Gee, that recipe title is a mouthful, isn’t it? If you’ve been reading my blog for long, you may recall that there’s only one person I know who gives recipes such long names. Because she’s afraid we won’t realize all the tasty goodness and goodies in any recipe. Yup. Phillis Carey. This one’s from a “light and  healthy” cooking class. And it’s delicious. And quick. EASY! It likely will require a trip to the market – specifically for the kale and zucchini – and maybe the chicken sausages – but as long as you’ve got canned cannellini beans and tomatoes on hand, then this recipe comes together in a jiffy. You add the kale – and it will seem like a LOT of kale, but once you put a lid on it, it will reduce down. Just don’t overcook everything – the kale just needs to cook until it’s tender, no further.

Pictured at right is the “soup” when I’d just added the kale – notice the mound. It cooks down, though. This dinner would likely require less than 25 minutes, maybe 20 if you didn’t serve anything else with it. And it’s a one-dish meal (it could be, anyway). Phillis suggested serving this with brown rice. If I were to serve it I think I’d serve it over a very small portion of pasta. But I liked it as-is, just served as a kind of soup with a very little bit of juice to it. Is that called a dry soup? I think so. Or sometimes the broth part is served in a separate bowl in Asian cuisines. That’s not the case here – it’s the chunky stuff that makes up the ragout/soup.

Phillis suggested that if you’d like some other textures and flavors in this, add some raisins during the last bit of heating, and then sprinkle on top some pine nuts (toasted would be best). I’ve included them in this recipe because they added a lot of texture and flavor to this dish when I made it. Delicious, that’s all I have to say. And low calorie too. This may become a real staple in my soup library.
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A year ago: Beef – an informative essay
Two years ago: Brandied Apricot Bars

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Now that I’m feeling better (I’m better, but not yet well, let’s put it that way) and back in the kitchen, I decided I’d make something totally different. A more-or-less vegetarian entree. So I leafed through the vegetarian goddess’ book – Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Nothing I’ve ever made from it has been less than outstanding. So I was certain this would be another winner.

As you readers of my blog know, I’m not a vegetarian, but sometimes eating a meatless meal appeals to me. My DH is always open to whatever I make. He never complains. And very rarely asks for anything – whatever I’m in the mood for is okay in his book. He makes it so easy to cook for. I searched through bean stews (no), steamed veggies (no), eggs and cheese concoctions (no), salads (no to that too). Then I spied the chapter on savory tarts, pies, turnovers and pizzas and settled on making a galette. And a mushroom one at that. Mushrooms are almost meat-like in their consistency and taste. I do like them a lot. This one contains shiitake and button varieties. Shiitake because you need their heightened flavor, and button for their filling-nature.

Pictured at left is the mushroom filling. Have you ever made a galette? It’s SO easy. SO forgiving. It’s a rough kind of pastry – not rough tasting – but rough in the presentation, I suppose you could say. It’s merely a buttery pastry dough rolled out in a ROUGH sort of round shape, it’s moved to a baking pan/sheet, the filling is piled in the middle and the edges are turned gently up over the filling. Then it’s baked, of course. You don’t have to glaze it, but it’s more attractive that way – this one was brushed with some melted butter. Usually there’s some of the filling visible in the center. There’s nothing prissy about making a galette, if you get my drift. This mushroom filling has some added flavor enhancers (tomato paste, a little bit of Dijon, some sherry vinegar, red pepper flakes and rosemary). You could add cheese, I suppose, but not having made Madison’s galette before I made it mostly her way. The recipe calls for a mushroom stock (home made, and way too much trouble), but I used Penzey’s chicken concentrate (diluted with water) instead. I also used less stock than Madison called for – I couldn’t imagine using over 2 cups of the sauce, so I made it with only a cup of stock instead. So my recipe here includes the few changes I made. Once the mushroom filling is made, it’s strained of all its juices (so the crust won’t become soggy, I’m sure), then you pour or drizzle any of the sauce over the baked galette. Pictured above is the pastry with the mushroom filling before you wrap the edges. You just gently roll the edges up and over, partially covering the filling and brush the pastry with melted butter. You can also make these in individual servings, like turnovers or as smaller galettes. No change to the recipe, just prepare 6 of them, folding the edges in as shown above or completely sealing them in a turnover.

