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Kale with Pork
Put a piece of salt pork into a kettle of cold water, allowing it to boil fifteen minutes to a pound. Three-quarters of an hour before it is done, have ready, washed and picked, the necessary quantity of kale, put it on with the pork, do not cover the kettle, and boil thirty minutes. When done, drain, put the pork in the centre of the dish and the kale around it; garnish with hard-boiled eggs. French dressing may also be poured around it.
A one-pot boiled dinner in miniature: the pork seasons the water, the water cooks the greens. The only real decisions are how salty your pork is and how long the kale actually needs.
- Salt porkModern salt pork is heavily cured and can make the whole pot inedible. Rinse it well, and if it is very salty give it 30 minutes in cold water first, or blanch it and start again with fresh water.
- "Fifteen minutes to a pound"That is total boiling time, so a 1.5 lb piece is done in only about 22 minutes, which is less than the three-quarters of an hour the recipe says should remain when the kale goes in; a piece of about 3 lb is needed before the two instructions agree. Keep it at a bare simmer rather than a hard boil or the meat tightens.
- Kale timingThirty minutes suits the tough, mature winter kale of the period. Curly kale from a supermarket is done in 10 to 15 minutes, and bagged baby kale or lacinato in 5 to 8. Add it later in the pork's cooking rather than following the clock here.
- Why the lid stays offThis is the instruction to keep. Uncovered, the sulfur compounds released by the brassica escape as steam instead of condensing back into the pot, and the greens hold their color better. Covered kale turns olive-drab and smells of it.
- Picking over"Washed and picked" means picking the kale over: discarding damaged leaves and the coarsest stems and ribs, then washing in several changes of water. Grit clings to curly kale and does not rinse off in one pass.
- The cooking liquidDo not pour it all away. The pork liquor is well worth keeping for a bean soup, though taste it first, as it may be too salty to use undiluted.
- French dressingIn this period that means a simple oil-and-vinegar vinaigrette, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar with salt and pepper. Not the sweet orange bottled dressing of the same name.
- Quantity and yield"The necessary quantity of kale" is left to the cook. Reckon about 1 lb of trimmed leaves and 1 to 1.5 lb of pork for four, since kale collapses to a fraction of its raw volume.
Boiling salt pork with greens is one of the oldest habits in the northern European kitchen and travelled intact to America: the pig supplied fat and salt through the winter, and kale, which sweetens rather than dies after frost, supplied the only fresh green available in late autumn. The pairing is often said to lie behind Southern greens cooked with a piece of fatback, and it has close relatives in the Dutch and German boerenkool and Grünkohl mit Pinkel eaten around the same season. Here the plain kettle of pork and kale is dressed up with hard-boiled egg and a vinaigrette poured around the platter.