In his cookbook Six Seasons, Joshua McFadden calls his kale salad recipe “The Kale Salad That Started It All.” It’s an accurate name: the salad, which McFadden created when he was a chef de cuisine at the Brooklyn restaurant Franny’s, kicked off a trend that gave rise to many permutations of kale salad and in the process transformed the hardy winter vegetable into an unlikely culinary star. Although McFadden first made the salad in 2007, it still takes us back to 2005, when the farm-to-table movement was gathering steam, and enterprising chefs were giving new life to old, taken-for-granted vegetables, and changing the way we eat in the process.
Recipe: The Kale Salad That Started It All
1 bunch lacinato kale (aka Tuscan kale or cavolo nero), thick ribs cut out
½ garlic clove, finely chopped
¼ cup finely grated pecorino Romano cheese, plus more to finish
Extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1/8 teaspoon dried chile flakes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup dried breadcrumbs (recipe follows)
Step 1: Stack several kale leaves on top of one another and roll them up into a tight cylinder. With a sharp knife, slice crosswise into very thin, about 1/16 inch, ribbons (this is called a chiffonade). Put the kale in a salad spinner, rinse in cool water, and spin until completely dry. Pile the kale into a bowl.
Step 2: Put the chopped garlic on a cutting board and mince it even more until you have a paste (you can sort of smash and scrape the garlic with the side of the knife as well). Transfer the garlic to a small bowl, add ¼ cup pecorino, a healthy glug of olive oil, the lemon juice, chile flakes, ¼ teaspoon salt, and plenty of twists of black pepper, and whisk to combine.
Step 3: Pour the dressing over the kale and toss well to thoroughly combine (you can use your clean hands for this, to be efficient). Taste and adjust with more lemon, salt, chile flakes, or black pepper. Let the salad sit for about 5 minutes so the kale softens slightly. Top with the breadcrumbs, shower with more cheese, and drizzle with more oil.
The better the bread, the better the crumbs; I like whole grain. Cut the bread into ½-inch-thick slices, leaving the crust on. Cut the slices into cubes and then spread them in an even layer on a baking sheet (or more than one pan, if making a lot; a 12-ounce loaf should fit onto one pan).
Heat the oven to its lowest setting, usually about 250 degrees. Bake the cubes until they are fully dry, but now browned. This could take an hour or more, depending on the bread’s moisture and density.
Cool fully and then process into crumbs by pulsing in a food processor. The goal is small crumbs more or less the same size, though some bigger ones are fine — think Grape-Nuts. You want to avoid too much fine powder, however, so stop once or twice and pour off the finer crumbs or shake through a colander and then continue to crush the remaining big pieces.
Store the crumbs in an airtight container. If fully dry, they’ll stay fresh for a few weeks.
Excerpted from Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2017. Photographs by Laura Dart
Dina Ávila is a photographer living in Portland, Oregon.
Recipe tested by Ivy Manning