The bottom line? Delicious. The mushrooms are meaty textured, satisfying and very tasty. The pastry was so tender and flaky. Because the mushroom filling was drained well before the filling was put into the pastry, the bottom pastry was perfectly cooked (and not soggy at all). I had to patch the outside edges in a couple of places, but moistening my finger with water and pressing the patched pieces in was successful. We both enjoyed the galette very much, and I’d make it again. Only change I’d make is to add some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese to the filling (and that’s not in the recipe below). The leftovers were also delish – I placed the pieces on a square of aluminum foil, and that on a baking sheet, heated it at 350 for about 20 minutes. The pastry was still tender, flaky and not a bit soggy.
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Two years ago: Mulligatawny Soup

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The other day I was looking through a cookbook that I’d not cooked from, yet. Actually I’m not sure I remember how I came by this cookbook. There’s no note inside. It’s called Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris . By Michael Roberts (he’s an American but lived in Paris for some years). Under the chapter for chicken and poultry, there are numerous recipes for simple chicken. Most, either stovetop or oven preparation, and none of them all that complicated.

Starting off, we didn’t have all the specific ingredients. The chicken was boneless – a mistake – but it’s all we had; and I didn’t have any chicken feet, a calf’s foot, or a pig’s tail – I’m not kidding you – that’s also in the recipe. I’ve learned enough over the last 20 years to know that we American’s are just so Victorian, or fastidious, I guess. We don’t like animal odd parts. We don’t like to look at fish heads. Or dead fish eyes on the fish head. And not all that many of us eat offal, the oddball organs and other things that comprise a whole steer, pig, chicken or lamb. I do like foie gras, but I don’t eat organ meat anymore in general because of the high concentration of bad fats. So we miss out, I suppose, on some awfully good flavor.

But the author cautioned in the write-up that if you don’t have good AGED red wine vinegar, don’t even bother to make this. I don’t know about your local markets, but mine don’t carry anything but the cheapest of red wine vinegars. Stuff that’s most likely mere vinegar with a dollop of red wine, perhaps food coloring to make it look like it’s red wine, it’s bottled and they call it red wine vinegar. If you ever take an honest-to-goodness taste of this stuff, you’ll probably agree with me, it’s awful. I won’t even use it for salad dressings or in cooking. Not having visited any wineries lately where I might have found some good red wine vinegar, a few months ago I resorted to buying a bottle of Cabernet Wine Vinegar at Williams-Sonoma. It’s been aged for 8 months, according to the label. And it’s expensive, I will say, but then I don’t use much of it at any one time. But Williams-Sonoma no longer carries it, I guess (I can’t find it on W-S’s website, anyway). However, several online places carry Banyuls 5-year aged. I’m going to look for that when I’m shopping at some of the high-end markets in our area. Through Amazon it’s $23.95 for a 750ml bottle.

As for chicken feet, a calf’s foot or a pig’s tail . . . uhm . . . I can’t say I’ve seen that at any of my markets, high end or not. Perhaps I could ask for it at one of the few stores I frequent where there’s an honest-to-goodness butcher visible. My guess is they likely won’t have it either. However, the Asian markets near us probably would. I don’t frequent them very often, but next time I’m there I’ll look. So this recipe I/we made didn’t contain any one of those three items. Roberts explained that adding one of those three things would add immeasurably to the flavor in the dish.

This dish was relatively easy to make. As I’ve explained recently, I’ve been under the weather. I AM getting better, but my DH offered to make dinner if I’d coach him. No problem. I sat at our kitchen island with the cookbook at  hand, a chopping board in front of me and was the laid-back director of the cooking theater. Dave said he had fun doing it! The dish was good. Next time I’d make more sauce so I’ve upped the quantity in this recipe below. I’d also add mushrooms at the end (not in the original recipe). We/he served it with French glazed carrots and a nice green salad.

