There is a salad in town with a reputation. Una Pizza & Wine is a cute gourmet pizza bar that originally created kale salad as a pizza topping before it became so sought after it turned into one of their main dishes. My coworker frequents Una to collect their Kale Caesar Salad during lunch break. Jesse and I tried it ourselves when we first visited Una, and although it was tasty we weren’t blown away. Restaurants, of course, tend to go overboard with flavours – enough salt, garlic and oil to remember the dish all day, thanks to the wafts on the breath.
I set about recreating it, with the goal of bringing it along to work for my coworker to see if it matched up.
After trying it a couple of times I think it has been mastered. The salad is best if the prosciutto is lightly panfried, the breadcrumbs left chunky, the garlic roasted until sweet and fragrant (without causing garlic breath), the eggs only just hardboiled keeping the yolk soft, and the kale left in the dressing for a couple of hours to absorb the flavours and soften the leaves.
Kale Caesar Salad
Adapted from A Cup of Jo
Dressing:
1 head garlic
1/3 cup olive oil plus extra for drizzling
juice of 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup)
3 olives (or capers or anchovies), pitted
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Shed the head of garlic of its outer layer, exposing the cloves, with the base still intact. Chop off the top 1/4 inch of the head so you can see the raw cloves within their skins.
Drizzle with olive oil and wrap tightly in foil. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, until the cloves are soft to the touch. Remove from the foil and allow to cool.
When cool enough to touch, squeeze the cloves out of their skins and add to a food processor. Puree the garlic along with the live oil, lemon juice, olives and mustard. Taste and adjust seasoning as required. It should be fairly thick, tangy and not too salty.
Salad:
1 large bunch kale leaves
Grana Padano or Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved
1 slice sourdough rye bread (or bread of choice)
4 slices prosciutto, diced
4 hard boiled eggs (cooked for 8 – 10 mins)
Remove and discard the stems from the kale leaves and thinly slice the leaves. Toss with the dressing and leave to marinate. Heat a splash of oil in a frying pan and add the diced prosciutto. Saute over low heat. Dice the bread into cubes and add to the pan of prosciutto. Cook until bread is toasty and prosciutto begins to brown. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Layer the kale leaves on a platter with the bread cubes, prosciutto, shavings of Parmesan and sliced hard boiled egg.
I love it when you can recreate a restaurant dish at home, only better! This looks pretty delicious.
This was sent to me by my cousin in Australia, she suggested I leave out the prosciutto as I am vegetarian, but that is a big part of the salad. I could use toasted cashew nuts instead. I am horrified at using an oven just to roast some garlic – I wonder if it would work in the microwave! or do that in advance when you are using the oven for something else. I am not sure about the kale as it is so tough, but will have a go.
Haha. Yes I too will not put on the oven just to roast garlic, however I am almost always baking something else anyway so I throw it in. Next time you are roasting veges, add a bulb of garlic. It will last fine in the fridge for a couple of days. If you like the kale to be softer it can easily be massaged. It sounds silly but simply rub the leaves together and it will soften and lose its bitterness. I would replace the prosciutto with toasted pecans but it truly is what makes a Caesar salad 🙂