Kale week begins

Officially, National Kale Day is the first Wednesday in October. But I was on vacation then, and also, I have enough kale to use up that I can't confine it to just one day. So expect a week of my favorite fall kale soups and such ahead.

Every year I have good intentions of just planting one kale plant. But seemingly every year this plan goes awry. Interlopers creep in via a multi-pack of greens. Someone offered me a Dinosaur kale (lacintino) at the plant swap in exchange for something I was just trying to get rid of, so I said sure. And surely enough, I now am facing impending frost dates with four very large kale plants in need of use. So here goes.

First, I start picking the biggest leaves at the base of the stem and go back after more once I've cooked my way through that lot. Wash all the leaves carefully, because falling tree debris tends to nestle in their ruffles. When dealing with the biggest leaves, you'll need to cut out the tough center stem up to the point where the rest of the plant is tender. (If you're starting with small kale greens from the grocery store, skip ahead to the chopping bit.)

If you're going to be using the kale within a week, go ahead and chop it up. If you're hoping to freeze it for later, blanch it in boiling water for a few minutes first to stop the growing process and then proceed with the chopping.

Unless you're making kale chips, you'll want to chop up the leaves. (Just google kale chips if you haven't tried it, it does actually work and is definitely worth making at least once -- just watch them very carefully because the window between raw leaves and incinerated chips is very, very small.)

Place your leaves in a pile several leaves high. Roll up like a jelly roll and chiffonade the leaves into wide ribbons.

If you plan to use the leaves in a saute or pasta sauce, you can store them at this point until you're ready to use. For most other uses, you want the leaves much smaller. In soups, you'll want the leaf pieces no bigger than a soup spoon size at most, and most leaves should be much smaller. Otherwise it's like restaurants that don't rip their salad greens, leaving diners to face a logistical challenge hard to accomplish with any degree of grace. Long ribbons of kale in soup just assert themselves too much and are hard to eat.

Once all the leaves are cut in ribbons, then start chopping until most of the kale is fairly fine and nothing is bigger than a big parsley leaf. I use a chopping bowl and mezzaluna chopper for this. It's one of those tools I probably wouldn't have bought myself since it seems like a uni-tasker, but it's a gift I use frequently in kale season. (Thanks, Mom, even though you really never saw the point of kale.) The chopping bowl is a nice big bowl that gets used for everything from its intended purpose to a Halloween candy holder. It's certainly not necessary to have one, but it really helps keep all those little green kale flecks from flying around the kitchen.

Redbor and green kale leaves make for a more colorful combo in soup.

A big vat of chopped kale will keep at least a week in the refrigerator. Up first, a big vat of roasted veggie and kale soup that's simmering away even now. Too bad I can't even tell by looking at my plants that I've even picked anything. Maybe it's Kale Month.