Ingredients
2 tablespoons bacon fat
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 apple, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
2 bunches Lacinato kale, stems removed and leaves coarsely chopped
1 cup dried sweet cherries
1/4 cup hard cider
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Directions
- Melt the bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Toss the red onion into the hot fat and fry until fragrant and softened, about 3 minutes.
Stir in the apple and fry until tender enough to pierce with a fork, about 4 minutes.
Toss in the kale and cook until barely wilted. It should take only a minute.
Stir the cherries and hard cider into the wilted kale and apple and simmer until the liquid is mostly evaporated, about 5 minutes. Stir in the apple cider vinegar and serve.
Reprinted with permission from The Nourished Kitchen: Farm-to-Table Recipes for the Traditional Foods Lifestyle by Jennifer McGruther and published by Ten Speed Press, 2014. Buy this book from our store: The Nourished Kitchen.
The Nourished Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2014) encourages the preparation of wholesome, nourishing foods, as well as a mindful approach to cooking and old-world culinary traditions. Jennifer McGruther guides readers through a traditional foods kitchen and offers more than 160 recipes inspired by the seasons and land that affect us all. This Cider-Braised Kale Recipe With Apples and Cherries is from the chapter “From the Garden,” and is a celebration of the changing of seasons from summer to autumn.
You can purchase this book from the GRIT store: The Nourished Kitchen.
The Nourished Kitchen Recipes:
Baked Salmon Recipe With Heavy Cream
Cider-Brined Slow-Roasted Chicken Recipe
Cider-Braised Kale Recipe with Apples and Cherries
Each year, at the autumn equinox, I serve this dish at our community’s annual harvest festival. It’s a magical time when throngs of masked mummers line the streets, reveling in song and drink before congregating at the town’s center and lighting a bonfire that reaches so wildly high its embers cannot be distinguished from the stars.
The dish itself is a celebration of the equinox, a time when the long days of summer wane into the growing darkness of autumn. It combines a remnant of summer—dried sweet cherries—with the bounty of autumn’s apples, greens, and onions. If you don’t have any hard cider, substitute sweet cider.
