Black Kale and Shallot Salad

I do love a fancy salad as dinner sometimes.  

Not the dreaded health food pile of tasteless greens topped with vinaigrette, but something beautiful and substantial on the plate.  Sure, you still feel virtuous afterwards, but it's more of the soul-satisfying comfort of warm food with sweet and salty crunchy earthiness that makes this salad craveable.    

I got the idea for this salad from the book "One- a Cook and her Cupboard".  I think I was living out of a hotel when I spied it, heavily discounted at a fancy department store.  Books are terrible for people who move around a lot, and cookbooks make little sense to buy if you don't have access to a kitchen, so it was a smart investment all around.  It's a really beautiful book to flip through, but I soon found the reason why it was on the bargain table.  Most of the recipes are quite complicated (some needlessly so) and require oodles of specialty ingredients or equipment, and some of the directions seem quite vague.  Not the easiest thing to digest for a cook with limited means or equipment.  

I spotted a kale salad salad, made some easy modifications and knew it was a winner.  It's quite pretty on the plate and ticks all kind of boxes for me:  it looks like something that took a lot more time than it should, it's pretty to plate, it's vegetarian, warming and satisfying without being too heavy.  A good choice in winter, or a dreary spring day where winter seems closer than summer. 

Recipe:  Black Kale and Shallot Salad

serves 4 to start, 2 for dinner

6 Shallots

a few sprigs of fresh thyme

olive oil, preferably of the extra virgin variety

salt

1 large sweet potato

1 garlic clove

a pinch of brown sugar

45g whole almonds

bunch (about 300g) purple curly kale.  Sure, you could use green, but purple looks dramatic.

1 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 180c/355f.

Roast your roots:  Peel and cut the root end off the shallots, leaving whole.  Peel and dice the sweet potato.  Peel and crush the garlic clove.  Put the shallots and sweet potatoes and garlic in a medium pan with a good glug of olive oil, salt, brown sugar and the thyme sprigs, and give it a few turns with a spoon or your hands to coat.  Cover and place in the oven for 30 minutes until the shallots have started to collapse and they start to caramelize.  Take out of the oven and let cool slightly.

Roast your almonds:  on a baking sheet, place almonds in a single layer and place in the oven.  Give the pan a shake after about 2 minutes, and let them roast a few minutes more.  Almonds should be a couple shades darker and be pleasantly fragrant.  Once cool, chop roughly.

Wash the kale and remove and large, tough stems.  Bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the kale for about two minutes.  Drain and shock with a rinse in the cold tap.  

Warm the butter over medium heat in a pan.  Add the drained kale, the shallots and potato.  Gently stir to coat with butter and to warm it up, then heap onto plates.  Sprinkle the chopped almonds on top and season to taste.