Tuscan Kale Salad with Oranges, Currants and Feta

Mid-February. I accepted the Portland magazine column. The first essay is due in March. The assignment is simple: write about Japanese home cooking in Portland, the way you write on the blog, but longer, more polished, more magazine. The assignment is also enormous: write about who you are, in a public forum, for a local readership that will see you at the farmers market and the yoga studio and the school parking lot. The visibility is new. The blog was visible, but blog-visible is different from magazine-visible. Blog-visible is: people find you. Magazine-visible is: people see you. The difference is the direction of the attention.

I made miso-glazed black cod — the Japanese-restaurant dish that Fumiko never made (it was too fancy for home cooking, she would say, too much of a "restaurant show-off") but that I make for special occasions, when the occasion deserves a fish that costs twenty-two dollars a pound and dissolves on the tongue like butter made of ocean. The black cod is marinated in white miso for forty-eight hours and then broiled until the surface caramelizes and the interior becomes silk. The dish is the argument for miso as a transformative ingredient: the miso doesn't just season the fish, it changes the fish, breaks down the proteins, makes the texture something that protein alone cannot achieve.

The first column essay is taking shape. I am writing about the farmers market — about my Sunday ritual, about Carol's kabocha booth, about the act of choosing vegetables as a form of conversation with the season, about the way a Japanese-American woman shops at a Portland farmers market and sees both countries at once: the kabocha is Japan, the kale is America, the basket holds both. The essay is about the basket. The basket is me.

I visited Ken in Sacramento. He is reading a book about Japanese garden design — a beautiful book with photographs of gardens in Kyoto, the kind of gardens that Tomi will someday design for my yard (this is the future, which I do not yet know, which the narrative knows but I do not). Ken held the book with both trembling hands and pointed at a photograph of a moss garden and said, "Someday." The someday was Japan. The someday was a garden he would never visit. The someday was a dream held in trembling hands, and the dream did not shake, even when the hands did.

The miso-glazed black cod was the centerpiece that night, but the dish I keep returning to — the one I made again and again through that column-writing February — was this kale salad. It was the basket made edible: Portland’s kale, bright citrus that reminded me of Sacramento visits with Ken, currants sweet enough to feel like a small dream held in both hands. After writing all day about seeing two countries at once, I needed a plate that did the same thing — something sturdy and American dressed in flavors that felt like somewhere else entirely.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 large bunch Tuscan (lacinato) kale, stems removed and leaves thinly sliced
2 navel oranges, peeled and segmented
1/4 cup dried currants
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic, finely minced
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Instructions

Massage the kale. Place the sliced kale in a large bowl. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and a pinch of salt, then massage the leaves firmly with your hands for 2 to 3 minutes, until the kale softens, darkens in color, and reduces in volume by about half.
Soak the currants. Place the dried currants in a small bowl and cover with warm water. Let sit for 10 minutes to plump, then drain well.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, minced garlic, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper until emulsified.
Assemble the salad. Add the orange segments, drained currants, and feta to the massaged kale. Pour the dressing over and toss gently to combine.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving platter or individual plates and scatter the toasted pine nuts over the top. Serve immediately, or let sit for 10 minutes to allow the flavors to meld.

Nutrition (per serving)

Tuscan Kale Salad with Oranges, Currants and Feta — The Basket That Holds Both Countries