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Broth-Braised-Kale + Cooking Yr Greens

March 3, 2016 By Lauren

fistfulofkale

Is it just me or has the sway of what is #trending become that much stronger these past few years?  The web has become a looking glass into the apartments, the closets, the kitchens, the cafes, the “lifestyles” of inspiring folks around the world.  #Inspo is to be found everywhere, and, ironically, its effect has been to prune away nuance in favor of #trends, which have begun to shape the most fundamental parts of our lives, including what we eat.  Especially what we eat.

Food trends have existed for a good, long while.  Wherever there was abundance, there were foods that rose and fell in and out of fashion (like the Roman tradition of stuffing a bird within a bird within a bird which has, incidentally, cycled back as the “turducken”).  In the last five or six decades, since food production was taken out of the hands of individuals and placed in the proverbial hands of industry, these trends became broader, more globalized.  Suddenly, you could eat the same Kraft dinner in Calgary, Canada as in Mumbai, India as in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In the past decade, we’ve turned away from industrial foods like Kraft dinners but the globalized food trend has only grown: the açai smoothie bowl, the green juice, the spiralized zucchini noodle, the avocado toast, the raw kale and quinoa salad.  No matter where you’re living, you’ve probably tried at least a couple of these foods in the last years, n’est-ce pas?  I sure have.

brothkale

Especially, the last one.  The raw kale and quinoa salad.  I must have made this salad at least three (or thirty) dozen times along my learning-the-ropes-of-nourishing-myself way.  But, the thing is, I don’t love raw kale.  In fact, I don’t even really like it.  If I’m totally honest, I never have.  No matter how tenderly its massaged, it’s still sort of, well, rough, and the time it takes to chew one forkful can feel like an eternity (the mastication of a never-ending bowl of raw kale is, I believe, Dante’s 8th circle of Hell).

So why was I eating so much of it?  Because it was so damn good for me.  At the time, in the early twenty-tens, raw kale and quinoa seemed the pinnacle of health-food, of “clean-eating”, and different versions of the combination flooded the web.  W/ so many folks singing its praises, who was I to think differently?

Six years further along my nutrition camino, I’m here to tell you that raw kale ain’t it, at least nutritionally speaking.  In fact, all of those dark, leafy greens that are so damn good for you (like chard, collard greens, spinach) are 10x better when they’re not only cooked, but well-cooked.  I’m talking about a good 20-minute simmer on the stove.

kaleinpan

Cook Yr Greens, Break Thru The Walls

Cooking is alchemy.  Something new is created w/ the addition of the elements–fire, water, oxygen–and time.  The raw food movement has a point: some foods do lose nutrients during this process (milk is one of the best examples).  But the majority of foods, specifically plant foods, benefit greatly from this alchemical process.

All of plant-foods’ nutritional juiciness–the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients–are stored in their cells, which are surrounded by walls.  These walls are made to withstand breakage and to protect the cells, thus it’s necessary to “break through the walls” if you want to obtain all those juicy nutrients.  Cooking or other alchemical processes like fermenting, sprouting, and preserving are all methods of breaking through the walls and “unlocking” nutrients.

In regards to dark leafy greens, specifically, it’s important to remember that certain nutrients like vitamins A, E and K are fat-soluble, meaning they need to be eaten w/ a fat in order to be absorbed by our bodies.  Kale and the other dark leafies are super-sources of vitamins K and A, so choosing a cooking option that includes a fat, like sautéing, “breaks through” yet another wall, letting you get the most out of yr greens.

Lately, I’ve been braising my greens in some mineral-rich bone-broth.  It’s a simple way to incorporate more bone-broth in my day (when I’m not feeling like straight-sipping on a mug), and makes a tough green like kale absolutely silky.  I’m always amazed at the color at the end–a rich algae-green,–and how much the greens cook down, making the daily recommendation of 3-4 cups of dark leafies feasible.

Are broth and kale both #trending?  Yep, definitely so, but this is a recipe based on traditions not trends and it’s one that not only makes me feel good but also tastes heavenly.  Give it a try and consider that the rise of food trends isn’t a bad thing, it’s just important to remember to think and to eat for yourself.

algaekale

Broth-Braised Kale

  • 1 knob ghee or tallow
  • 1/2 onion, sliced thinly
  • pinch salt
  • 1 clove garlic, sliced thinly
  • 1 bunch curly kale, chopped roughly
  • 1/3 cup chicken bone-broth
  1. Heat cast-iron pan on medium heat.  Once nice and hot, melt ghee.
  2. Add onions and salt generously, cook and stir until translucent then add garlic and cook and stir for another few minutes.
  3. Add kale and stir, mixing the kale, garlic and onions together.  If it seems like you’re using too much kale for your pan, don’t fret!  The kale’s going to cook down, majorly.
  4. Add bone-broth and turn heat to low.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until broth is gone from pan.

 

Filed Under: Plant, Recipes, Seasons, Sides, Vegetable, Winter Tagged With: bone broth, broth, broth braised kale, kale, paleo, wapf

Chicken Liver Spread

May 23, 2015 By Lauren

liver-plate

It’s time.  Time I introduced y’all to one of the most nourishing foods in ze whole wide world.  A food that, despite my qualms against the practice, I’m inclined to prefix with the word “Super”, yes, w/ a capital “S”.  It’s a food that’s easily accessible, no matter what part of the world you call home, and is even affordable, to boot.  A food that is often forgotten and is, if remembered, regarded with some, let’s just say, Apprehension w/ a capital “A”.

