Kabocha squash and kale

I had a long, rather involved morning trying to get a jump start for my car today. I actually did get one early on, only to not let my car run long enough to recharge, then parking it face-in in the garage to not start again. Um...?! This maneuver perhaps tops last week's decision to bring my house plant, aka small tree, outside for sun last week, forgetting that the nights were pretty cool and that the tree would, of course, feel the fall chill and drop its leaves, which it is now doing quietly every hour in my living room.

So. The big need for a functional vehicle today was a grocery store trip because I was out of eggs and cream. So breakfast this morning was keto style coffee (coffee blended with butter and coconut oil) and this delicious squash and kale with breakfast sausage, rather than eggs. Which was not bad. I could eat kale and kabocha squash forever, and this pairing was particularly good. (It is slightly reminiscent of the roasted kabocha with date relish from some years ago, but less fancy and less sweet!) I am coming to the end of my garden kale - I picked a bunch this morning after brushing off snow, and I suspect my next harvest will be the last. No more daily kale bounty!

This recipe is simple, and makes a great side, or eat it for breakfast as I did, with eggs and/or sausage. The fussy part of this dish is that it requires two pans: 1 for roasting the squash, and the other for the stove top. I made my squash more like slices, but you could also cut it up into chunks. I did that with the rest of the squash, which I also cooked to save for later.

• olive oil and coconut oil
  
• half of a red onion, slivered or diced
  
• 1 clove garlic, minced
  
• 1 bunch kale, stem removed and chopped
• 1 jalapeno, chopped with seeds
  
• half a small kabocha squash (or butternut), seeded, peeled, and sliced about 1/2" thick
  
• salt
• few squeezes of lemon juice
  

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

Pour about 1 T olive oil onto a rimmed sheet tray; lay kabocha squash slices in a single layer, making sure to coat both sides in the olive oil. Add more olive oil as needed, and sprinkle salt over the top. Put sheet tray on the bottom oven rack for 20-25 minutes, flipping halfway through. You want the slices to brown on each side.

While squash is cooking, prep the onions and garlic and kale. Heat 1 T coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute onions until soft. Add garlic and saute another 2 minutes. Add chopped kale and jalapeno and saute for 5-10 minutes, stirring often to coat all of the greens. If your kale is dry, add 1 T of water to help cook/steam the kale. (Mine was wet from the snow cover!) You want the greens to be soft, but still bright green. Keep heat under the skillet on low, uncovered, while you wait for the squash.

When squash is done, spoon it into the cast iron. Pour a glug of olive oil over the top, and give some generous squeezes of lemon juice before stirring everything together, gently. Add more salt to taste, and serve.

Sauteed Kale with Roasted Tomatoes

The garden kale is getting really big and, as I mentioned in the last post, keeps needing thinning. My favorite kale dish of late is a somewhat sweet, with a little bit of apple cider and some roasted tomatoes, both of which have been in my freezer all winter. It's time to rotate the stock!! This kale tastes delicious, and is sort of made al dente so that the onions are barely translucent and the greens are still super bright. I've been using smaller kale leaves, so if you have giant ones, you may want to cook them a wee bit longer.

This is a half batch in the skillet! Yum!

Sauteed Kale with Roasted Tomatoes
Large bunch kale, chopped in pieces
1/4 c. apple cider
onion, sliced thin
1/4 c. roasted tomatoes
2-3 T coconut oil

Melt coconut oil in a large skillet. Add onions and saute for 3 minutes. Add the kale and than the cider. Stir often to rotate the greens so that they all cook and become bright green, about 5 minutes. Add roasted tomatoes and continue to saute another few minutes, again stirring occasionally so that tomatoes soften a bit and greens are just tender. Serve!

Breakfast Veggies & Eggs with Tahini

I started doing kettle bells this month. I am not sure what got me inspired to do it, except I had a little extra time and a desire for some more msucle. And I found a nice kettle bell place right by my house. I tried lifting weights one time last year (ha!) - the way where you do very few reps with as much weight as you can do and still actually lift it. I burst into tears each time. Not because it was impossible, but it was like my mind thought I couldn't do it and my mental state just collapsed. So. Kettle bells seemed like a nice way to build up some muscle without the tears. I've gone to 4 classes and already I feel stronger and could do way more than the first couple of times. Holy cow!

