I highly recommend this salad and the accompanying dressing. It's so tasty, pretty, and elegant to serve to company, perfect for holiday dinners. And relatively easy to make as well.
This salad is composed of toasted walnuts, pomegranate arils (my fave!), cranberries stewed in apple juice, jicama, orange slices, and kale, of course. I short-cutted since the oranges aren't quite in season at the moment, and just went with canned manadarin oranges in juice (not syrup) (aka tangerines). I also used tangerine juice for the dressing instead of orange juice from fresh oranges.
Just a couple of preparation notes. First don't put it all together until you are ready to serve it. I cleaned and chopped everything the night before and just kept the ingredients in separate containers in the fridge.
I recommend "marinating" the kale alone in some orange or tangerine juice. Once you have cleaned and chopped the kale, pour a little orange juice in and massage it into the leaves, then let it sit overnight. Some people don't really care for raw kale, and this should take any bitter edge off. If you don't have hours for it to marinate, you can always blanch it for like 30 seconds in boiling water and that should do a comparable job. I love kale. It's a great change-up from spinach or field greens salads, but either of those would probably be ok salad bases if you aren't sure about kale.
Also, this salad has jicama. Do not be afraid of the jicama. Preparing the jicama is like peeling a giant potato with a peeler and then chopping it into cubes. Simple. My last short cut recommendation is regarding the pomegranate. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's usually have containers of pomegranate arils already removed from the fruit, to save you even more time. It won't save you money, but definitely time.
And for the dressing, please make it. It'll be worth it. It was the perfect flavor for the salad. We loved it.
Pen and Fork's Christmas Kale Chopped Salad
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