What we’re serving here is good you can eat everyday and that's so uncommon in the
restaurant business
Most of the time you go to a restaurant and you walk out and sorta feel like maybe you took a
couple years off your life
here the comment that I get more than anything is
I feel like I just exercised I feel great and that's what I think keeps people
coming back
everything every day and this all conforms to the principles of the
anti-inflammatory diet
and this dish that we’re gonna make you certainly kale was one of the richest
sources of vitamins, minerals,
iron, calcium. this is variety of kale called the
Tuscan black kale, lacinato kale, Cavolo nero is the Italian name
dinosaur ale sometimes
it’s my favorite kale I have a bunch of this in my garden and it’s getting near the end of its season as
it gets hot
and one of the tricks to this is to we remove the
the tough stalks
and then this is shredded, I don't have any black pepper could you get me a little
great and the trick with this is that
this is gonna be it will have a dressing over it of
Lucini extra virgin olive, oil fresh lemon juice,
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes
and a grated Parmesan cheese. I use a
a cheap cheese in it but we find parmesan is sort of
more generally acceptable here and the trick is to let this sit
for at least five minutes better 10 minutes or so and that removes the
bitterness
and toughness of kale and completely changes it, and one of the nice things about this it
keeps, you can keep this
I make a big batch of this and it will keep for several days in the refrigerator and is as good
doesn't wilt like the like lettuce. Great, so
I'm first gonna toss this with
wonderful Lucini extra virgin olive oil
okay black pepper
red pepper
should I use all of that, is that the amount yeah we can adjust it
just yes okay salt
yes
a little lemon juice in here
Let's toss and we'll taste
let me put the garlic in
and fresh garlic
It’s kind of like a tender cole slaw, Italian cole slaw
We get a lot of people to come to the restaurant and eat this dish like
three or four days a week and they always ask me cause we give the recipe away
And we have little cards and we give it away
And they always say, You know I tried to make the kale salad at home and it just
wasn't the same
And the first thing I always ask them is what kind of olive oil are you using?
Because you really, with something this simple, you have to start with the best
Ingredients you have to start with really fresh
kale and you have to have really good quality olive oil
real parmigiano
Take the rest of that
K nowadays especially farmers markets
Whole Foods, Sprouts you know the grocery stores that have
the better ingredients for sure and this variety of kale which was rare in
the US is now common
And you can get organic kale and I’m strongly recommend getting organic kale
Pardon me
in a week, well we get it and cases with 20
bunches so this is about three bunches and we go through about 45 cases a week
We use a local farm here in Phoenix called Mclendon Farms
who grows our kale in season
And they participate in a few farmer’s markets here in the valley
And Bob Mclendon, the owner was talking to me the other day he said
That he would always bring three or four bunches of kale to
take to the market until True Food opened and now he goes through ten to fifteen
cases because people come and say
I want the kale from True food. You know we designed this menu, you know there's a lot
of vegetarian items on the menu their menu is definitely vegetable
driven it's driven by the produce the seasonality and the fresh produce
then whatever dish that we’re cooking so what ended up happening is
there’s like this shift between meat and fish and dairy
and produce we are about 65 percent produce here
whereas in most restaurants its exact opposite is true
so we didn't make this big bowl of kale for nothing you guys are going to try this now
okay
but this is i mean fantastic and people get addicted to this topic
This variety of kale, most kale comes from Scotland, Russia
and it can even grow through heavy frost it gets sweeter with frost
this variety from Italy is more heat tolerant
You should all help yourselves