KALE CHIPS WITH OLIVE OIL, SALT & PEPPER

KALE CHIPS WITH OLIVE OIL, SALT & PEPPER
from a recipe on the Corbin Hill Food Project newsletter
1 bunch kale
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 t sea salt
1 t black pepper

Remove the kale leaves from the stem, then tear into small pieces (not too small – they will shrink in the dehydrator)
Place kale pieces in a large bowl. Add extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper.  Toss to mix well, and then rub oil onto each leaf to coat on both sides.
Spread kale pieces one layer deep on a dehydrator tray topped with a paraflex sheet.
Dehydrate 6 hours or overnight, or until crisp.

To make kale chips in your oven:
Spread the kale in one layer on a baking sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn and bake for 15 minutes more, or until crisp.

The information for baking comes from a recipe on the Corbin Hill Food Project newsletter.

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KALE CHIPS FOR DAYS

POST #895
NOUVEAU RAW’S KALE CHIPS
I’m a sucker for kale chips. I mostly just make the same ones over and over again, but here and there, I try new ideas to see if there might be another “same one” to add to my repertoire.

Enter Nouveau Raw’s Kale Chips bank of recipes. I say bank because there at least a dozen different recipes, for whatever kind of taste you fancy.  You’ll find Mexican, Thai, Jamaican, chocolate (yes!), and more traditional-sounding vinegar-dill, sour cream and onion, and barbecue flavor ideas.  The ones I’ve tried have all been good.

NEW YEAR, NEW RECIPES: marinated mushrooms, marinated dehydrated mushrooms, cheezy dehydrated broccoli bites, cheezy kale chips,

POST #875
I had big plans for today (editing a book I want to put on Kindle), but, when I finally fell out of bed at 7 a.m. (2 hours later than my usual wake-up time), I went to the kitchen, looked around, thought about what was in the refrigerator that should get used, thought some more about the mushrooms I marinated yesterday, and thought about what I could do with the portobellas and baby portabellas I bought yesterday. On a trip past the dehydrator shelf in the hall, I saw that, in addition to the 2 lbs of cashews I picked up yesterday, I have at least 3 C-worth of cashews on the rack over the dehydrator. Got lemons, jalapenos, bell peppers, onions, garlic, sea salt, and olive oil. So much for the day tied to the computer. I tied on my apron, and started digging around in my recipes.

MARINATED MUSHROOMS: Let’s start with those mushrooms I marinated yesterday. After I had already started pouring oil on them, I realized that I had accidentally picked up flax oil instead of sesame oil. Oh, well, I do like flax oil on salads. We’ll just hope. I added some garlic to try to make a more flavorful mix. Gave mushrooms to the room-mate guinea pig – she liked them even with flax oil. Still, this morning, I wanted that sesame flavor, and so I drizzled about 1 teaspoon of sesame oil (all I had left) over the mushrooms and tossed them well, to distribute the oil. Then, I decided that, since the carrots in my refrigerator were not getting any younger, I should shave some off a carrot and put that in the mushroom mix as well. Did that with the vegetable peeler – really thin, sheer, see-through carrot shavings, and I chopped them into smaller pieces to mix nicely with the mushrooms. Fed that to the room-mate guinea pig, and she liked it even better, and was excited that it looked like the marinated mushrooms that she can buy in her Japanese supermarket.

After I’d done that, I decided I should do something about all of the other “baby bella” mushrooms I had sitting there. I glanced at a couple of recipes I had picked up from other people, and changed a couple of things here and there, and got to work.

First, I removed that stems and set them aside (I use them for “pulled” barbecue), then I sliced the mushrooms about 1/4 inch thick and put them in a large bowl. I ground a small jalapeno in Magic Bullet, then added some extra virgin olive oil, garlic, a little tamari, and some lemon juice, whizzed it again in the Magic Bullet, then poured it over the mushrooms in the bowl, and massaged it in. After that, I put the mushrooms in the dehydrator.

