Fettucine with Kale, Green Garlic and Lemon

I can't believe we had a frost last night. I planted all my summer vegetables over the weekend, so I had to frantically put tarps down and carry all my containers to the garage. I actually did all this Sunday night and left it in place until this morning, since yesterday was so cold. I really hope that this was winter's last hurrah - I want to be eating fresh spring veggies from my garden soon!

Since strawberries and radishes and peas aren't ready, I've been contenting myself with cold-hardy greens from the farmer's market (and gorging myself on asparagus - one of those recipes is coming soon). I threw this dish together for lunch the other day. It's fast, fresh and tasty.

If you've never used green garlic before, I recommend trying to get your hands on some. I got mine from the farmers market a few weeks ago. My guess is that the farm was thinning its rows of garlic and decided to sell the thinnings - and why not? They have a delicious fresh garlic flavor - strong, but without the bite of storage garlic cloves. Green garlic looks like a green onion, but should be treated like a leek - strip the old layers off, cut off the roots, and slice up the white and light green portions to use. The leaves go in the compost (or the stock bag!). It added a nice fresh flavor to the kale. If you can't find green garlic, regular garlic cloves or garlic scapes would work well here, too.

Fettucine with Kale, Green Garlic and Lemon
serves 2

6 oz whole wheat fettucine
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
2 stems green garlic (about 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
3-4 c kale leaves, stripped from stems and ripped into bite-size pieces
zest and juice from 1/2 lemon
2 oz Pecorino-Romano cheese, shredded

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water according to package directions.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green garlic and red pepper flakes and saute about 1 minute, until fragrant. Add the kale and saute 3-4 minutes, tossing with garlic.

If the kale does not look cooked through at the end of 3-4 minutes, toss 2 tbsp water in the pan and quickly cover. Let the kale steam for a minute or two to finish cooking.

When the pasta is finished, drain (reserving 1/4 c water) and add to the pan with the kale. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Add a bit of pasta water if necessary (I only needed a 2-3 tbsps). Serve topped with grated Pecorino-Romano.

Fridge-Clearing Stir Fry with Bean Thread Noodles, Broccoli Stems and Edamame

Jeff and I love playing around with new recipes. Every week, we construct a menu out of them. But what happens to the motley assortment of leftovers in the veggie bin at the end of the week?

Stir fries.

Stir fries, generally with rice, but sometimes with noodles, crept into our repertoire during CSA season as a way to deal with the bok choy that was inevitably abandoned, wilting, in the crisper the night before we picked up our next share. Stir fries are awesome. A quick saute and some tasty sauce will perk up the saddest of produce. Add some rice, a fried egg and crunchy cashews and you have a meal.

Since it's March, we didn't have any fresh CSA produce to use up in this dish. Instead, it started with leftover broccoli stems. I've been a broccoli stem hater my whole life, but given my crusade to eliminate kitchen waste, I feel obligated to use them. Adding them to stir fries is the only use I've come up with (sometimes sliced, sometimes shredded). I also threw in some snap peas that were on their last legs, a roughly chopped onion, and some edamame and chard from the freezer. Anything you have on hand is really fine - it's less of a recipe than a formula. A formula for success!

Fridge-Clearing Stir Fry with Bean Thread Noodles, Broccoli Stems and Edamame

5 oz package bean thread noodles
3 tbsp canola oil, divided
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 medium onion, chopped
2 broccoli stems, thinly sliced (you might want to peel any particularly woody bits as well)
3/4 c edamame
1 c snap peas (I like to cut them into bite-sized pieces)
3/4 c frozen chard, thawed
ginger-garlic sauce (see below)
1/2 c roasted cashews

Cook the bean thread noodles according to package directions - mine needed to be soaked in boiling water for ten minutes.

In a large wok, preheat 1 tbsp canola oil over high heat. Add the egg and stir fry, stirring constantly, until cooked through, 1-2 minutes. Remove from pan and reserve.

Add the remaining 2 tbsp oil to the pan. Add onion and broccoli stems and cook 2-3 minutes, until onion is translucent. Add the snap peas, edamame and chard and cook another 2 minutes, until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the noodles and add them to the stir fry (since they're extremely long, I usually cut into the pile a few times with some kitchen scissors before adding them to the pot - it makes it much easier to toss everything together). Add sauce and stir well to combine everything. Sprinkle on the cashews and serve.

