Kale goes to Hollywood
Kale, in Germany rather the epitome of tradition and home cooking, is the star of the vegetable market in Hollywood and New York.
Hardly a week goes by without the New York Times supplying its readers with kale recipes: sautéed, as chips or liquid as pistachio green smoothie. Kale, the English name of the firm green leaves called Grünkohl (green cabbage) in German, is now regarded as a cult vegetable on the American East and West Coasts. Hollywood stars such as Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow are devotees of the low calorie green cabbage and have put it in the headlines. On the Net there has long been a “kale community”. The New York Magazine even called kale the “super hero” amongst vegetables.
In Germany people marvel at this cool career. The humble vegetable is known to be rich in vitamins, but its image is rather traditional, even if there is now a Kale Academy. “Kohl und Pinkel” (kale and sausage), a kale mush with a chunky sausage, is a classic of winter home cooking especially in Northern Germany. There, eating kale is a custom celebrated in many communities with a “cabbage tour”. The cities of Bremen and Oldenburg even compete to see whose original “specialty” kale is. In Bremen, kale has always been served since 1545 in February at a “Schaffermahlzeit”. This social event is the oldest continuous annual fraternal meal in the world.
Oldenburg, for its part, has held the “Defftig Ollnborger Gröönkohl-Äten” (dialect: “hearty Oldenburg kale eating) since 1956. Among the eating traditions of the German capital is the selection of a “Cabbage King” or “Cabbage Queen”. This illustrious circle includes the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2014 the kale sceptre is to pass into the hands of the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey in Berlin, Hüseyin Avni Karslioğlu, the first Cabbage King without a German passport. Afiyet olsun – enjoy your meal!
57th Defftig Ollnborger Gröönkohl-Äten, 17 February 2014 in the State Representation House of Lower Saxony in Berlin