MARINATED DEHYDRATED MUSHROOMS
20 baby bella mushrooms, sliced 1/2 inch thick
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small jalapeno, finely minced
1 T garlic powder
1 t tamari (all of the recipes I saw called for much more, but I don’t much care for salt)
2 T lemon juice

Place mushroom slices in a large bowl.
Blend remaining ingredients, then pour over mushrooms in bowl.
With your hands, toss the mushrooms around with the oil mix until all pieces are well coated.
Spread mushroom slices one layer thick on teflex covered dehydrator tray (you could put them directly on the plastic screen, but the teflex is a lot easier to clean up)
Dehydrate for 4-6 hours

I was planning to dehydrated these mushrooms to a jerky consistency, but, after about 4 hours, I tasted them, and turned around and gobbled up about half of them. I decided I should put them in a container in the refrigerator at that point. (Later, when I called Mom to wish her Happy New Year, and I told her about all of the mushrooms, she asked if they tasted like sautéed mushrooms – it has been so long since I have eaten cooked things, I had to think hard – yes, these dehydrated mushrooms taste like well-sauteed mushrooms!) I liked them so much that I sliced up 2 portobellas, cut them into 1-1/2 inch pieces, marinated them, put them right into the dehydrator, so I can have more of these delicious mushrooms.

CHEEZY DEHYDRATED BROCCOLI: I dug some still-okay broccoli out of the refrigerator, and, remembering a recipe from Nouveau Raw I had seen a while back, decided that I could chop it up into about 2 C of florets , toss it with my cheddar cheese, and dehydrate it, so that was the next project. Man! It is really hard to cover broccoli florets completely with sauce. I got it done anyway. They are in the dehydrator as we speak.

CHEEZY KALE CHIPS: I got the idea for the broccoli since I had a lot of kale which needed to be used. (I figured that I could make one batch of the cheddar cheese and use it on the broccoli as well as the kale – it worked, btw). This kale was labeled “young kale.” I’ll say this about “young kale” – it does last longer in the refrigerator, but, if you are going to make kale chips, it is hard to get bite-sized pieces from those small, tightly curled leaves… I got a lot of “crumbs” along the way. Never mind… two trays of chips are in the dehydrator.

11/15/12 CSA SHARE: A perfect world: What I got

Post #861
My perfect world:  What we got, what I took home:

Leeks……………………….traded for kale
Watermelon Radish
Green Kale
Russet Potatoes…………traded for cabbage
Cabbage
Broccoli……………………traded for carrots
Baby Carrots

Yep, I wanted it and I got it all!  (I’m kind of worried, though. I hope my nemesis, the old guy who always gets there before I do, even if I get there before the CSA workers do, and always takes whatever I want from the trade  box, is okay.  He didn’t show up in all of the @20 minutes I was there.)

Curiously, the workers were watching me like hawks when I was doing my trades.  Okay, I do go to the trade box first and take what I want, because I want to get what I want before someone else does, and because I know that I will be bringing back certain things (you’ve seen my plans — I stick to them ), but I told them exactly what I would bring back, and I did so as soon as I dug them out of the box.  I took back the broccoli, the leeks (they were few and small), and the potatoes.  I also took the radishes because I thought that maybe something else I wanted would wind up in the box before I left. I went back for the radishes but  I only took three, although I had put in about seven (I realized that later).  

Nuff said about my “CSA experience”

I made up some kale chips last night, only I forgot to put the red bell pepper into the cheeze mix, although it was sitting right there on the table.  Du-umb!  I am here to tell you today that the red bell pepper really does make a difference.  The chips are okay, and I’ll eat them all, anyway, but I will never ever ever forget the red bell pepper again.

I have another large bunch of kale – I think I’ll halve it and make cheddar cheeze chips and smoked jalapeno chips, as well — that was the original plan, anyway.

Those cabbages are big enough to make up maybe 3 quarts of sauerkraut each. Flavor experiments here we come!  

The carrots will probably go to sticks again — those were good.   