Ginger-Garlic Sauce
From For the Love of Cooking.

1 tsp cornstarch
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 c honey
2 cloves garlic, minced
1" fresh ginger, minced
1/2 tsp water (optional, if sauce is too thick)
2 tbsp sliced green onion

In a small saucepan, combine the cornstarch and soy sauce, whisking well until any lumps are gone. Add the honey, garlic and ginger. Bring to a boil, stirring often. Reduce heat and let thicken 3-4 minutes. Stir in green onion and serve over meat, mixed with rice or tossed with a stir fry.

Bacon and Butternut Pasta Bake

Are you holed up in your house waiting for the blizzard to start? Maybe it's time for a warm and tasty winter pasta dish!

I'm not going to lie to you - we made this a few weeks ago already, but I think it would be great for a cozy snowy evening. Bacon and Gruyere may not be good for the body, but they're totally good for the soul! And the kale and squash bump up the health factor a bit, don't they?

Ok, maybe not. It's not the healthiest dish, but it is tasty. And you'll probably burn those calories off with all the shoveling you'll have to do tomorrow.

Happy blizzard.

Bacon and Butternut Pasta
From Cooking Light January/February 2012.

5 c butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
12 oz ziti
4 c kale, chopped
2 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
2 c onion, sliced vertically
1 tsp salt, divided
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 c chicken broth, divided
2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 c creme fraiche
1/3 c Gruyere, shredded

Preheat oven to 400° F. Put on a pot of boiling salted water for the pasta.

In a large bowl, toss squash with oil. Transfer squash to a foil-lined baking sheet and roast for 30 min, until tender.

Meanwhile, cook pasta about 7 min, until almost al dente (you want it underdone because it will continue to cook in the oven later). When the pasta has 2 minutes to go, add the kale to the water and cook with the pasta.

In a large nonstick skillet, cook the bacon until crisp. Remove from the pan and drain on a paper towel. Add onion to the pan with the bacon drippings and cook for about 6 minutes. Add 1/2 tsp salt and garlic and cook another minute, stirring.

Meanwhile, bring 1 3/4 c broth to a boil in a small saucepan. In a small bowl, whisk remaining 1/4 c broth with flour. Add flour mixture, remaining 1/2 tsp salt and red pepper to the broth. Cook 2 minutes, until slightly thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in the creme fraiche.

Combine the squash, pasta, kale, bacon, onion mixture and sauce in a large bowl and toss to combine.

Transfer to a 13 x 9 baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top. Bake for 25 minutes, until bubbly and beginning to brown.

Cauliflower, Kale and White Bean Soup

With the holidays so near, everything is starting to get busy. Between our normal activities, trips to the gym, and holiday baking and other preparations, we seem to be occupied every evening. This is not the time for complicated, time-consuming recipes (though I still love them, and have a good one to post some time soon!). This is the time for simple goodness simmering in a pot.

This soup is really easy to throw together, using some of my favorite winter vegetables. I can never get enough cauliflower. It's good in soup, roasted, pureed in pasta sauce, in curries, and sometimes even raw. Roasted cauliflower, in particular, doesn't last very long in our house. Leftovers are a rare occurrence. This soup didn't last long, either, since it combined the wonder of cauliflower with delicious, nutritious kale. I don't know about you guys, but when I eat kale, I feel so much more energetic and alert. Those vitamins must be doing something good!

What made our batch of soup extra special is that we made it with some of our Thanksgiving turkey stock. That stock turned out so thick and rich that it gelled in the fridge. There was definitely some extra protein floating around in there. If you have homemade poultry stock, it will make this soup more delicious. If you don't, it'll still turn out pretty good, and good for you!

Cauliflower, Kale and White Bean Soup
Adapted from What Would Cathy Eat?