My DH (dear husband, just in case you’re a new reader and don’t know my code) had a good day on Sunday. He was the speaker at a Sunday School class at our church. He gave a 20-25 minute speech about “Hope.” He talked about the fact that he’s been a Type 1 diabetic since his 8th birthday, and mostly about the fact that he’s a double amputee. At the end of his talk numerous people in the audience had questions – mostly about his artificial legs and how they work. He also mentioned that when he was diagnosed as a diabetic in 1947, the doctors told his parents that he likely wouldn’t live past the age of 28. They never told Dave that. He’s 70 now and doing well, thank you! Anyway, I was SO proud of him – Dave is a story-teller and speaks to and with people with ease. He doesn’t often speak to groups, but his speech was very interesting, well prepared and very nicely executed. So he was on a roll on Sunday, as they say, and he was ever-so proud of himself when HE put dinner on the table for us. I’m going to be back at the cooking helm now, I think, since I’m feeling better every day.  But I was grateful that he wanted to make this dish. He did it very well – VEDDY VEDDY well.
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A year ago: Breakfast Egg Muffins
Two years ago: Chicken with Red Wine Vinegar Sauce (oh my goodness, I made this exact dish, different recipe, 2 years ago. Serendipity, I think)

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This recipe goes way back in my repertoire. Given to me by a friend from college. One evening when I visited her home many years later, she made these carrots, and I’ve made them oodles of times since. I forget about them because they’re not one of those veggies that are all that good for us – they’re a carb rather than a true vegetable. But carrots were all there was in the crisper. Since my DH was cooking the dinner, I knew these would not be difficult for him to make.

I sat at our kitchen island and gave him directions. I did some of the chopping (slice the carrots on the diagonal if you can – makes them much more attractive) and coached him along the way with the preparation. They’re NOT hard by any stretch of the imagination. But they do require a couple more steps (to get sugar and clip some fresh parsley out of the garden) before making them.

Obviously it’s the sugar that makes them French. And they’re oh-so succulent when they’re cooked just right (meaning they’re not overcooked). Well, they do have some butter in them too – that makes them especially tasty as well. This dish is a very nice colorful veg for a company meal. It can be made ahead and reheated just before serving too. That’s always nice, isn’t it, to have something all done and all you have to do is reheat it. Dave was a happy camper with these carrots – he made them all by himself and he wanted to dig in for seconds.

When the carrots were perfectly cooked, sometimes you still have an abundance of water in the pot. Remove the carrots, boil down the sauce a bit, then put the carrots back in for a re-warm and serve. See, these are really quite versatile.
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A year ago: Homemade Turkey Breakfast Sausage
Two years ago: Raspberry-Almond Truffle Tart

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Every year Epicurious does a prediction of what’s going to be UP and DOWN as far as food for the coming year. Where I live we’re not really in the epicenter of the food biz. We certainly have some good restaurants within a 20-mile radius. We could drive to Los Angeles more often where we might find a more serious mecca of dining, but the traffic is awful. What used to be a 60-minute drive in moderate traffic, is now usually a 90-minute tortured drive of brake lights and flaring tempers. So we stay closer to home and enjoy what good restaurants we do have. There really are many good ones, but they’re not necessarily at the forefront of gastronomy. California offers more healthy alternatives – from Pacific Rim cuisine, to that eclectic kind of California-esque cooking that’s ever so popular. Lots of salads, vegetables, even tofu and sushi. We have ample barbecue, steak in all forms and sizes, burger joints, and pho (Vietnamese soup). There’s comfort food, formal food, cheap and high-end Italian food too.

So, I read the predictions with a slightly askance eye. Will it have any bearing on our eating habits? I’m not sure. You decide:

MOVING UP: Fried Chicken

Really? Hmmm. I’m not so sure we even HAVE any restaurants that feature fried chicken. Fried food doesn’t feature much in most California restaurants. Sure there’s some – like calamari, zucchini sticks, jalapeno poppers and french fries. But not many others. Seems to me that most appetizer menus feature fried food. I rarely order any of those things with the exception of calamari. But maybe I need to dust off some of my 1960’s era cookbooks and find some new methods for making fried chicken at home. It’s just not very healthy, which is why I never attempt to make it.

MOVING DOWN: Burgers

Somehow I doubt burgers are going to take a back seat in most places in our neck of the woods. Everybody loves burgers. And with fries. What is popular here in California is turkey burgers – I do order one on occasion.

MOVING UP: Mini Whoopie Pies

This surprises me. These aren’t popular here at all. As I recall, they’re quite the thing in the midwest somewhere, near their origin. You know what they are? Two soft cookies sandwiched together with a kind of marshmallow filling. I’ve made them, but they’re altogether too much sweet/sugar for me.

