Red Russian kale is so pretty, that you could be forgiven for putting it in a vase. The leaves are the deepest, glossiest ruby red. Fabulous. Having 4 hungry mouths to feed at home, I decided against the vase option, and opted to include the kale in an Indian feast. In our house when we are cooking Indian meals we tend to do several dishes in the style of a thali. We are often eating vegetarian Indian food, so having several dishes suits that well because it creates a sense of grandeur without the need for a centre-piece meat dish. Each of the dishes can be quite simple to prepare, but when put together they make for a fun meal which my family eat with relish. We will often do a dhal, mushroom or plain pilau, a vegetable dish in sauce and a drier vegetable dish. Having a copy of Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery is a big help because it has vast quantities of recipes for most vegetables and means I can convert most things I have in the veg basket into a lovely Indian meal.
Any kind of kale is the most versatile vegetable because I find I can use it like cabbage or spinach. For example, if I were cooking a roast meat joint I might just use it as I would cabbage. However, it can be used in place of spinach if pre-steamed. For this meal I opted for Madhur's 'spinach cooked with onions' so I removed the tougher stalks, chopped and steamed the kale before I started the dish because it doesn't collapse as easily as spinach would. Cooking it involved little more than frying onions and chilli, adding spices, then the kale.
It is very popular amongst TV chefs to recommend frozen spinach when cooking certain types of dish. I don't think frozen spinach would have worked well here, but it did give me the idea to buy more kale than I need next time I see it. I would then steam the lot and put some in the freezer to use in this way again.
Lisa Reid
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