2 tbsp olive oil
3 leeks, white and light green parts sliced and soaked
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
4 c kale, chopped
2-3 c cannellini beans, cooked
1 small head cauliflower, broken into bite-sized florets
6 c turkey stock
2 c water
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp dried parsley (fresh would be better, if you have it)
salt and black pepper to taste (my stock is unsalted, so I had to add a lot of salt to the soup)
4 tbsp grated Parmesan

In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook about 10 minutes, until softened. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook about 1 minute, until fragrant. Add kale and cook for 5 more minutes.

Add the beans, cauliflower, stock, water, bay leaf, parsley, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 12-15 minutes, until the cauliflower is very tender. Stir in Parmesan and serve. (Remember to remove your bay leaf!)

Sausage and Kale Saute

I thought I would share one of the delicious dishes Jeff and I made with our farmers market finds from last week, discussed in this post. We took the sweet sausage from Beech Tree Farm in Hopewell and the kale from North Slope Farm in Lambertville (supplemented with some store-bought kale - we didn't have enough!) and made this delicious saute.

The pork was perfect for this recipe - flavorful without being too greasy. The sausage casings came off easily and the meat crumbled well in the pan. There's nothing like fresh sausage for something like this. I remember how I used to try to remove store-bought chicken sausages from their casings - it just doesn't work. I'm sticking with the good stuff from now on. Some of the kale was slightly bitter, but the sweetness of the red peppers balanced it out nicely. The original recipe included maple syrup, perhaps to balance the bitterness of the kale, but we didn't notice its presence at all, so I wouldn't bother including it from now on.

Overall, this is a bright, tasty dish - definitely my favorite kale recipe. The vivid colors brighten up a winter table, too!

Sausage and Kale Saute
Adapted from The Locavore's Kitchen.

2 tbsp olive oil, divided

1 lb sweet Italian sausage (if using links, remove the casings)

1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced (I used strips that I had frozen in the fall - this was probably my best preserving idea of the season. Next year, I plan on freezing a ton of these. Much better than paying $4-5/lb for off-season peppers, and they still taste great!)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb kale, chopped

2 tbsp water

salt and pepper to taste

Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat (you will need a pot with high sides to contain all the kale). Add the sausage, breaking it up into small chunks, and cook 10-15 minutes, until thoroughly cooked and beginning to brown. Remove with a slotted spoon onto a paper-towel lined plate to drain.

Keep the pan on the heat and add the remaining tablespoon of oil. When it's hot, add the onion and red pepper to the pan. Saute until soft, 5-6 minutes. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant.

Add the kale and stir until slightly wilted, tossing with the oil and veggies. Add the reserved sausage and 2 tbsp water (to help steam the kale a bit) and stir well. Cover the pot and cook an additional 5-10 minutes, until the kale is tender. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Collard Greens with Apple and Balsamic

It's been a while since I've posted. I've had a billion things to do and have felt like I've been falling behind in everything. Only in the last few days have I been able to tie off some of my loose ends and move on. That means that I have the leisure to blog again, and perhaps get caught up on some posts that I've had on the back burner.

I made these collard greens with apple and balsamic vinegar almost a month ago. Collards are incredibly healthy and can be very easy to prepare. This preparation blanches them before stir-frying to speed up the cooking process. The light, crisp apple is a nice contrast to the dense, almost meaty greens, and the balsamic provides a lovely acidic sweetness at the end.

This could be a nice addition to your Thanksgiving table - a nice light contrast to the heavy traditional side dishes.

Collard Greens with Apple and Balsamic
From The Best of Food and Wine 1995.
 

1/2 lb collard greens

1 1/2 tbsp canola oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 small tart apple, peeled, cored and thinly sliced lengthwise (I used a freshly-picked Winesap)

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Remove the stems and center ribs from the collard greens. (I fold mine in half along the stem and pull the leaves down. They should tear off neatly from the stems. I learned this from Paula Deen before I'd ever even considered trying collards.) Chop the leaves into bite-sized pieces.

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Cook the collards for 5 minutes, then drain and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook 2 minutes, until softened, stirring frequently. Add the apple slices and cook another 2 minutes, until tender.

Add the collards to the pan and stir until well combined. Increase the heat to high, add the balsamic vinegar and cook, stirring constantly, for a minute or two, until greens are coated. Remove from heat, season with salt and pepper, and serve. Easy peasy.