My breakfast this morning is based on Modern Times' "Good Morning Healing Earth" breakfast, which is a lovely medly of lots of sauteed veggies topped with scrambled eggs and drizzled with tahini. It seems like an excellent pre-kettle bell breakfast. It's really good, and the version I made at home turned out equally as tasty, if a little simpler. The original dish at Modern Times actually uses onions, beets, carrots, green peppers, mushrooms, kale, zucchini and broccoli. So go for it all if you happen to have all those veggies - but I thought the ones I selected were a good combo that still gave a similar taste. Sub any veggies in for something else, though I do think the kale, beets, and carrots are key. Modern Times uses roasted beets instead of my pan sauteed ones, so if you happen to make a big batch of roasted beets, keep a few out to use in this for breakfast!

Good Morning Breakfast (serves 1 large serving)
1-2 T butter, ghee, coconut oil, bacon fat, etc
1/4 small beet, diced small
1 small carrot, diced small
3 kale leaves, de-stemmed and chopped
1/2 small onion, diced
handful of broccoli florets, trimmed small
salt
1 T. parsley, chopped
2 eggs
tahini (mixed with water - and lemon juice if you have it - to thin it out, plus a pinch of salt)

1. Put a cast iron pan on medium heat. Add fat, and then beets. Cook covered for 3-5 minutes. Add onions and remove lid. After another few minutes, add broccoli and carrots. Cover the pan again for 3-5 minutes. Add kale. Cook a final 5 minutes, until greens are wilted but still bright, and beets are just tender. Stir often to keep things from sticking and add a little more fat if needed.
2. Meanwhile, scramble eggs in another pan so that they finish about the time of the veggies. Mix up some tahini with water to make it drizzle-able (a little less water than tahini ratio).
3. To serve: dish out veggies in a pile on a plate and top with scrambled eggs. Sprinkle parsley and drizzle tahini over everything. Serve!

Sauteed kale with craisins

I've been indulging myself a bit since Thanksgiving with a bit of extra sweet stuff - most recently in the form of craisins added to my breakfast greens. Yum. I am still finishing up my garden kale - it is down to some of the small pieces that are also a bit tender from the repeated freezing. It tastes so good!

This is one of those recipes that you don't really measure, but I'll give some estimates to serve 2. It is sort of a hybrid of a kale recipe KP always used to make me with kale, onions and raisins, along with a raw kale craisin salad that was at a recent potluck I was at.

Sauteed Kale with Craisins
small onion, sliced thin
Kale bunch, stalks removed and chopped
2+ T fat (coconut oil is always amazing with kale, so I recommend that)
1/4 c craisins
1 T cider vinegar
salt to taste

Heat a large cast iron pot on medium heat and add fat/oil. Add onions and saute for a few minutes until they begin to soften. Add kale - pile it up - pour on the vinegar and then put a lid on the pan. Keep the heat low and stir often to soften up all the kale/make the onions translucent. The coconut oil should coat the leaves and help moisten things, but you can add a few teaspoons of water if it seem a little dry. After 5 minutes or so, add the craisins and some salt. Continue cooking another 5-10 minutes until kale, onions, and craisins are soft.  Serve! 

*Note that some toasted nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans) would all be tasty on here as well.

Kale Chips

I've been meaning to try making kale chips all winter I think, and it was only after my mom fed me hers (and reported that she makes them all the time) that I finally got to it. She suggested I turn the oven hotter than most recipes say, which worked great for me. These are super simple to make and really tasty. I have yet to find a good way to store them so they stay crispy though. You can stick em back in the oven a day or two later and they'll crisp up again, but when I put them in a baggie, they wilted. Freezing them might work...I want to look for something because it would be a nice way to store garden kale into the winter.

Kale Chips
1 head of kale (I used red russian)
2 T fat (I used coconut oil, my mom uses olive oil)
Salt

Wash and de-stem the kale leaves. Toss with oil to coat each side - I stirred for a nice long while to make sure that all the leaves were thoroughly covered. Bake on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, checking leaves midway through to check for brown-ness. Make sure the leaves are spread out in a single layer. You will know they are done when they are crispy to the touch and just turning brown on the edges. Sprinkle with (smoky) salt and eat!

Sea Scallops!

I decided to take some days off this week in honor of my birthday. A five-day weekend seemed like a really good present to myself! I also seem to be treating myself to all kind of delicious food items, including some sea scallops (which I have been salivating over for the past few weeks). They are not cheap, running about $24/pound at Seward, but they were going to be my "start of vacation" dinner, so I bought 4 of them (1/3 of a pound) and made them for dinner.

I vaguely followed the recipe linked here, but changed it a bit to include what I had on hand. Oh this was so good! The sweetness of the scallop with the salty bacon and greens was perfect. I'll multiply the amounts so that the recipe below will serve two generous portions (I could have eaten 1/2 a pound of scallops, they are so good).