GARLIC KALE CHIPS & GARDEN OF LIFE RAW MEAL

POST #849
Sometimes you have to try something new, and today has been that day for me.
Today’s new experiences:
Garlic kale chips
Garden of Life Raw Meal powder

GOOD NEW EXPERIENCE
I found garlic kale chips on the RawNouveau site, and decided to try them out last night. What was interesting to me was that, in contrast to the cashews which from the base of most kale chip “coating”, this recipe uses sunflower seeds, and I just happened to have a surplus of sunflower seed sprouts from making my sunflower seed crackers on Monday. I changed the recipe a little, because I’m me, and, also, because I only had one bunch of kale.  I ended up making one-fourth of the recipe, with changes here and there.

RAW GARLIC KALE CHIPS
1 bun kale, washed, stemmed, blotted dry
1 C sunflower seed sprouts
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 T nutritional yeast
10 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 med. jalapeno, finely minced
1/2 t sea salt
1-1/2 T raw agave syrup

• Tear the kale into bite-sized (2-3 in.) pieces and place in a large bowl.
• In a food processor or high-speed blender, blend the liquid ingredients, then add the remaining ingredients, and process to a smooth, creamy consistency (with a food processor, the consistency will be a little grainier)
• Pour the cashew mixture over the kale in the bowl.
• With you hands, toss and gently massage he kale with the cashew mixture until each piece of kale is evenly-coated top and bottom.
• Spread the kale pieces evenly in one layer onto dehydrator trays covered with a teflex sheets.
• Dehydrate at 115 degrees for 8 hrs. or until dry and crispy.
• Store in a glass container with an airtight lid.

(notes on my changes to amounts/ingredients: I like garlic so I stayed with the original 10 cloves even though I was using 1/4 the amount of kale and other ingredients. I don’t like sweet normally, but this was my first time with this chef and this recipe, so I dug out the bottle of agave syrup I had, only to find out I only had 1 T left — I added a heaping t of the palm sugar I just got. The original recipe did not call for jalapeno, but I like spicy, so, there you have it.)

I took the garlic chips out of the dehydrator this morning and have eaten a couple of handfuls of them. They are good. I’ll do this recipe again.

NOT SO GOOD NEW EXPERIENCE
Now, about the Garden of Life Raw Meal,:
I bought this at Willner’s, on Park Ave., because they have better prices, and because it had such an impressive list of ingredients.
I had tried it once before, following the instructions to use 2 scoops of powder to 16 oz of water, but it turned out so thick and nasty-tasting that I decided to try it with half the powder and a huge handful of blueberries I had in the freezer, and I put 3 heaping teaspoonfuls of palm sugar in it..
Yuck. This stuff tastes like dirt. Despite all the palm sugar in it (and I normally do not use sweeteners of any kind), it just tasted like sweet dirt with a dirt aftertaste. This stuff was not cheap, so I will use it up, but I will never buy it again.

Note: I read a review on Amazon, in which the reviewer said his Raw Meal was moldy. I wouldn’t know how to tell it was moldy. It didn’t taste moldy, it just tasted like dirt, which some other reviewers mentioned. (I’m not unused to protein powder tasting like dirt—I used to use Nature’s Life Pro 96 Super Soy Green Protein, which tasted like dirt, until they changed the formula and added sweetener. With the original formula, a banana could disguise the taste.)

7/29/10 CSA SHARE: What we got, and what I took home

This is what I got in my box, and this is what I went home with:

Zucchini – 2 pcs
Red Onions – 2 pcs.…………1 hd. cabbage
Long Peppers – 2 pcs
Green Peppers 1 – 2 pcs
Yukon Gold Potatoes – 3 lbs
Parsley – 1 bun………………..1 bun. kale
Cucumber – 1 pc
Red Kale – 1 bun
Green Beans – .3 lb
Cabbage – 1 hd
Garlic – 2 hds

I would have traded the onions and the potatoes for more kale, but,  despite the fact that there was a lot of kale in the trade box, most of it was very holey, and I did not think that would make for luscious kale chips, so I only came away with two bunches, which I will do up tomorrow night.

