Pasta salad

We took this salad to a lovely concert in Millennium Park. There is not much dressing but we found it to be plenty with the basil, feta and olives.

1/2 lb mini penne (I think shells or rotini would work well too)

2 big kale leaves

1/2 lb broccoli crown chopped small

20 grape tomatoes halved

10 olives (I used Kalamata and Alphonso) diced

feta crumbled

fresh basil sliced fine

Dressing:

1/2 lemon

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

3 Tbsp olive oil

thyme

oregano

pepper

ground mustard

salt

Cook the pasta in salted water. Add the broccoli 2 minutes before it is done. Drain in a colander lined with the kale. Let cool. Combine the ingredients. Dress with the dressing.

Dressing. Combine all ingredients except the oil. Let sit. Add the oil and stir well.

Kale week and two recipes

Jon is working in France right now and will be for the next six months or so (don't worry; I get to visit this summer), and his departure has thrown me a little out of my food and cooking rhythm. Specifically, I barely have to cook because I eat much less than Jon+Ev. So I have fewer opportunities to try new things, and I don't have as much motivation to be fun and creative in the kitchen. Here is a post I started a while ago when Jon was in town and gave up on at the time because my pictures weren't uploading properly. I have a few other recipes I've been meaning to write up, so those should be appearing soon. And I'm working on getting my groove back. A big part of this is learning that "serves six" means "you can eat this for eight meals" instead of "you might have leftovers for lunch tomorrow if you're lucky" like it used to.

It is no secret that I love kale. A couple weeks ago I proposed that we should have a "kale week" where we ate kale every day. Jon was a bit skeptical and suggested that we only do a kale work week, but we ended up eating kale the Sunday before and Saturday after as well, so it was a full week of kale. I proposed kale week in part because I love kale and in part to see if I would get tired of it. I didn't at all. In fact, the Monday after kale week, we made a kale pizza, pictured above, recipe below.

Sunday: Potato, kale, carrot, and onion skillet.
Monday: Southwestern quinoa salad (recipe coming soon, perhaps) with a side of sauteed kale

The picture uploaded 90 degrees clockwise from what the file looked like in the folder the first time, so I rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise and tried again. That time, it uploaded in the same orientation as the file in the folder. I tried to rotate it again, but it was not having any of that. Technology!

Tuesday: Chickpea crepes topped with red Russian kale, golden beets, and feta cheese. Delicious!
Wednesday: We knew we would be eating dinner out with friends, so we sauteed some kale with sesame oil and salt and had it as a side to our lunch of sandwiches.
Thursday: Spinach ravioli with kale added to the cooking water at the last minute, topped with cheese.
Friday: Mac and cheese and kale. Jon makes great mac and cheese from scratch, and this time we sauteed up a bunch of red kale and stirred it in. It was great! Next time I might increase the kale to two bunches to get even more kaley goodness. The recipe is below.
Saturday: Leftovers of various kale-containing foods
Sunday: No kale.
Monday: Kale pizza

Macaroni and cheese and kale
This is based on the mac and cheese recipe from the New Basics Cookbook. We reduced the cheese significantly from their recipe and added kale. The recipe dirties a lot of dishes and takes a while, but it sure is tasty. I think this could be made with blanched broccoli or asparagus in place of the kale.

vegetable oil for sauteing
1 or 2 bunches kale, washed, tough stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped
1 pound penne or rigatoni
4 cups milk
4 tbsp unsalted butter
6 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp paprika (we use sweet or hot smoked, or a combination)
salt and black pepper
4 oz gruyere cheese, grated

In a saute pan over medium heat, saute the kale in the vegetable oil until it just wilts. Set aside.

Cook penne in plenty of water until just tender. Add the kale to the penne. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

Bring the milk to a boil in a heavy saucepan. Set aside.

In another heavy saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and cook, whisking constantly, for about five minutes. Do not allow to brown.

Add the hot milk to the flour mixture and whisk well. Add 1/2 tsp paprika and a generous amount of black pepper. Season with a little salt. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, for about five more minutes or until the mixture thickens. Add to the kale and penne and toss to coat thoroughly.

Butter a 9x13 baking dish and fill evenly with sauced penne. Distribute the grated gruyere evenly and sprinkle with more pepper and the rest of the paprika. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until hot. Turn on the broiler (use caution if you have a Pyrex baking dish) and cook under the broiler 3 or 4 minutes or until the top gets a little golden and crispy. (The kale on the top will dry out and get a nice crunch going.)

Kale pizza
I used both sauteed kale added at the beginning and raw kale added at the end. The sauteed kale crisped up a little but stayed substantial and chewy. The raw kale crisped up a lot and added nice crunchy bits. You might recall that I throw it onto a lot of my pizzas for a nice vegetal crunch. Jon said he would have preferred just the kale crispies, but I liked both.

1 pizza crust made with 1/2 whole wheat flour

vegetable oil for sauteing
1 bunch of kale, washed thoroughly, thick stems removed, leaves chopped
extra-virgin olive oil for brushing on pizza
about 1/4 of a large onion, sliced into thin rings or half-rings
1 oz gruyere cheese, cut into thin 1-inch squares
coarse salt and black pepper
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 425 and put your pizza stone in it. Roll out the pizza crust.

