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| Cavolo Nero crisps with honeyed walnuts |
Kale crisps flavoured with soy and honey with a few honeyed walnuts thrown into the mix...
For a while now, I have been dreaming about kale crisps - ever since the day I stumbled across packets of these veggie crisps at an organic food store. The thing with kale crisps is you either love them and crave them constantly, or you can't understand the concept of them and loathe the idea. Either way, at £3.60 a packet, these crisps don't come cheap.
To make your own tasty Kale crisps, this recipe uses "Cavolo Nero" or Tuscan Kale, which I prefer to other varieties of kale. Also known as Lacinato Kale, it is an attractive vegetable with long, textured dark blue-green leaves that sometimes look almost black. The larger leaves give a fantastic end result, almost like crunchy sheets of nori (seaweed). I also find their flavour to be superior to other kale varieties, like curly kale. As with all kale, Cavolo Nero is highly nutritious, high in vitamins A, K and C, and rich in antioxidants (Source: Dr Weil).
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| Cavolo Nero with it's dark blue green leaves |
This recipe uses 200g of Cavolo Nero leaves which makes a batch for about two people. The leaves can easily be stripped away from their hard central stems by holding the end of the stem with one hand and running your hand down the stem with the other. As I prepare the leaves in 50g batches, the marinade ingredients are listed for this quantity (for 200g of leaves, you will need four times the quantity of marinade).
We used Sainsbury's SO Organic clear honey and Sainsbury's SO Organic walnut pieces.
Honey Soy Cavolo Nero crisps
makes a batch for 2
Ingredients
200g Cavolo Nero, thick stems removed
MARINADE
for each 50g of cavolo nero leaves:
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
Five spice powder, pinch (optional)
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
Maldon sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
Wash leaves and spin dry. Discard stems or reserve for another time.
In a bowl, whisk the soy sauce, honey and five spice powder together with the olive oil. In 50g batches, toss the leaves into the marinade, massaging in the mixture to coat both sides. Repeat until all the leaves are coated.
Lay each leaf flat on a baking tray in a single layer, and place in the oven until crisp (this should take about 10 minutes). Check often to make sure they aren't burning.
Remove from oven, and sprinkle with sea salt.
The leaves should be crisp and have the texture of dried seaweed sheets.
Honeyed Walnuts
Ingredients
50g walnut pieces
2 teaspoons of honey
Method
Thank you to Sainsbury's for sponsoring honey and walnut pieces from their SO Organic range.
Cavolo Nero is widely available, but you can experiment with different varieties of kale, by varying the cooking time. Try these recipes : David Lebovitz Kale Chips and Martha Stewart Kale Crisps with Sea Salt and Lemon.
