Apparently not everybody likes kale…

Our Bangalow-based columnist, Robert Drewe, is not a fan of kale – as far he’s concerned you can give him bacon any time.

Lately I seem to be writing a lot about food. Is it because my family grows a few fruits and vegetables here in the country? That I got a taste for food-writing with my article for Gourmet Traveller in praise of the original Rottnest jam doughnut? That I enjoy eating out? Above all, that I live with a truly excellent cook?

No, it’s because I find the fads, descriptive jargon and pretentions surrounding food to be ridiculously entertaining. Take kale, for example. I know this is sacrilege in these parts but has any single vegetable ever been so suddenly popular for such little reason? Is there a restaurant menu that doesn’t feel it compulsory to feature kale in a walk-on role?

I’m quite familiar with kale. Curious about its wondrous benefits as the latest ‘super-food’, we planted some, and I must say our kale is doing marvellously. In a harsh winter in Bangalow it was the only vegetable not only to survive but to thrive. It’s frost resistant, bug resistant and snail resistant. Kale is also kangaroo and rabbit resistant. Does this tell you anything?

Yes, it’s also flavour resistant. Well, of course you can deep-fry the leaves, drizzle them with oil, then crisp or sauté them and finish with a smidge of garlic (notice my familiarity with the words ‘drizzle’ and ‘smidge’). Then kale is vaguely tasty. But any food that depends totally on garlic and oil for its taste surely isn’t pulling its weight.

Before I leave the subject of kale, I should mention a recent recipe in Gourmet Traveller that said it all for me: ‘Blistered Kale Ribs with Kale-Leaf and Quinoa Salad’. No more common old stalks; apparently vegetables, like animals, now have ribs. (Do you recall quinoa? It was the kale of ten years ago. It took us that long to remember it was pronounced ‘keen-wa’.) It’s great that the two fads are now married in a single meal (a ‘duo’, in fact). But will I, in my lifetime, ever choose to eat this particular dish, whether blistered or not? Nah.

My favourite local restaurant not only fails to see the point of kale, but doesn’t dress up its menu with verbosity. It just gives a reasonable description of what’s on offer. Seeing as we’re not actually in Avignon, its spuds aren’t pommes de terre but potatoes. Its meals don’t claim to be ‘farm-to-table’, ‘farm-fresh’, ‘garden-fresh’ or ‘natural’, claims so over-used they have no meaning. Unlike everywhere else, its soups are ‘hearty’, its salads ‘zesty’, without, for once, having to say so.

“It’s frost-resistant, bug resistant and snail resistant.  Kale is also kangaroo and rabbit resistant.  Does this tell you anything?”

It seldom uses such menu-speak as ‘hand-glazed’, ‘pan-fried’ and ‘oven-roasted’ (how else?), not to mention ‘foraged’, ‘deconstructed’, ‘artisan’, ‘bathed’ and ‘market-fresh’. Did the chef really venture into the fields himself and forage for the mushrooms, or just get them from the market – or Woolies? Of course fresh food comes from a market – and your point is? I suspect chefs want you to be awestruck that they get up at the crack of dawn to hunt down produce at the market. (This isn’t always the case.)

Most chefs prefer to serve a ‘duo’ of ingredients, rather than two. So they can be ‘married’, I guess. If you’re lucky they’re ‘delicately-balanced’, maybe even ‘nestling’ on a ‘bed’ of something.

Why is a dish better for being ‘deconstructed’: ripped up and put together again? (That sounds suspiciously like literary theory.) Meanwhile, ‘artisan’, already grossly over-used, might just be excused as a word for a time-honoured food uniquely crafted by a specialist, but not for potato wedges. And do I want my steak ‘bathed’? I’d prefer an already clean one, thanks. And hold the merlot-thyme jus.

And the kale as well, of course. But I suspect I’m alone here. Kale-mania has spread far beyond Australia. From the New York Times to the mass-market US Weekly (‘Stars Who Love Kale’), the vegetable is a hot topic. The Times said kale had become ‘a symbol of a certain kind of artisanal, ecological lifestyle’. The most popular T-shirt sold in America in the past decade is one emblazoned with the slogan ‘Eat More Kale’.

As the now-wealthy T-shirt creator, Bo Muller-Moore, says, ‘I can tell a lot about a person based on whether they know what kale is. If someone comes up to me and says, ‘What’s kale?’ I feel sorry for them.’

As I said, I’ve tried kale. I prefer bacon.

Robert Drewe’s latest book, a collection of his columns entitled Swimming to the Moon is published by Fremantle Press: fremantlepress

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