Kale Salad with Mango, Red Banana, and White Truffle Olive Oil

I was visiting my parents this weekend to move my sister into college and celebrate Dad’s birthday. Interesting combo, but it resulted in me making dinner for them last night. When we were at the grocery store, and I was putting the ingredients for this salad into the cart, my dad had the “I can’t believe this is going to be good, but I don’t want to criticize” face. You know the face, the one parents make after their kid scribbles all over a paper and tells them they made a present. Fortunately, this salad turned out to be amazingly delicious. Not to mention that it’s a powerhouse of vitamins, so you should absolutely give this a try.

Ingredients

Adapted from  Aarti Party

1 bunch kale
1 mango
1 lime, zested
2 red bananas
1 tsp olive oil infused with white truffle
2 T pepitas

Slice the leaves off of the thick kale stems, and give them a rough chop into bite-size pieces. Zest lime, and combine in a medium-sized bowl with lime juice and olive oil. If you don’t have or want to buy white truffle olive oil, you can use olive oil and some crimini or shiitake mushrooms. There isn’t a real substitute for the flavor of truffle, but stronger mushrooms will be the closest you can come.

Massage kale with oil and lime juice until it becomes fragrant and shrinks down by about 1/3 in size. This helps take a lot of the “green” flavor out, and also makes the kale a more palatable texture without cooking.

Peel and dice the mango and red bananas and toss to combine. The red banana has a slightly fruitier taste than a yellow banana, so I’d go for the red or leave out the banana; I’m not sure a yellow banana would be a good substitute.

I bought roasted and salted pepitas (pumpkin seeds), because that was all I could find. If yours are raw, make sure to toast them over low heat until fragrant before including them in your salad. I just used the salt already on them as my salt for the salad and felt that was enough, but season to your taste.

Toss together and let marinate for 30 minutes-2 hours. It’s equally delicious room temperature or refrigerated, so you can be really loose with the timing of the salad.

About these ads