I did trade the onions for another head of cabbage. (I am in sauerkraut mode this week – the first batch will be ready tomorrow night — and I want to try some new flavors, so small heads like I got will be perfect for small jars of flavored sauerkraut.

I have sent a message to the farm asking about the green peppers.  I do trust my farm, but aren’t we told that green peppers are unripe? (The farm knows about me, i.e., I am a raw vegan and I write about them and talk about raw food issues, so I am looking forward to their answer — will relay it here as soon as it comes through-– I have asked them to tell me, if in fact *green* is the ripe color of these peppers, what the actual *name* of the peppers is)

KALE CHIPS! NEW FLAVOR!

Last night, I decided to make some kale chips.  I did not have a red bell pepper, and I did not have any lemon, so I decided to make them with the Thai green curry paste recipe from Sunday’s class.

I put about 3 T of the green curry paste into the food processor with 1 C cashews, about 1 C sundried tomatoes and about 1 T garlic powder, and some of the tomato soak water.  I ground it all into a loose paste.

I tore the leaves off the center vein, and then I tore them up into pieces @1-1/2 in. square, and placed them all in a huge bowl.  I added the curry/cashew mix to the bowl and mushed everything around until all the leaf pieces were covered with the cashew/curry mixture.

Then I placed all of the kale pieces on dehydrator trays and dehydrated overnight (@ 6 hrs at 105 degrees).

I took the kale chips to school today for lunch, and shared some of them with some lunch friends – they all liked them (nice! those people are not raw)

I’m so proud!

CHEDDAR CHEEZY KALE CHIPS

CHEESY KALE CHIPS

3 bun. curly leaf kale
1 C raw cashews, soaked 1 – 2 hrs., and drained
1/3 lg orange (or red) bell pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
1 t onion powder
1/2 t sea salt
1 T chili seasoning, or to taste (optional)
Water to just cover cashews

• Tear kale leaves into bite-sized pieces, and set aside.
•  In a food process all ingredients except kale to a smooth consistency
• Place kale pieces and 1/2 cashew mixture in a large bowl
• Massage cashew mixture into kale pieces, massaging each leaf individually.
• Place kale pieces one by one on covered dehydrator trays, and dehydrate at 110 degrees for 2 hrs
• Remove trays from dehydrator and transfer chips from sheets mesh covered dehydrator trays (easy way: Place a mesh sheet over the dehydrator tray with the chips. Cover the mesh sheet with another dehydrator tray. Flip the assembly and then remove the first dehydrator tray, and the teflex sheet.)
• Dehydrate for 5-6 hours more, until crunchy.

NEW KALE CHIPS

Last night, I decided to experiment with the KALE CHIPS.   using  my CASHEW CHEDDAR CHEESE recipe.

I made the recipe according to the original instructions, but, instead of the extravagant 2 C cashew recipe, I used my cashew cheeze recipe, which did just as well.  I had a huge bunch of kale from Fairway, for $1.99 (about 3 bunches from any other market), and I broke it all up into the large mixing bowl I use for making crackers, and then I poured on the cashew cheddar cheeze mixture and mixed it all around until all of the pieces were covered front and back.  As I went to put each kale piece on the dehydrator sheet, I added a little more cheddar cheeze mixture, to make sure it was well coated.

I ended up needing all 5 trays of my dehydrator.  The only problem is that I only have 4 teflex sheets.  The last kale pieces had to go on straight onto a mesh sheet.  In the morning, I turned all of the kale pieces which were on teflex sheets onto their mesh sheets.  I just left the pieces which had been on the mesh sheet all night.  When I came home, and tried the kale chips, I found that the ones which had been on the mesh sheet all the while were much crunchier than the others (so I put them all  to dehydrate for a few more hours, becasue crunchier is better).  Next time, I will put all of the kale chips directly onto the mesh sheets – they don’t drip, so there is not need for the teflex sheets.

I will be experimenting with other flavors now… I think the next choice is the jalapeno cheeze, and then I am going to figure out a Thai curry version.  Stay tuned … (I have a forced week of vacation coming up soon, so the recipes will be flowing.)