Massaged Kale Salad

The first time I ever heard of massaged kale salad, my initial reaction was what the hell kind of hippy salad is that? (I'm allowed to say things like that because I grew up pretty much as 'hippy' as it gets and I'm all about (affectionate) self-deprecation, like this Portlandia clip which is basically a spot-on parody of my personal approach to meat-eating).





But I gave the salad a try, because I like to play with my food and massaging kale sounded fun. This recipe has since become a standard favourite. Massaging the kale with lemon juice, olive oil and salt helps break down the cell walls of the kale leaves and makes it easier to digest. I'm sharing it with you today because (aside from being DEE-licious!) it's a very festive recipe that looks great on the holiday dinner table. Plus at this time of year when there's such mountains of rich foods all around, it's nice to get some raw, fresh goodness on the table and this salad is packed with antioxidants! I was also suspecting some of you out there still have kale in your gardens because I sure do...

I took this photo 2 days ago, when it felt like -20 celsius. How cool to be able to harvest your food in the middle of December! (eh?!) I try to eat as local as I can year-round but sadly kale is the only local ingredient in this recipe. The thing is, if I had to name 3 non-local things that I can't resist, it would be the 3 other ingredients in this salad: avocado, pomegranate, and fennel. Actually, I guess fennel can be local but hard to find the local stuff this time of year. So here you go... a local / un-local salad. (No time to make a video today but I've got a Christmassy ones coming your way so stay tuned!)

Massaged Kale Salad with avocado, fennel, and pomegranate

1 bunch of kale

1 pomegranate

1 fennel bulb

1 avocado

For the massage oil: 

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp. salt

Rip the kale leaves into pieces, discarding the stems. Mix the juice of one lemon, olive oil and salt together and pour half of it on the kale. Now get intimate with that kale! Rub the massage oil into the leaves for about 10 minutes, until the kale is a deeper green and shrinks down in size somewhat. You can also taste it to see how chewable / flavourful it is. Thinly shave the fennel, chop avocado into cubes, and de-seed the pomegranate. Pour on the remainder of the dressing. Mix together & there you have it.