MOVING DOWN: Mini Cupcakes

Personally I’ve not even SEEN mini-cupcakes. With the popularity of places like Sprinkles, where the regular-sized cupcake reigns supreme, how could mini-cupcakes even be on the radar?

MOVING UP: Lamb

Hmmm. Maybe so, but it certainly is a pricey ingredient here in our stores. Costco has good deals on lamb, but I think they only carry boneless legs from Australia and racks of lamb. I do enjoy Colorado lamb, though, and seek it out when I can. But have you looked at the fat content? That’s why it’s normally a big treat for us – not only for cost, but for calories.

MOVING DOWN: Pork

Barbecue certainly has made a big impact here in California. We find barbecue (beef and pork mostly) in lots of places. A few restaurants that truly do the barbecue thing (long, slow smoking) are quite popular still.

MOVING UP: an Immunity-Building diet

This has to do with eating foods that are now known to be helpful for building your immune system. I’ve read some about this, but not enough as I couldn’t recall any of them. Apples, onions, organic tomatoes, chicken soup, broccoli, green tea, Vitamin D rich foods (salmon, sardines, tuna), yogurt and chiles all feature large in such a diet.

MOVING DOWN: the Omega-3 foods

I was surprised to read this, but the reason is logical – so many of the Omega-3 fish contain so much mercury, that it’s considered almost more like a health hazard. Some are recommending pills rather than eating the real thing. Besides, we’ve so over-fished our waters there are only so many kinds of fish we can eat. Sad.

MOVING UP: Butchers

It’s becoming a new “in” profession. I’ve been quite disappointed of late when I have visited a store with a real butcher – sometimes they have no idea what I’m asking for. Has made me wonder if the apprenticing has changed its methods so greenhorns are allowed to wait on customers and only one real butcher even works there. I wish I knew more about it.

MOVING DOWN: Mixologist

All those fancy drinks (like martinis and other blender drinks) are apparently going to move out of fashion. We’re not much into trying all the fancy drinks as we’re mostly wine drinkers. We don’t even sample beers much either.

MOVING UP: Homemade beer

Speaking of beer, guess there are now kits for making your own rather than paying the premium prices for some of the boutique brews. This doesn’t even figure on my food radar. Sorry.

MOVING DOWN: Mad-Science Cocktails

Kind of a repeat of the Mixologist downturn. People have been oversaturated with the fancy, crazy cocktails.

MOVING UP: Vancouver

Partly this is because of the Winter Olympics, but Vancouver has become a new mecca for fine dining, I guess. We were even there this past summer for about an hour (before our cruise ship headed out to sea), but had no time to seek out a restaurant.

MOVING DOWN: Barcelona

Seems like there aren’t all that many people who would be affected by this – I mean – flying to Barcelona just to eat? Kind of an expensive trip, I’d say. We’ve been there once, and were quite amazed at the fine dining available. Enjoyed it a lot, but it isn’t exactly going to figure strongly in any of my travel plans in the near future.

MOVING UP: Potluck Dining at Home

This sounds like a great idea. Especially with our current economy and less expendable income at our fingertips.

MOVING DOWN: Formal Dining at Home

So few people do formal dining anymore. We here in California probably started the trend toward casual dining at home about 15+ years ago, so this isn’t news to us.

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I’ve been under the weather lately. I’m now on day 33 of an upper respiratory infection (bronchitis). Prescription meds have been used up and now my body just has to get rid of the last remnants. It’s been a hard fight, obviously, because I still have a pretty awful cough and I still don’t feel good. My Christmas stuff is still decorating the house – haven’t felt up to un-decorating it yet. This bug is just hanging onto me for dear life. My GP says I’m rid of the wheezing (fortunately) and it will just take a bit more time. I’ve never – ever – had a cough that’s been this bad. I’ve never smoked, and I haven’t ever had asthma, but the first doctor I saw in an emergency clinic two weeks ago thought I had both. Anyway, there hasn’t been a whole lot of cooking going on in my kitchen lately. We’ve been pulling out frozen stuff (mostly soups) and my DH has been making trips to local eateries for some take-out. Not fast food since neither of us like that stuff much. I’m not even up to going “out.” I’d rather stay home.