In a saute pan over medium heat, saute all but a small handful of the kale in oil until just wilted. Remove from heat.

Brush pizza crust with olive oil. Scatter onion slices and cheese over crust. Sprinkle with coarse salt and black pepper. Top with sauteed kale. It should be a pretty thick layer, but you might not want to use all of it depending on how big the bunch of kale was.

Transfer pizza to pizza stone. Bake for about 8 minutes or until crust is mostly, but not quite, done. Add the raw kale pieces and bake for 3 minutes more, or until crust is done. Remove from oven and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Pasta salad

Here is a neat little pasta salad I made a week or so ago. If I were to do it again I would leave out the olives. Also some pesto might be nice in it.

12 oz Orzo
2 roasted red peppers diced
8 olives chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil (loose) chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley chopped
2 Tbsp pine nuts
3 Tbsp Olive oil
1 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
Romano Cheese grated
salt
pepper

Cook the Orzo as usual (or maybe leave a bit more al dente). Mix oil, vinegar and basil. Mix the red peppers, olives, pine nuts and parsley. Dress with oil and basil. Add cheese, salt and pepper to taste.

Butternut squash gnocchi

I made this gnocchi recipe with butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes last night. It worked beautifully. Crystal said that when she tried it, her squash was very wet, so she had to add a lot of flour to combat that, diluting the squash taste. I was prepared to battle wet squash, but mine was no wetter than the sweet potatoes. My theory is that I had a very old squash, and it had dried out somewhat. I don't remember when I bought it, but I know it was in the cabinet before I went to Europe in early June, and I didn't buy groceries for about a week before we left, so it was at least 2 1/2 months removed from the store. Perhaps using an old squash is the way to go with this recipe. Anyway, I used the exact same recipe as before, so I won't copy it here. It definitely tasted squashier, but it was still a delicate flavor. Jon and I loved it, and there were no leftovers. We ate it with butter instead of the usual olive oil and of course topped it with parmesan cheese.

Pasta salad

I am a sometimes contributor to this blog. Recently I made a pasta salad. I am not usually a fan of whole wheat pasta, but I used a rotini that was half whole-wheat/ half regular and it worked. I like pasta salads in the summer because I like pasta and you can eat them cold, which seems to make sense in the summer.

The salad contains roasted peppers that led to Ev's now-famous Pyrex tragedy. Along with the mozzarella the roasted peppers make the salad. Next time I make this I might use spinach instead of kale.

Jon’s Pasta salad

12 oz. Pasta
Kale
2 roasted peppers (see below for roasting instructions), chopped
Fresh Herbs (basil, oregano and rosemary)
Mozzarella, cut into small cubes
Dressing

Cook pasta in plenty of water until al dente. Drain. Meanwhile, saute kale in a small amount of olive oil until just wilted. Toss all ingredients together with dressing. I dressed this with a mustard vinaigrette (olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, salt, pepper and herbs). It was pretty good.

How to roast peppers safely

Place peppers in a broiler-safe baking dish on the top rack of your oven. Turn on the broiler. Carefully turn the peppers with tongs every five minutes or so, cooking until the skin is charred all over or your Pyrex explodes because you didn't heed the first instruction.

Sweet potato gnocchi

I was out of town for the weekend at a Sacred Harp singing. I stayed with a friend's parents, and we made this for dinner on Friday night. I didn't take any pictures this weekend, so I'm including a couple that I took a few months ago. Just in case you aren't Italian, gnocchi are little Italian potato or flour dumplings.

This is good company food. It's pretty impressive (homemade gnocchi!) but doesn't take that long to make if you start with cooked sweet potatoes or cook them in the microwave. I usually pop the sweet potatoes in the oven a couple days before I'm planning on making this so they'll be ready when I want to use them. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com, but I don't use their weird sweet potato cooking technique. I just bake the things like I would if I were eating them plain. The spice combination of garlic and nutmeg is really nice. I'd like to try this with butternut squash sometime, too. I think that would be good. I like to dress these with just a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese, but butter is good too. You can use a standard tomato sauce, but it will overpower the delicate sweet potato flavor.

Rolling a snake of gnocchi dough

Sweet potato gnocchi

2 8-oz sweet potatoes
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour

Bake the sweet potatoes until they're soft, either in the oven at 425 F for 40-60 minutes or in the microwave for 6-9 minutes. Scoop the flesh into a medium mixing bowl and mash. It's OK if it's a little lumpy, but you will be able to feel the lumps in the finished product. Add the garlic, salt, nutmeg, and egg and mix thoroughly. Add the flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. You might not use all the flour. You want to use just enough to make a soft dough. After adding about 1 cup, you'll probably have to start kneading it instead of mixing it with a spoon. When you have a soft dough, roll it between your hands into snakes about 1 inch in diameter and cut the snakes into small pieces (see above pictures for rolling and cutting). You might need to incorporate a little more flour during this process if the dough is still sticky.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop the gnocchi into the water several at a time. (They don't all have to be cooked before you add more, so you can stagger the additions.) When a gnocco (yep, that's the singular) rises to the top, scoop it out with a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl or colander. When all the gnocchi are cooked, eat them quickly. They are best fresh out of the pot.