I washed and dried my kale.
I cut it into pieces, tossed in a small amount of olive oil and salt, and spread it on a cookie sheet. As you can see, I didn't cut away the stems. Seemed wasteful.
I baked at 400F for about 10 minutes, tossing it partway through. I would have baked it longer, but I thought it was done enough. Some of the pieces were dried and crisp, although they were so thin they had a papery quality. Others were nice and juicy, especially those with a piece of crunchy stem in them. I liked those the best, and I thoroughly enjoyed the simple flavor of kale and salt and a little olive oil.
What does this tell me? I need to find a better way to cook the kale, and I certainly need to throw it into the rotation!
On a sidenote, I was listening to a piece on The Splendid Table with some guy talking about how search engines put the relevant recipe sites further down the page and favor giving you recipes from sites like Cooks.com, where people post recipes that haven't been tested or carefully written. He used the example of someone getting a "tummy ache" (his words, seriously) from a recipe that wasn't clear on whether to use raw or cooked chicken in a casserole. I think that this kind of insults us in two ways: first, our ability to cook and see a good recipe; second, our ability to use the internet and find a recipe worth trying.
Oh well. Maybe I'll take that advice and try this recipe, tried and true from The Peppertree, which tells me to remove the kale stems and cook them longer in a cooler oven. I'm not going to say it won't work, but I did like to crunch on those stems. And I did polish off my baked kale.
I went to a cooking demo at whole foods that used kale. She cooked it down quite a bit in a skillet on the stove and added salt, lemon juice and tamarind paste. It was delicious! (Would work with swiss chard, as well.) I will try to find the recipe to send you.
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