I did walk out to our patio at sunset one evening last week and this was the view:

On the left, at the horizon is Catalina Island (the dark left-to-right strips – it’s 25 miles from the coast to the islands).

There’s also a little update about the Wensleydale cheese I wrote about a week or so ago. Our local Costco (a larger Costco, a bit further away) does carry the cheese year ‘round. I also heard from one of my loyal readers, Cindee, who tells me that Wallace & Gromit adore this cheese. I didn’t know anything about Wallace  & Gromit until then – have never seen any of their movies. Will have to add them to my Netflix queue. As the story goes, the Wensleydale cheese factory was floundering some years ago until by chance the cheese made an appearance with Wallace & Gromit. Since then the cheese has been flying high, the company came out of its slump, and in England they now market the cheddar with a Wallace & Gromit package:

Isn’t that just a kick? And, I’m happy to report that my DH bought more of the cheese with this kind of packaging:

So, stay tuned. I’m not blogging daily, and won’t be until I feel better and have begun cooking again – so I’ll have something to BLOG about.

A year ago: Ground Beef Moussaka

Two years ago: Creamy Leek Soup

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I already have a posole recipe here on my blog. But when I made this one I’d forgotten that, so I made this version, perhaps even easier than the other one. This one uses all canned ingredients for the soup part (tomatoes, hominy, broth) and as long as you have the topping items on hand (grated Monterey jack cheese, radishes, green onions, lettuce – and I added cilantro, sour cream and avocado), this soup comes together in a hurry. This soup I made is not the authentic posole (as it’s usually made with pork). I added in other ingredients. But oh, is it a WOW soup. This is MY KIND OF SOUP, I’ll tell ya. Lots of powerful flavors mingling in the bowl. Lots of textures too. Altogether fabulous.

But first of all I must tell you about a new product – well, it WILL be a new product, I believe – from Muir Glen. I hope you’ve been seeking out Muir Glen organic canned tomatoes already – especially their fire-roasted tomatoes. I just am crazy about them – sometimes they’re hard to find, so I buy a bunch of cans whenever I do locate them. A couple of months ago, the folks at Muir Glen kindly sent me a little gift package of their about-to-released products. (I’m sure the reason they did is that I’ve mentioned Muir Glen several times on my blog, so they probably assumed I’d be more than pleased. They didn’t ask me to write up anything, but I’m happy to, because I believe so much in their superior products.)

Today I’m just going to talk about the Fire-Roasted Tomatoes in Adobo Seasoning because that’s the one I tried out of my gift basket. Very yummy, this stuff! You can order this gift box/basket online through the company’s website. The box I received (above) is $7.00.

I took a taste of the canned tomatoes before I put them in the soup, so I could try to think about the flavor. It’s spicy (has chiles, cumin, oregano among other things) and has a little deeper character than just plain canned tomatoes. Of course, the Muir Glen are fire-roasted, so they already have some deeper flavor to begin with. All things to make this new Muir Glen can very helpful in the kitchen! And very appropriate for things like chili and soup. Adobo is a type of seasoning (popular in Mexico, the Caribbean, Spain and the Philippines) but they vary widely. This adobo is, I think, the Mexican variety. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about it:

• Adobo relates to marinated dishes such as chipotles en adobo or Chipotles in adobo sauce is a condiment in which chipotles (smoked jalapeño peppers) are stewed in a sauce with tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, salt, and spices. The spices vary, but generally include several types of peppers (in addition to the Chipotle and most likely those on hand), ground cumin and dried oregano. Some recipes include orange juice and lemon or lime juices. They often include a pinch of brown sugar just to offset any bitter taste.

As it happens, I added more oregano in my soup, because I wanted a more pronounced herby flavor. But the adobo tomatoes already have some. Plus the cumin, another popular Mexican seasoning. There at the picture (left) you can see the “salad” part of posole – you put that in the bowl first (shredded lettuce, green onions, radishes, avocado and sour cream). Then the soup is ladled in. It’s a fairly dry soup – not a lot of liquid, which was fine with me. Then I sprinkled the cheese and cilantro on top of the soup before serving.

