For years, I wondered why my kale salad fell flat. Literally. Like anyone who has ever tried it, I’d fallen in love with the Caesar-like kale salad at Barbuto in New York’s West Village. I tried replicating it with my winning Caesar salad dressing, but it just wasn’t the same. Something about the texture. I lightened up the dressing. I massaged the kale with the dressing. I massaged it with lemon juice and salt and let it sit before adding the dressing. Nothing worked. Nothing gave me the ethereal texture of the Barbuto salad. Then one day, I bothered to ask the chef Jonathan Waxman, who conveniently happens to be a friend, the most obvious question of all: What kind of kale do you use? “Curly kale,” he said. “It’s gotta be curly kale.”
Mind blown. Like curly parsley, I’d pretty much ignored the very existence of curly kale. I reached right past its sturdy, curly leaves and went straight for its flatter, darker, more manageable-looking Tuscan cousin — Tuscan kale (also called lacinato kale, black kale, cavolo nero and dinosaur kale). But once I tried the curly kale, I understood: Those curls, when sliced, are what allow the kale not to fall into a dense pile. Instead, like Easter basket grass, the curly kale, even when dressed, has volume; there is light and air between the strands, giving a necessary levity to the sturdy and intensely flavored leaves.
Also, “massaging” kale is kind of a misnomer. It’s more like squeezing the dressing into the kale. This is no aromatherapy Swedish-type massage; we’re talking deep tissue, sports massage. We’re aiming to break down cell walls here, not to ease the kale into a restful slumber.