Pasta with Swiss Chard, Bacon and Parmesan

I'm really getting into these quick pasta dishes. We first put this on the menu two weeks ago, and it kept getting bumped back: too many leftovers, going out to eat, no time to cook. Jeff finally made it on a day that I was teaching and getting home late. I walked in the door to a steamy, bacony, earthy smell. When the dish was ready, we absolutely devoured it. I think there should have been leftovers, but all the extra bites we snuck out of the pan took care of those. When I got another bunch of chard from the farm a few days later, I knew there was no other option. And I knew all of you had to hear about it.

This time we only made half the recipe, since it was a small bunch of chard, but I'm giving you the whole thing here. As you can see in the pictures, half the recipe filled my pan pretty well. When we did the whole thing, Jeff needed a separate bowl to toss the pasta and fixings in.

This dish is full of flavors I love: earthy chard (you may remember that my initial reaction to chard was ambivalent, but I've since hopped on the bandwagon), meaty bacon, zingy lemon and salty Parmesan. The original recipe assumes you are using thin, packaged supermarket bacon. We use thick-cut butcher bacon, so we reduced the number of strips. This means that it produces a bit more fat, reducing the need for oil, and doesn't crisp up quite like thinner bacon would. On the other hand, it has a rich, meaty flavor that thin bacon can't match. Combined with the chard, which is almost meaty in its own right, it produces a wonderfully hearty, but not heavy, dish, perfect for a low-meat, vitamin-rich meal!

Pasta with Swiss Chard, Bacon and Parmesan
Adapted from Rachel Ray's 365: No Repeats.

1 lb chunky pasta (I used tricolor rotini, because I had it in the pantry)

2 tsp olive oil (add more if you need to, but if you have nice fatty bacon, this should be plenty)

3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped

4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

1 small onion, roughly chopped (I used red onion for some extra flavor and vitamins - purple vegetables are good for you!)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 bunch Swiss chard, cleaned, de-ribbed and roughly chopped
1 c vegetable stock (we used homemade stock)
juice of 1 lemon
1 c grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste (the original recipe did not call for salt, but since we used homemade stock which has no salt in it, we needed to add quite a bit)
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt the water, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Reserve one cup of pasta water.

Preheat a large skillet over medium heat. Add oil and bacon and cook about 3 minutes, until the bacon begins to crisp. Add the garlic, onion, and red pepper flakes. Cook about 5 minutes, until the onions are lightly caramelized.

Add chard, toss to coat, and allow to wilt down. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat up to high, add the chicken stock and about one cup of starchy pasta water. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer 6-7 minutes.

Add lemon juice to the chard mixture. Turn off the heat. Drain the pasta well (if you haven't already), then add it and the Parmesan cheese to the greens and toss well (you may need to do this in another bowl). Serve immediately!

Beet Greens (and Other Greens Too)

One reason I wanted to join a CSA this summer (besides the joy of having fresh, local, organic vegetables every week) was to expand my palate. Since I hate to waste anything, it forces me to try things that I would never pick up at the store. One of those things was beet greens.

Now, I am not a fan of beets, but I'm trying to be a sport and find some preparation I can eat, if not enjoy. Last week's beet home fries were an epic fail - neither Jeff or I would eat the final product. We fared better with the beet greens, though, combining them with collards in this delicious recipe. Braised with bacon, onions and cider vinegar, these greens were delicious. We ate the whole batch in one sitting.

So this week, when beets once again appeared at the CSA, I gladly took some, envisioning more delicious greens. I thought I might also throw in my tiny head of radicchio, since I couldn't find another good recipe for it (every one I found assumed I had a denser, more cabbage-like head of radicchio). I had high hopes of delicious results.

Unfortunately, the radicchio was a bad move. I know I don't like the stuff raw, so I wasn't about to throw it in a salad. I assumed that cooking it in this way would mellow the flavor. Boy was I wrong! It added a horrible bitter note to my otherwise lovely greens. I was really sad. Rather than scarfing the whole batch down, the leftovers are now sitting in the fridge. Jeff and I are in a standoff about who has to finish them off.

