Lacinato

Lacinato kale bears long, narrow, blue-green leaves with a distinctively bumpy, embossed surface, more pronounced than the texture of standard green kale. The leaves are feather-shaped and typically harvested at 10 inches or smaller, when they are especially tender. Raw, the flavor is fine, sweet, and full without ever turning strong or overbearing, carrying delicate nutty notes; once cooked, that mild sweetness turns robust and earthy.

Lacinato can be eaten raw or lightly cooked, and its flattened leaves are well suited to kale chips. To serve raw, cooks often work lemon juice or a dressing into the leaves by hand before tossing them into a salad, or pan-cook them with olive oil and garlic. In Tuscany it is the traditional base of ribollita, the reboiled vegetable soup, while in Spain, where it is known as Galician cabbage, it goes into caldo gallego with potatoes, white beans, and pork shoulder.

Harvested from the bottom up as the lower leaves mature, plants keep producing through the season, making Lacinato well suited to cut-and-come-again picking for salad mixes from direct-seeded plantings. Its leaves sweeten after frost, and even as growth slows in cold weather the plants can overwinter in many areas, sending up flowering shoots and buds in spring that are also eaten. Cold exposure is credited with maximizing that sweet flavor, and in northern gardens a few plants are often left standing for harvest after snowfall. Lacinato also performs well in high tunnels through cold weather, extending the harvest season under protection.

Lacinato kale traces to 18th-century Italy, particularly the Tuscany region — the source of its alternate name, Tuscan kale — where it became a traditional ingredient in regional dishes. Thomas Jefferson later grew it in his garden at Monticello, an early sign of its spread beyond Italy.