I’m talking about liver.  Yeah, that’s right.  Liver.

In many holistic health communities, I’ve found that the conversation surrounding liver can be confusing.

Take, for example, this conversation, which occurred two falls ago, during my first course of holistic nutrition, The Fundamentals of Nutrition, when we were studying vitamins–their functions in the body and the foods that contain them in the highest amounts.  We started with vitamin A and I noticed that, in our notes, the highest sources were all vegetables.

My hand shot up, as it was wont to do, “But isn’t liver the highest concentrated source of vitamin A?”

My teacher, a naturopathic doctor, shrugged, “Liver is the detoxification organ.  Eating liver is like eating all of the toxins the animal was exposed to.  I would never recommend it to anyone.”

“Why would anyone WANT to eat liver?!” A classmate toward the back of the room suggested.

Why, indeed.

But before we answer that, let’s attend to the big question, the one my teacher raised, first.  If the liver is the detoxification organ, isn’t it just a storage-house for toxins?

Short answer:  No.  Well, not exactly.

liver-herbs

Liver, the Long Answer

One of the liver’s many functions is to remove toxins from the bloodstream, so, yes, toxins do pass through it.  The keywords being pass through, as the liver doesn’t store toxins, but instead filters them, neutralizing them and making fat-soluble toxins water-soluble, enabling them to be removed via water-like substances (sweat, bile, urine).

This is how the liver works in a healthy organism, a healthy human or chicken or cow.  In an unhealthy organism, one that’s constantly exposed to toxins like herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones, the liver is overworked, unable to filter, to neutralize, to remove and instead toxins are, indeed, stored there–deposited in its fatty tissues.

This is one of the many reasons why finding liver from an animal that was raised traditionally–on pasture, organically–is super important.  A healthy animal = a healthy liver = a nutritional bonus for us all.

rye-bread

Nutrients in the Liver, the Long List

We’ve learned that a healthy animal’s liver isn’t storing toxins.  In fact, it’s doing the opposite:  it’s storing nutrients.  These nutrients are what enable the liver to do its detoxification thang and are the reason that many traditional cultures revere the liver as a profoundly nourishing food.

Liver contains all the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) and the fat to absorb them.  It’s the highest source of vitamin B12 and folic acid and contains the minerals iron, copper and zinc in abundance.  It contains the nutrient coenzymeQ10 which cells use to produce energy for cell-growth and maintenance and which has been shown to benefit cardio-vascular function.  It’s high in antioxidants, which help our own livers function properly, and it even contains an as yet unidentified “anti-fatigue” factor.

On board, yet?

liver-spread

I first got on-board the liver-train two years ago, while living in northern Michigan.  I’d had pâté in restaurants before but, even though I’d slaughtered chickens and helped to butcher of pigs (under the tutelage of Tuscan butcher, no less), the idea of cooking liver kind of freaked me out.

I was living in a place called the Tree House (s/o to those beautiful folk) and one night a friend, let’s call him JM Jesus, brought over some organic calf’s liver to cook over the bonfire.  We lifted it straight from its wrapping and dropped it into the cast-iron skillet.  The smell was sharp, like some super-funky cheese, and the taste grainy, as if someone had added sand to the pan.  I later learned that calf’s liver takes a bit more preparation, but needless to say, I wasn’t convinced.

A few months later, in Vancouver, I found myself living close to a high-vibe butcher and took home a whole chicken one afternoon, organ meats and all.  I decided to give liver another go, having heard that chicken liver was easier to prepare than calf’s.  I dropped the livers in a pan with a handful of herbs and a knob of ghee, added some sautéed onions and garlic and more ghee, and blitzed it all together.  The next day, I brought in my jar of liver-spread w/ a few slices of rye-bread and some mustard to share w/ my classmates. 

“Liverwurst!”  my friend N.Klamm exclaimed as we polished off the jar.  Creamy and savory and speckled w/ aromatic herbs: call it pâté, parfait, or just plain ol’ liver-spread, this simple recipe brought me aboard the liver-train and, let me tell you, I haven’t looked back since.

Print
Chicken Liver Spread

Ingredients

  • 1 onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 300 grams chicken livers
  • 7 tablespoons + knob ghee
  • 2 handfuls of sage, thyme, rosemary, chopped thinly
  • pinch salt

Directions

  1. Add knob ghee to cast-iron skillet on medium heat. Sauté onions and garlic w/ big pinch of salt until well cooked, about 5 minutes, or so, stirring every so often. Remove from pan and place in food processor.
  2. Add chicken livers and herbs to pan. Cook for 3 minutes on each side--you want the insides to remain pink--if it's overcooked, the texture becomes grainy.
  3. Remove livers from pan and add to food processor. Add 4 tablespoons ghee and big pinch of salt. Blend until smooth.
  4. Place 3 tablespoons ghee in cast-iron skillet and heat on medium until melted. Take off from heat and let cool for a few minutes.
  5. While ghee is cooling, spoon liver spread into clean and sealable glass jar.
  6. Pour ghee on top of liver spread to create a "fat seal" that will allow your spread to stay fresh longer (about 1 week, in the fridge).

In Switzerland, as in many places, you can only buy frozen chicken livers. To defrost livers place in fridge overnight and make your spread the next morning. It is important to defrost the livers properly! Do not leave out on the counter to defrost.

3.1

Filed Under: Animal, Chicken, Kitchen Essentials, Organ, Recipes, Sides Tagged With: liver, liverwurst, nutrientdense, organmeats, parfait, pate, recipe, wapf

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