So try this recipe. Try some beet greens - they're good for you! Even throw in some collards or kale. But please, find some other way to dispose of your radicchio.

Beet Greens

Adapted from Simply Recipes.

1 lb beet greens (collards or kale will work, too!)

1 strip thick-cut bacon, chopped

1/4 c onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

3/4 c water

1 tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1/6 c cider vinegar

Wash the greens well, then dry them (I recently bought a salad spinner for this - now there's no more grit in my greens, and they don't come out soggy!). Cut off stems. Cut the leaves into bite-sized pieces and set aside.

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until browned. Add the onions and cook in the bacon fat for 5-7 minutes, until they soften and start to brown. Stir in garlic. Add the water to deglaze the pan. Stir in sugar and red pepper. Bring to a boil.

Add your beet greens and toss gently. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer gently until tender, about 5-15 minutes (if you're using kale or collards, you may need another 20-25 minutes of cooking to get them tender enough). Stir in vinegar and serve!

Reflections of a Part-Time Vegetarian (and Potato-Leek Hash with Chard and Eggs)

As Lent comes to an end in a few short hours, so too does our vegetarian experiment. In many ways, I am sad to see it come to an end, as it forced us to become more innovative and interesting cooks. Jeff told me that it made him love to cook even more, since we attempted more complicated and involved recipes than usual, expanding our skill bases as well as our palates.

I learned that I do not need meat to survive. In fact, I am often better satisfied without it. I can't say that I had a single meal in the past 40 days during which I missed having meat on my plate. However, I also can't say that I didn't crave it - especially as the weather grew nicer and the scent of burgers wafted off of our neighbors' grills. I would really like a burger right now. But I can't say that I really want a large amount of meat, either. I've missed meat more as an accent than the star of the show - I want some ground sausage in my stuffed shells and some bacon on my twice-baked potatoes. I am going to make a greater effort to try and keep meat in this subsidiary capacity - like Thomas Jefferson, I will use meat "as a condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet." At least, on the days that we're not grilling burgers.

For lunch today, we made one of the recipes on my must-do list: potato and leek hash with Swiss chard and eggs. This is the perfect example of a satisfying vegetarian meal. While it is a bit time-consuming for a lunch, on a lazy, rainy day like today we didn't mind spending some extra time in the kitchen. I think this dish would be suitable for any meal, but would be particularly nice for a weekend brunch.

Chard is the second vegetable on my 30 by 30 list. I actually made it earlier in the week as well, in an asparagus ragout that didn't come out as planned, and so did not make it on the blog. I had never had chard before this week - I find it an earthy tasting vegetable - not my idea of a good time on its own. Combined with other things, that earthiness is suppressed and it becomes palatable. In this dish, it was actually pretty tasty. I would definitely have it again in this context. If you don't like or don't have chard, I think spinach would be the perfect substitute here (and it's currently in season in NJ farmers' markets - I saw some yesterday!).

Interestingly, for the penultimate meatless dish of our Lenten project, this dish tasted like it had meat. If you had told me there was bacon in there, I could easily have believed it - something about the caramelized leeks and garlic evoked a bacony flavor. And if you are eating meat, I think some crumbled bacon on top might be quite nice, too! And if you are like me and do not like runny eggs, scramble some and serve alongside the potato-leek-chard mixture.

Potato-Leek Hash with Swiss Chard and Eggs
From Cooking Light April 2011.

2 tbsp olive oil
2 large sliced leeks (whites and light greens only, chopped and then soaked for a bit to remove the grit)
12 oz fingerling potatoes, halved lengthwise
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/4 tsp paprika, divided (the recipe called for Spanish smoked paprika, which we couldn't find)
1/2 tsp salt, divided
1/2 tsp pepper, divided
4 c thinly sliced Swiss chard leaves (about one bunch)
1 oz shredded Gruyere

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and heat. Add the leeks to the pan and cook about 8 minutes, stirring frequently (maybe a little less time or heat, if it starts to brown too soon, as mine did).

Add the potatoes and garlic to the pan. Cook 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally. (Try to keep the skin-side of the potatoes up so that the flesh browns nicely!)

