Kenyan Greens Recipe

In America, greens like chard and kale are boring hippy food. These are often served raw, or in a flavorless preparation. It makes them seem like dull, unappetizing foods. Here is a recipe to elevate your greens to a delicacy.

This recipe can be used with crinkle kale, dinosaur kale, swiss chard, rainbow chard, amaranth greens (a.k.a. callaloo or mchicha), mustard greens, spinach, beet greens, and many other varieties of green, leafy vegetables.

Kenyan Greens

1. The first step is prepping the greens. Wash each leaf thoroughly and break the leaves off of the stems. Throw the stems out, they’re not yummy and they don’t cook up well, or even digest well for that matter. This step doesn’t apply to spinach, but with many of the other greens that have a prominent stem, it will make a big difference.
2. Slice your greens thin like shredded paper confetti.
3. Slice & dice some aromatics to create a flavor-base for your greens. Usually these are onions, garlic, ginger, and cilantro.
4. Dice up some tomatoes really small as well.
5. Get a bit a bit of oil going in a large saucepan on medium heat.
6. Saute your aromatics. Start by browning the onions, then add the ginger, garlic, cilantro, and tomatoes one at a time, being careful not to burn them, but to get a nice brown on the outside and a lot of good smells.
7. Now throw in your greens by the handful, mixing them in with the flavor base.
8. Begin to add seasoning as you add the greens, typically just salt and pepper are enough, but feel free to get creative. Curry powder or various spice masalas might be great (careful now…).
9. Mix in all your greens with all the flavor, making sure you don’t have distinct areas of partially-cooked greens, over-cooked greens, and burnt aromatics sitting in different pockets. You want everything to be mixed together nice and evenly.
10. Let the greens cook until the color changes to an appetizing and bright green, but not so long that the greens become dull, dark, and limp. This is not canned spinach; you want to eat this and it should be as pretty as it is delicious.