Skip to main content
Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.
While kalettes conjure an image of dancers dressed like leafy greens doing the can-can, it’s actually the name of a hybrid vegetable from England. As British Brussels sprouts sales tanked in the ’90s, the plant breeders at Tozer Seeds crossbred them with kale in an effort to develop a more exciting sprout laced with purple frills. (It remains a mystery why the Brits didn’t just encourage roasting the little cabbages instead of boiling them to death.) Tozer’s efforts failed to produce thrilling new Brussels sprouts, but they did grow a hybrid with a thick main stem sprouting little kalelike flowers that were very tasty. Because kale itself was so trendy, they called the diminutive buds “kalettes.”
Like all the brassicas, kalettes grow well here in the maritime Pacific Northwest, and despite the much higher cost of the trademarked seeds, many small farmers bring them to market. Most years, you can find them from November through March, but a vegetable vendor at the Portland Farmers Market told me this season has been tough and their kalettes have just started to produce. So kalettes may be hard to find, and they’ll be more expensive than the rest of their cabbage cousins, but the approach described below makes them delicious if you’re up for the splurge.
The first time I cooked kalettes I used my standard Italian-ish approach for leafy brassicas: Drop them into boiling water for a few minutes, then sauté gently in olive oil with lots of garlic. And they were delicious. But Amanda Rodriguez, one of the cooks at Wellspent Market, told me she likes to roast them. When I found kalettes at the farmers market this month, I took them home, tossed them in olive oil and garlic, and popped them into a hot oven. When they came out of the oven, the cluster of thin stems and broccoli-like inflorescence was firm but tender, and the frilly leaves offered a crispy contrast. While my heart belongs to cabbage, these incredibly good roasted kalettes pushed me toward infidelity.
Recipe
½ pound kalettes
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped*
½ teaspoon kosher-style sea salt
Put the kalettes, olive oil, garlic, and salt in a large bowl. Use your hands to toss so all the kalettes get coated with olive oil. Spread them onto a sheet pan in a single layer and roast at 400° F for about 15 minutes or until the leaves get crispy. Try not to eat them all right off the sheet pan.