Stir in 1 tsp paprika, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Add the chard and cook 4 minutes, stirring constantly.

Make four egg-sized wells in the mixture with a spoon (like I mentioned above, since I don't like my eggs this way, we only made two eggs in the pan for Jeff and scrambled the others in a separate pan for me). Crack one egg into each space and sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper and 1/4 tsp paprika. Cover and cook 3 minutes. Sprinkle the cheese over the potato mixture , cover and cook 2 more minutes, until the egg yolks are lightly set.

30 by 30: Sauteed Kale with Pine Nuts

I mentioned my birthday was last week. I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting old. And since this will continue to happen with or without my consent, I'd better get with the program.

Enter my 30 by 30 list. I had actually tried to come up with one of these lists last fall (so I had some time to get a jump on it), but I didn't even come up with fifteen items. I looked at other people's lists for inspiration (this concept is quite popular in the blogosphere) - people wanted to write a novel or climb Mt Everest before they turned 30. Personally, I find these "goals" a little silly. Writing a novel is not some sort of mandatory requirement for adulthood, and if everyone were to write one before their 30th birthday, there would be a lot more garbage on the shelves of Barnes and Noble than there already is. Unless you already have pretensions of authorship, it's a ridiculous goal. And I have no pretensions of climbing Mt Everest. So my list included some more plebeian things like starting a retirement account, getting a puppy and writing a few dissertation chapters (some of which I managed to accomplish already). But since I couldn't even come up with 30 things to do that seemed meaningful and achievable, this idea has lost a bit of steam.

Until now, that is. I have come up with a great twist on the 30 by 30 idea: I will try 30 new foods before I turn 30! This is good because I continue to be a picky eater and I really don't want to go through the rest of my adult life this way. I don't have to like everything, but I need to at least give these foods a good try. And it is a challenging goal because this is something I've already been consciously working on for a year or so, so it's going to be more difficult to find new foods to try. I'm going to be keeping track of these on a separate page of the blog, so you can all play along at home.

I inaugurated this list last night with . . . kale! I actually have no experience with dark leafy greens like kale, chard or collards, and they've been on my list of things to try. As I tore the leaves from the stems, I was surprised at how firm and almost sharp the kale leaves were. That firm almost-sharpness stuck around, too - I felt it pricking the sides of my stomach after dinner! I had a taste of it raw and thought it had a cabbage-like tang, so I was not surprised to learn (via Wikipedia later in the evening) that it belongs to the cabbage family. Cooked, though, I did not get much flavor from it. It is definitely fibrous and time-consuming to chew (which can be good - eating your food slowly gives your stomach time to realize it's full!), but not tough or otherwise unpleasant. In short, I give kale an average review.

This recipe, however, makes me want to eat the kale: mix in red onion, garlic and toasted pine nuts (ok, I managed to burn mine rather than toast them - twice) and this is something I want to eat. It was like a treasure hunt: find the tasty little bits among the kale! But in doing so, I ate the nice, healthy, vitamin-rich kale, which is a good thing.

And did I mention that it looks gorgeous? It cooks to a beautiful, appetizing bright green color. With the bits of purpley-red onion and toasty pine nut accents scattered through it, it was truly an ornament for the table.

Would I do this again? Probably. But I'm not sure if I'm totally on the kale bandwagon yet. Let's see if I start craving those leftovers . . .

Sauteed Kale with Toasted Pine Nuts
Adapted from Bon Appetit (not sure which issue - sometime in the winter of 2010-11).

2 bunches kale (1 lb)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c pine nuts, toasted (definitely do this in a dry pan, and keep them moving - I tried to cheat and use the toaster oven and burnt two separate batches)

Tear the kale leaves off the stems and shred them coarsely.

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven (or other large, heavy-bottomed pan) over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and sautee until soft (about 3 minutes, in my case, since I chopped the onion small).

Add the kale and cook until it wilts, tossing often (about 3 minutes). The kale should be just tender and still a very bright green. (If you have too much kale for your pan, sautee half for the first three minutes, then add the second half for three minutes more - this is advised by the original recipe, which involved two pounds of kale). Toss with pine nuts and season with salt and pepper to serve.