped cilantro or mangos or tomatoes, replacing the walnuts with sesame seeds and chopped peanuts, and adding olive oil.  Olive oil makes most things better.

Serves 4
Slice one large shallot thinly, and place over medium heat with a little oil.  Fry until crisp, stirring frequently to prevent burning.  Add a little salt.  This takes about ten minutes.

Tear one bag or one and a half bunches of fresh, crisp kale into bite-sized pieces.  Salt. Microplane about an ounce of parmesan cheese onto the kale; add a tablespoon of olive oil and toss gently so every leaf has a little bit of cheese on it to make up for the fact that it is not a carefully fermented tea leaf. (you could also use soy sauce or Bragg's or nutritional yeast, maybe.)

See how I've divided the ingredients into equal pie-chart slices? Do that, it looks nice, and then you look real smooth mixing it at the table.  You are going to add one or more of each of the following ingredients:

A small romaine heart, chopped (this is enormous; you may need to excavate a small pit in the kale for your lettuce.)
A half cup to full cup of a sweet thing like mangos, apples, pears, peaches, peppers, or tomatoes. 
A chopped avocado
A quarter cup of chopped herbs like cilantro, green onions, or mint (this is optional.)
A quarter cup of crunchy nut-like things such as peanuts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, or sesame seeds.

Put the fried shallots in the center to disguise how badly the segments connect.

Look how pretty that is!  So pretty!

Now squeeze a lemon over it and stir it up and serve it.

Tidbit: Miso Butter

Mix equal parts white miso and soft butter. Add it to all of the things. (About a tablespoon of each should be fine for a pound of produce. You know I believe that animal fats are fine in pursuit of eating leaves.)

Roast brussels sprouts are particularly good. So is fresh corn. Broccoli. Blanched kale. Sweet potatoes Or if you want to thicken a sauce, whisk this in at the end.

Raw Kale Salad

Now that I'm moving away from my hometown, I can share this recipe without fear of reprisal.

Stem and wash one bunch of tender crisp kale. (Soaking the kale in cold water can restore crispiness.) Tear into bite sized pieces.

Grate one small beet.

Toast 2 tbs. sesame seeds.

Mix the juice from three lemons, 2 tbs soy sauce, and 1/4 cup nutritional yeast. (This is not a low sodium dish.)

Pour the sauce over the beets. Add the kale and sesame seeds and stir. Eat.

Kale Gomae

Gomae is traditionally made with spinach, but I don't like spinach. C doesn't like kale, but he was born to suffer.

Put a large pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Wash and stem one bunch of dinosaur kale. (I think pretty much any kind of kale would work, though purple kale might be strange.) When the water is boiling, cook the kale until tender- 2-5 minutes. (Frequent tasting is necessary. Also, this is possibly a waste of very delicate kale. Make tabouli.) Drain the kale and rinse with cold water to cool. Squeeze out the water, leaving the kale in ever so appetizing green wads. Cut wads into half inch slices.

Toast 3 tbs sesame seeds over medium heat. Reserve 1 tbs and crush the rest lightly with a spoon. Mix 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp water, 2 tbs soy sauce, and 1 tbs mirin until the sugar dissolves. (If you don't have mirin, add a full tsp of sugar and an extra tsp of water or white wine or sake.) Add crushed sesame seeds and mix with kale. Arrange dressed kale on plates and garnish with remaining sesame seeds. Add two drops of toasted sesame seed oil to each plate. Eat.

My Last At Least I Wasn't That Desperate: Saddest Kale Salad

Unlike some people, I take my commitment to kale seriously.

Sometimes one is halfway through the morning routine, dressed in slacker business casual, and the sun rises revealing a beautiful cloudless sky. One curses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for its lies about definite precipitation. One now has about 15 minutes to remove the frost from the car windshield, possibly gas up the car, change into field clothing, and stuff 800 calories into a box before driving to the marina. It's days like these that engender the saddest kale salad.

Grab some kale. Pull it off of the stems and put it into tupperware until the tupperware is full. Add some vinegar and some oil. Close the tupperware. It's worth taking an extra second to make sure there's a fork in the lunchbox, because eating sad kale salad with fingers is not pleasant.

People will tell you that raw kale is inedible, but you'd be surprised at what seems edible when there's nothing else in your lunchbox but almonds.

Antipasto platter

Somewhere in my cold shriveled heart is a belief that a pile of bitter vegetables will make up for about a week of saturated fats, alcohol, and simple carbohydrates. It's like C and the whole cold drink on a hot day causes heart failure superstition. It's not that he believes it, it's that by now room temperature soda tastes better. So yes, after the excesses of the last holiday I am willing to call vegetables dipped in olive oil and garlic healthy and am willing to call bitter root vegetables antipasto. (Where I'm from antipasto is usually pepperoni, the saddest prosciutto, sliced mozzarella, Parmesan, and pickled pepperoncini- I feel like adding a couple of olives is pretty much the first step on a slippery slope to... a pile of bitter vegetables on a plate.)

Bagna cauda is supposed to be just ample olive oil and lots of chopped garlic, warmed gently. As someone who will take the occasional shot of vegetable oil when feeling low, oil and garlic isn't special enough for me. I added lemon and salt. (So exciting. Living the dream here.) So yes, heat one cup really good olive oil gently over a very low flame. Add six to eight cloves garlic, smashed and peeled. After about three minutes the garlic will be soft enough to smash further, if it pleases you to do so. Add the juice of two lemons and a dash of salt.

I used blanched kale, red endive, blanched carrots, sliced boiled beets with a splash of vinegar, thin sliced fennel bulb, and blanched Jerusalem artichokes. I would say to skip the carrots, but I'm pretty sure that it's the only thing everyone else ate. Seasonality is key, chickens- perhaps you are not reading this in the depths of winter and can choose from roasted peppers and ripe tomatoes and sauteed eggplant. Perhaps it is spring, and tiny baby vegetables are making themselves known. Do you wish to add some baked mushrooms? Some sweet onions? Some lovely spinach? Some olives and pickled artichoke hearts? Please do. Put whichever available vegetables that look delightful on a platter, and then dip them into the bagna cauda. (Some things- like blanched kale- require drizzling with the bagna cauda. Please eat blanched kale with a fork. For everyone's sake.)

I can feel my liver growing stronger. Hypothetically. Given holistic medicine isn't a crock.

Kale/Quinoa Tabouli

This post title reads like a parody of vegan cooking.

Rinse 1 cup white quinoa three times. Simmer in two or three cups of water until tender and the seed embryos pop out.

Chiffonade the heck out of two cups of (destemmed) dinosaur kale, one cup of Italian parsley, and 1/2 cup mint leaves.

Drain and cool the quinoa. Mix the chopped greens and the quinoa with two cloves diced garlic, the juice of two lemons, a healthy dash of salt, and 1/4 cup olive oil.

Why Aren't You Eating More Kale?

Kale is pretty awesome.

Take one bunch kale and strip the leaf off of the stems. Tear or chop it into bite sized pieces. Taste a couple- is this something you would eat without further cooking? If so, go ahead and eat it raw. Otherwise, blanch the kale in boiling water- let it cook for three minutes, and then start testing it for edibility. When the kale is sufficiently done, drain it.

Crush 2 cloves garlic. Juice two lemons. Add 1/ cup olive oil and 1/8-1/4 tsp Braggs. Beat together and pour over kale. Eat hot or cold. Hey, leafy greens! Now you will live forever.

Apparently kale is tastiest if you serve it with glutamines. If you're not ready to commit to a bottle of vegan glutamine source, try using a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmasan.