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Charlottesville City Market, chive flowers, easy recipes, farmer's market, fast food, food, Home Depot, kale, pesto, stretch gardening, vegetarian
Readers who follow my blog know I adore kale.
an earlier pasta dish with blanched kale and chive flowers. If you have gone Keto, substitute spiral veggies for pasta.
Truly, I eat kale every day—fall and winter—steamed for four minutes, drizzled with olive oil and often topped with two farm raised eggs, easy over. Adding variety to this super-food, I decided to make one of my favorite dishes—pesto.
Why not kale pesto?
Indeed, this dish will knock your socks off.
Diane’s Recipe for Fresh Kale Pesto
Find a large bunch of fresh curly kale, either from your garden or from a local farmer. Strip the leaves off the vein and tear leaves into pieces. Rinse kale, while bringing a pot of water to a boil. In a large bowl, add cold water and a few scoops of ice cubes. Set this bowl near the pot of boiling water. When water is boiling, add kale in batches and blanch for 30-45 seconds, or until kale is bright green. Using a spider, lift blanched kale out and plunge into the bowl of ice water. Repeat process until all kale is blanched and iced.
fresh from the local grower, Whisper Hill Farm ~ 9 stems
ice bath
blanching kale until bright green ~ 30-45 seconds
ice kale to stop cooking
squeeze water out of kale using hands
almond and pecan stash ~ always store nuts either in the fridge or freezer
Squeeze iced kale with hands and place all kale into the bowl of a food processor. Add 1/4 C sliced almonds, 1/4 C pecans, 1 t. Himalayan salt, black pepper to taste, 1/2 C virgin olive oil, juice from a whole fresh lime (I use a citrus press), and pulse entire contents, scraping sides of bowl a few times during processing. Add additional olive oil until smooth consistency is achieved.
kale pesto fully processed
Meanwhile, boil your favorite pasta or spiral some zucchini, reusing the blanching water. In this instance I used a combination of organic Casarecce and linguine. When pasta is al dente, remove it from the water using the spider. DO NOT RINSE. SAVE hot pasta water.
al dente Casarecce and linguine
Mix pesto into pasta or veggie noodles, adding additional olive oil and a few tablespoons of pasta water to dish until desired consistency is reached. Add a large knob (20g) of room temperature sweet butter and gently toss adding freshly grated Parmesan just before serving.
cooked pasta, knob of butter, kale pesto, toss adding additional pasta water and olive oil as needed.
I promise this recipe will make a believer out of you. A real tasty dish that will have your friends talking. Serve with your favorite beverage and sexy tomatoes if in season. Serves 6.
If you are processing a lot of kale from your gardens in spring, simply place pesto into 8 oz. containers and freeze. Omit the cheese until consuming.
completed dish doused with fresh Parmesan
PS I adore pesto and make three signature pestos from home-grown herbs: French tarragon with pecans, chive artichoke with walnuts in the early spring, and classic basil with walnuts during the summer months. Those recipes may be found by typing “pesto” into the search bar on this blog.
This new kale pesto rounds out my repertoire and I hope you will enjoy them all. There is more to life than basil pesto!
Bon Appetit!
Copyright © 2013 by Diane LaSauce All Rights Reserved
