Just a quick recipe today for paid and non-paid subscribers. It’s not a baking recipe, but the kind of template that I rely on for my everyday cooking. As I wrote about in The Problem With Recipes, I usually cook based on what I have combined with some inkling of an idea or a desire that gets fleshed out during the process itself. I think it’s how most people who love cooking and have gained a certain level of experience approach their kitchens. From the outside, it might look like intuition, but is really more of a practice built of attention and curiosity over time.
If you’re interested in this way of cooking, I highly recommend you check out the online course I’m teaching with The School of Making Thinking starting in February. I promise it will be fun and not feel like work: we’ll have short readings that will inspire you, and lots of small exercises aimed at focusing your attention and opening up your creativity. Maybe you’ll feel more inspired outside of the kitchen as well!
Anyway, the recipe template today is something I jokingly called Dry Salad. I made it for a friend who’s early in pregnancy and sent me a picture of the Dill Pickle Pringles that were the only thing she felt like eating even though she wanted some healthier stuff in her body. It’s basically a bowl of dressed-up kale chips, with roasted nori and chili crisp nuts, that resembles junk food enough that pregnant people and toddlers alike will happily snack on it, but if you think about it isn’t really different from a salad (just dry). I’ve made it three times in as many days so I think it’s fair to say it’s our favorite food of 2026!
Dry Salad (v, gf)
Ingredients
Kale chips
1 bunch kale (either lacinato or curly)
Olive oil or neutral oil
¼-½ teaspoon of sea salt (use less if adding MSG)
Optional: ¼ teaspoon MSG, or to taste
Optional: ¼ teaspoon citric acid, or to taste
Chili-crisp nuts
½ cup of mixed raw nuts/seeds: almonds, pepitas, cashews, sunflower seeds
1 tablespoon black or white sesame seeds
1 tablespoon chili crisp sauce (any style you like)
½ teaspoon salt if the chili crisp you used isn’t super salty (Lao Gan Ma, for example, doesn’t require additional salt)
To finish
2 packages (10 grams total) roasted snacking nori (seasoned or unseasoned)
Optional: crushed potato chips — especially salt-and-vinegar if you don’t have citric acid!
Method
Preheat oven to 400° convection or 425° without convection.
Wash kale and strip leaves from stem. Tear up the leaves and dry as well as you can (in a salad spinner or with towels).
Spread out the leaves on a half sheet tray. Drizzle with oil, then sprinkle on the seasonings. I like ¼ teaspoon each of salt, MSG, and citric acid (which I know many people don’t have in their pantries — it’s useful though!). Taste a leaf and adjust seasoning.
Put the kale in the oven and bake for about 10 minutes until crispy.
Turn the oven down to 325° convection or 350° without convection.
In a small bowl, toss the nuts and sesame seeds with the chili crisp sauce. If you use a less-spicy chili crisp like Fly by Jing or Blank Slate, add ½ teaspoon salt. Regardless, taste a nut and add salt and/or more chili crisp if necessary.
Bake for 10-15 minutes until browned, rotating the tray and stirring the nuts halfway through.
To make the “salad,” combine the cooled kale chips and nuts in a bowl. Use scissors to cut pieces of roasted nori over the bowl and mix them in. Crumble potato chips into the bowl if using (salt and vinegar potato chips will help add some of the tanginess that citric acid can otherwise provide).
Eat with a big spoon or just your hands. The mix keeps well in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.
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The "dry salad" concept nails something most recipe content misses. Thinking about kale chips as deconstructed salad, minus the sogginess, just reframes the whole snack vs meal dichotomy. I've seen simlar versions with tamari-roasted nuts and nooch, but the citric acid for that vinegary punch without moisture is clever. Works way better than trying to season kale chips post-bake when they're already crispy and fragile.