Soups are a standard around my house. I really enjoy making them – and especially the kind like this which have a little cornucopia of toppings – to be added with relish and abandon. You like cheese? Add more. Nix the lettuce? Okay by me. Maybe cabbage is better. Don’t like radishes? Fine, add minced red bell pepper as a condiment. You understand – make it your own. As long as the basic soup is flavorful (yes), healthful (yes, with chicken), you can make this soup any way you’d like. This soup is a winner!
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A year ago: Chicken Bouillabaisse
Two years ago: Pork & Green Chile Stew

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Sometime a year or so ago I wrote up a post about this Pear Crisp (which came from Smitten Kitchen’s blog, and she adapted it from a Gourmet Magazine recipe). It was one of those awesomely good things that enveloped you in comfort with every bite. It contained a flour-nut topping. And the fresh pears just soaked up the goodness of the vanilla browned butter. Looking at the recipe I decided to make this again, but make it gluten-free for my cousin Gary. It was a very easy fix to do that. It called for 1 1/2 cups of flour. I substituted 1 1/2 cups of blanched almond flour instead. It was mixed with whole almonds and spices to make the topping, that turned a very toasty brown (those very dark brown parts you can see in the photo). The crisp went from nice golden brown to nearly burned in a matter of about 5 minutes in the oven. But it wasn’t burned – quite – and those dark brown parts actually tasted quite good.

Ideally, make this when the pears are at their PEAK of flavor. Not when they’re one day past. It still tastes good, but it’s better if the pears are on the underside of ripe rather than the overside of ripe, if you get my drift. The photo at left is the crisp prior to baking with the nut crumbly topping sprinkled all over.
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A year ago: Shrimp & Shellfish Chowder

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Sorry this photo isn’t better – I’d intended to take more photos – I just plain forgot – and when I remembered, these muffins were all gone – but at least I’d taken this one picture, a real close-up using a new lens. Do notice the little dots of moisture here and there in the muffin  . . .

Nearly every Christmas my cousin Gary from northern California comes to visit. He’s a single guy. Very tech oriented (he’s a retired programmer from Hewlett-Packard), and helps me with lots of little things – giving me instruction about html (the stuff that runs how this website looks) and tweaking my computers. Would you believe I have four computers – five if you count my iphone. (And my DH, Dave, has a computer, but he rarely uses it.) I own two desktops at home, an old laptop (that’s going to be retired soon) and a new netbook I use when I travel. Gary’s a member of Mensa, and in his spare time he tutors high school kids in the programming of robots (for an annual international competition). And he always offers to help me cook too. I’d had several recipes I’d wanted to try but I wasn’t up to it because of my upper respiratory infection. We ate out more than usual during his visit.

Anyway, Gary is wheat intolerant, so when he visits I try to make new things for him to try. This time he took home about four recipes – two he asked for, and two I decided he should try. I did do a bit of cooking on days when I felt good enough, and I made these muffins for him to have with his breakfast. Generally we make a trip to Whole Foods so he can buy some GF crackers and bread. But he ate all of these muffins first and liked them. The recipe came from over at Kalyn’s Kitchen blog. Kalyn adapted the recipe from a GF cookbook called The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Anderson. Kalyn is a South Beach Diet fan, so no refined sugars, etc.

If you like light, fluffy, traditional muffins made with flour, these might not satisfy you. These are made with almond flour. Not almond MEAL (which I do buy at Trader Joe’s and use for other things), but blanched almond FLOUR, which is a finer milled product – looks and feels a bit more like flour. But of course, it isn’t. The fat content of these muffins is high – but it comes from the natural oils in the nuts (the almond meal and the minced pecans), not from added fat (although there is one T. of oil in it – for six muffins!). So, if you want to tame down carbs, or have a wheat intolerance, give these a try.
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A year ago: Pumpkin Cornbread Muffins (also GF, made when my cousin was visiting in 2008)
Two years ago: Roast Lemon Chicken

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A few months ago I made a soup using a packaged country gravy mix. It was a real hit. And ever so easy to make. I bought a number of packages of the gravy mix, fearful McCormick would take it off the market! I have no hint that’s going to happen, but one never knows. So, I used the same method, the same gravy mix, the same Italian sausage and onion and changed-up the other ingredients. I had celery, zucchini and dark red kale instead of cabbage. The preparation of the soup was generally the same, although kale does require a bit more cooking than the chopped, sliced cabbage. It took about 30 minutes to tenderize the kale, plus the time to sweat the vegetables and cook the Italian sausage. So, all in all, it took about an hour to make.

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