Kale chicken about 1/4 of a large mild onion, sliced 2 serrano peppers, sliced finely olive oil sesame oil ground coriander anise seed dash cinnamon dash garlic salt soy sauce chinese cooking wine or mirin 1 to 1.5 lb. boneless chicken chopped or torn into smallish chunks 2-3 large leaves, or 4-6 smaller leaves, or more, kale 1 midsized to large summer squash, sliced Slice onion and peppers. Add ~3-4 tbsp olive oil and a bit of sesame oil (1/4 to 1/2 tsp or so) to a frying pan. Saute onion and peppers in the oil on high for a short time (~30 sec). Reduce heat to medium high. Add spices. - ground coriander. use quite a bit: estimated from 3/4 to 1 1/2 tsp - anise seed. moderate amount: estimated from 1/4 tsp to 3/4 tsp - cinnamon. healthy to largish dash. - garlic powder. dash (or alternatively, put a couple cloves of fresh garlic in with the peppers) For best results, shake these in over the onion and peppers rather than measuring and dumping in a blob. Stir. There should be enough oil to soak up the spices; if not, add more. Wait another 20-30 seconds or so, stirring a couple times, then reduce heat to medium. Add soy sauce, gently. At this point the pan temp is above 100C so the soy will sizzle, possibly fairly hard; if you dump it in unceremoniously it will spatter. The amount of soy sauce to use is "enough". However, this is critical (too much and the whole thing becomes far too salty) -- my best estimate is about 2 tbsp. but, don't measure it. Instead, do this: add a medium-sized dash from the bottle into first the middle, then each of four quadrants of the pan. Each quadrant will sizzle; once the pan is under 100C, then maybe add a little more, maybe not. Stir. The soy should be enough to coat the material you have in the pan, but not enough to generate any significant depth of liquid. if there isn't quite enough, add more. Now add mirin. add enough to get a *little* depth of liquid in the pan. (estimated: from 2-3 to 5-6 tbsp) Stir. Let cook for another ~30 seconds, stirring once or twice. Now reduce heat to low and go chop the chicken. This should take long enough that the liquid level in the pan drops some, but not enough that the pan starts to get dry. If you're done too fast, or you chopped the chicken in advance, wait (dunno how long, sorry, maybe 10-15 minutes total) -- if you took too long you can add more soy (see below) but this is not desirable because of the salt content. Add the chicken. Shake more coriander and a bit more anise directly onto the chicken. How much: perhaps 3-4 and 1 good shakes respectively, although this depends obviously on your spice bottles. As for measured amounts, I have no idea at all; maybe 1/2 to 3/4 tsp and 1/4 tsp or less respectively. Stir, making sure to coat all the chicken in the sauce. If there isn't enough sauce, add more soy over the chicken. if you find you need to add more than a little to get enough liquid, use mirin as well. (Both are salty, but soy generally has more salt...) If all else fails you can add more olive oil too. If you think appropriate given the total quantities of soy and mirin you've added, add a little salt here. However, it may be better to skip this entirely. Now increase the heat to medium again. Cook the chicken, stirring occasionally. When the chicken is nearly cooked through, add the kale. Tear up the leaves and, if necessary, break up the stems. YMMV; the kale I get seems to vary quite a bit both in leaf size and stemminess. Add as much kale as you can fit into the pan on top of the chicken; remember it will shrink down drastically once it starts to cook. (Given a normal-size pan, it's not likely even possible to add too much.) (Note: if you rinse the kale right before adding it, as you probably will, shake it so it's vaguely dry but no more than that. If it's completely dry, you may need to add water or other liquid.) Stir as best as possible; try to get as much of the chicken as you can on top of the kale. Continue to cook. Once the kale starts to shrink down, stir more, and continue stirring occasionally. Once the kale has shrunk down about halfway, add in the squash. If you haven't already put too much salt in, salt the squash at this point. (*Before* stirring the squash in.) Stir occasionally, until the squash is just on the verge of being done. Remember that squash doesn't take very long; it is "on the verge" once it starts to show noticeable hints of translucency. At this point the pan should be close to, but not completely, dry. If you've got a lot of sauce at this point you may want to try thickening it; however, I don't think this should be an issue. Now, reduce heat to low. Let it sit on the heat for a few minutes (5 or so) so the squash finishes cooking. The exact timing doesn't matter much; this gives flexibility to make tea, wait for other things to be finished, bang the dinner gong, etc. When you're ready, stir one last time, turn off the heat, and serve immediately. Serve with steamed rice. Serves 2-3. Total elapsed time: 45-50 minutes. Notes: 1. It is easy for this to turn out too salty. Both soy and mirin have a good deal of salt, so use no more than necessary as described above. 2. The estimated amounts listed above are guesswork. I never measure spices for this kind of cooking, and you shouldn't either. 3. Two serranos seems to yield a comfortable level of heat, that is, basically mild but enough to be slightly noticeable. For me. If you are more sensitive than me to it, maybe use one. If you want it noticeably hot, three might work better. It wasn't intended to be particularly hot; if you want it to be, you probably know better than me what to do to accomplish that. 4. The precise sequencing described above for the onions, spices, and chicken is not vital, but recommended; i.e., it works for me this way, if you dump everything in at once or whatever it may not. However, if you add the kale or the squash any earlier than described they'll definitely come out overcooked. 5. If you use a stronger onion (e.g. an ordinary yellow onion, or a red onion), use a bit less of it. Or maybe not, it won't make that much difference. 6. Kale seems to vary quite a bit, so rather than counting leaves go by volume. Red kale vs. ordinary kale doesn't appear to make any noticeable difference. Haven't tried lacinato kale. You can probably also follow roughly the same procedure with any other bitter greens, although obviously it'll taste different. I've used a similar procedure with mushrooms and spinach. 7. Obviously you can use a zucchini in place of a summer squash, but it won't look as good on the plate. You might also be able to use slices of eggplant; haven't tried that though and it will require somewhat different procedure. 8. This is not gluten-free because of the soy, but I fully expect it'll work ok with tamari. DO NOT USE TERIYAKI SAUCE HI MOM. 9. I see no reason this shouldn't be kosher given kosher chicken, but I'm not an expert. There is no chance whatsoever of it being adaptable to be kosher for Passover. 10. I've been asked whether you have to grind the anise. You don't. Credits: made up by dholland. History: 11/14/2010 initial improvised run; highly successful. Estimated recipe written down afterwards. 3/18/2011 tried it again; it ended up way too salty. Forgot to buy a squash, too, which didn't help. Made notes on how to avoid salt problems in the future. 4/3/2011 third run; very slightly too salty but also highly successful. Revised recipe afterwards, adjusted quantity estimates. Changed salting procedure to avoid adding any salt with the spices; better to wait until it's clear how much soy has gone in. 1/29/2012: fourth run. used 1.8 lbs chicken, whole bundle of kale. used more oil up front to help account for this, worked fine. the pan got quite dry before/during the kale addition point, and some of the chicken pieces got a bit scorched. needed to reduce heat some. however, this did not hurt; in fact, it may have helped. the moisture from the kale was not enough to dampen things; I added a bit more oil along with the last of the kale but it didn't help much. by the time things were done the pan was fully dry. it came out ok anyway; I guess the oil at the beginning seals moisture into the chicken so it doesn't itself dry out. or something. also tried eating it with soba noodles; that was a mistake. stick to rice.