Every year, my girlfriends and I get together for a holiday feast.  It has been a tradition since high school!  At first we would all have our parents help us make something and it ended up being a major carb fest, but we do better and better every year!  This year I was responsible for the veggie side dishes.  I made green beans, roasted cauliflower and a knock off of one of my favourite salads from a local Toronto restaurant, starring kale, pine nuts and currants!  It’s too good not to share!

Ingredients (amounts are approximations, as I always make salad dressings to taste)

• 2 heads of kale
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 lemon
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp stone ground mustard
• 1 tbsp parmesan cheese
• sea salt & pepper
• handful of currants
• handful of pine nuts
• pecorino cheese for garnish

Method

• de-stem, wash, and chop kale into small pieces
• massage kale with juice from half a lemon, and a generous amount of sea salt to cover the amount of kale you have
• set the kale in the fridge (the lemon and salt will start to break down the cell walls so that the kale doesn’t taste rough)
• mix the dressing (olive oil, apple cider vinegar, honey, mustard, parmesan cheese)
• pan-roast the pine nuts for ~5-10 minutes
• after the kale has sat in the fridge for some time (~1 hour), you are ready to dress it
• dress it with the dressing, currants and roasted pine nuts
• garnish with pecorino