Did you know that kale and quinoa were introduced to
the United States at the same time?
Yep! That is the case, and they
didn’t arrive in the 1990s when we know their popularity exploded … but a
hundred years before. David Fairchild
was a USDA botanist and world traveler.
He explored the world and brought 200,000 new fruits and vegetables to
the United States.
Fairchild’s job was to travel around the world and
find these crops, research them and make certain it was safe to bring them to
the U.S. His interest in botany came
naturally. He was born in Michigan and
his father was the first president of the Michigan State University. Later the family moved to Kansas, where his
father was President of Kansas State University. Both universities had strong agricultural
programs and Fairchild had first-hand knowledge of the lackluster foods of
America at that time. The Smithsonian
Institute initially funded Fairchild’s travels, but after a few years,
President William McKinley’s administration absorbed the project as part of the
USDA. We can thank David Fairchild each
time we peel a banana, pop the pit out of an avocado or drink a beer. Yes, he traveled to Germany, made friends with
some of the men who guarded the fields of hops and managed to ‘steal’ some to
bring back home! Thank you!
I owned a big restaurant in the 1980s and I purchased
cases of kale. We didn’t eat it! We used it to line our salad bar (the first
salad bar our little college town had)!
For most of the 1900s, kale was primarily grown for decorative purposes,
but finally in the 1990s, we began to eat it and by 2010, the kale trend had
certainly blown up! Kale salads; kale
smoothies; kale chips.
David Fairchild found kale growing in Croatia. Food
historians tell us that kale was growing along the Mediterranean 4,000 BC. We know that the ways of cooking in the times
of David Fairchild included stewing, so the earliest American cookbooks teach
us to prepare it that way. We know that
kale was grown in European gardens because it was hearty. It was a food needed during WWI because it
was cheap to grow and was prolific. We
know it was a suggested crop for the Victory Gardens of WWII. In my favorite vintage period of the 1950s
and 60s, kale was being consumed in American households. The recipes are scant and typically call for
cooking the greens for a long time.
Scalloped Kale is a little different, in that it tops that over-cooked
kale with a white sauce and finishes the casserole under the broiler.
But today, kale is praised and consumed in the United
States at a higher rate than it has been consumed in other countries. In the Netherlands, kale is mixed with mashed
potatoes and served with fried bacon or smoked sausage. In Germany, it is served with bacon on
sausages and is comfort food. In Italy,
kale is a popular ingredient in Ribollita soup. Caldo Verde is a popular
Portuguese soup that combines pureed potatoes, chopped kale, olive oil and
sliced spicy sausages. In Ireland, it is
often used instead of cabbage to make their popular combination of mashed
potatoes and greens. In Scotland, kale
is so much a part of the daily diet, people who are too sick to eat are said to
be “off one’s kail”.
I enjoy kale salads, but today I’m sharing a recipe
for a creamy kale and pasta casserole.
It is layered and resembles a nice vege lasagna. It makes a wonderful main course or served in
smaller portions as a side for grilled meat.
It is also a year-round recipe. I
cook and freeze kale and I simply chop kale and freeze it raw. It is so versatile. Kale keeps in the fridge longer than most
leafy greens, and I written many times that I eat it because my oncologist (22
years ago) told me to eat healthy … eat greens.
I changed my ways and changed the eating habits for my husband and
daughter.
The first recipe I want to share with you is for
homemade ricotta cheese. My German
grandmother made her own cottage cheese.
Her sister had a dairy farm and Grandma always had fresh milk and
cream. She had a cheesecloth bag that
she filled and hung on a hook right over the kitchen sink. I didn’t learn how to do this from my
grandmother. Instead, a sweet elderly
Italian friend taught me. You don’t need
special equipment. You don’t need cheese
cloth to strain the cheese … just use a fine mesh sieve.
Homemade Ricotta
½
gallon whole milk
½
cup lemon juice or vinegar
In a
heavy saucepan, heat the milk to about 200 degrees. Not to a boil, but hot. Immediately pour in the vinegar. Cider or white works. Remove the pan from the burner and let it
sit. The vinegar will curdle the
milk. After the milk has cooled and curdled,
drain it through the sieve. You can use
what your pour off. It is good to bake
with or to add to a casserole. I seldom
use it.
What
I always do, however, is add 2 teaspoons of sugar to this cheese when I use
it. A half-gallon of milk will make 2
cups of cheese. Most recipes call for
that much.
You
can replace ricotta with this homemade ricotta in sweet and savory recipes, but
I still add the sugar!
This
is oak leaf kale. The leaves really are
shaped like an oak leaf, and if you let the kale get a week past really fresh,
the leaves will change colors to gold and red … just like fall leaves. I love it more for that very reason! It makes beautiful salads and is my favorite
garnish used to line platters or hors
d’oeuvre trays. Think about your Thanksgiving turkey and how
gorgeous it would be nested on a thick bed of these leaves! They are pretty, but they are good, too!
Oak Leaf
Kale and Pasta Casserole
This
recipe is for 4 side servings or 2 main course servings. It is easily doubled.
2
cups cooked kale, bite size pieces
1
cup ricotta cheese
1
egg
1
teaspoon sugar
2
cups cooked pasta (shells, elbows, any kind)
White
sauce ingredients:
2
Tablespoons butter
2
Tablespoons flour
2
cups Half and Half
2
Tablespoons German beer mustard
Press
the water from the cooked kale. Prepare
a casserole dish. Mix the ricotta
cheese, egg and sugar until it is smooth.
Drain the pasta well.
Prepare
the white sauce by melting the butter and making a roux by stirring in the
flour. Add the Half and Half and let it
cook until it thickens. Stir the mustard
in. Any German style mustard works for
this, but Dijon would be fine and natural grain mustard would be fine.
Begin
the layers for the casserole with kale on the bottom. Then add a thin layer of the white
sauce. Add the pasta and top it with the
ricotta cheese mixture, so it thickens up the pasta layer. Add another layer of kale, then finish it
with white sauce. Bake uncovered for 35
– 40 minutes. The white sauce on top
with brown and bubble.
Let
the casserole cool 30 minutes before cutting and serving. You can see that I garnished the top of mine
with some of the kale leaves that I deliberately didn’t chop up … and some red pepper pieces.
This post is a part of my 2020 Vintage Vegetables project. If you are interested in similar articles, just click the menu button. I'll also be sharing with a couple blog parties and they are listed on my sidebar. Enjoy!
