Kale & potatoes

Eastside Road, June 28, 2011—

I MUST ALREADY have metioned the huge sacks of potatoes we bought every week or two when I was a kid — fifty-pound sacks, burlap, that we'd carry in the three-quarters of a mile during the rainy season when our dirt road was impassable by car. (You can read about this and other insanities, if you like, in my memoir Getting There.)

What we never did, those days, was cook them with kale. We grew kale, but never ate it; it was strictly for the chickens. Mom said it gave the egg yolks flavor, and Dad said it wasn't fit for human consumption.

These days, of course, we frequently eat potatoes and kale, having learned about it from our friends in Apeldoorn. I don't know what Dad would have said about the Dutch. I think he'd have liked their boerkool.

Lindsey fries up a little bacon, then cooks the sliced potatoes and the chopped kale in the bacon fat, slowly, covered, so that it steams as much as it fries. We like malt vinegar sprinkled on it.

Did you think kale — a leafy green — would obviate the usual green salad? How little you know Lindsey!

Rosé, Luberon, ”La Ferme Julien“