1 pound sea scallops
1/4 pound bacon, chopped
1 bunch of kale, chopped
1 onion, chopped
Fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper

Chop bacon and saute in a large skillet for 5 minutes. Add onions and continue to saute until onions are translucent and bacon is crispy. Set bacon/onions aside, but reserve the bacon fat for cooking the shallots (you'll use the same pan).

While onion is cooking, start the kale steaming in a covered pot with an inch or two of water or broth at the bottom (I used broth because I had some, and it added really nice flavor).

Add the shallots to the pan with bacon fat, and cook on both sides for about 5 minutes each.

While they are cooking, pour out any extra water from the kale, then add the bacon/onion mix. Saute together for a few minutes and salt and pepper to taste, and squeeze fresh lemon (maybe a Tablespoon or so).

Serve scallops on top of greens. Yum!

Coconut Kale

This recipe comes courtesy of Jamie, who created these totally amazing greens to share at a Shabbat gathering at Occupy MN last week. A handful of us stayed to talk in the plaza and eat kale with our fingers while the general assembly got going on the other side of the government center.

I sort of marvel at this complex movement that is Occupy Wall Street. One of my conversation highlights that night was to note that those of us at Occupy (wherever) are representative of people (wherever), only rather than existing in a smaller sphere within our houses or communities, we are interacting with one another: sharing ideas, having conflicts, and trying to find consensus on all sorts of massive topics. Something about it makes me feel quite in love with us all.

So. These greens. I have made them twice since eating them less than a week ago - not only because they remind me of feeling love-full, but also because they are damn good.

Serves 4-ish
2 T coconut oil
2 banana peppers (or sweet peppers), diced
2 jalepeno, diced very small
1/2 onion, diced
2 small tomatoes, diced
large bunch kale, chopped
1 T tamari
splash sriracha or hot sauce* (*optional!)
1/3 c. dried coconut

Heat coconut oil in a large saucepan. Add onions and peppers and saute 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and saute 2 more minutes. Add kale in small handfuls; stir to coat with oil. Add tamari and cover pan with lid to steam for 5-6 minutes, stirring once or twice, until greens are dark green and tender. Stir in coconut and hot sauce. Taste...add salt or more hot sauce if needed.

Kale, peach, corn and feta salad

This was a blogluck contribution that I thought turned out super tasty. The combination of veggies and fruit are not something I would ever have come up with...peaches, on salad?! The flavors were amazing together though, and it is another raw kale option that tasted really nice and fresh and substantial. I think this is especially perfect now, when the peaches are just ripe and the corn is fresh off the cob.

I found the original recipe at a new blog here. Her directions are a wee bit vague though, and I made a larger amount. My measurements are below, but see hers if you want to make a salad for 2 or 4.

Serves 8
2 large bunches kale
1/4 c. sherry wine vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 lemons, juiced
1/4 c. olive oil
1/4 c. cilantro
salt
1 red onion
4-6 ears corn (depending on size of ear, mine were really small, so I used 6)
4 ripe peaches
1 block salty feta

1. Remove stem from kale and chop into bite size pieces.
2. Mix vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil and cilantro. Add salt generously. In a large salad bowl, mix kale with dressing and stir well so that all greens are coated.
3. Sliver the red onion and add to salad.
4. After cooking the corn, remove kernals and add to bowl, along with peaches. Top with crumbled feta.

This salad seems to get more tasty the longer it marinates. I recommend making it at least an hour in advance.

Raw Kale Salad

I know I am not the only one with lots of dark greens growing in abundance. I notice that mine tend to sit there for a long while - which is fine, they will last long into the fall - but I think it is because I keep thinking I need to eat them cooked. And as it turns out, this summer is not my summer for cooked greens. I try to eat them along with breakfast or dinner and I am not into it. I'm done after a few bites, and even those seem a bit forceful. But raw greens - that is a different story!


I looked up some basic raw kale recipes, and settled on Kale Salad with Pecorino and Lemon. The basic difference to eating raw kale versus cooked seems to be it needs to marinate for an hour or more to soften it up a bit. It actually felt like I was making a version of pesto when I made this salad, but without the food processor...similar smells. Which is maybe why I ended up adding in some roasted pistachios too. It was the only nut I had, though had I seen this before sticking them in the oven, I would have brined them first. Yum!


In the end, I also decided to use a different green than kale (my kale is way small, not enough sun)...I used Mustard Spinach Komatsuma - a new green I planted this year (which is delicious btw). It is not as tough as kale - more spinach-y. (That link has some recipe suggestions, including a kimchi that I am intrigued by.) Anyhow - the salad turned out amazing! The flavor is really nice - the lemon somehow compliments the slight bitter taste of the greens. I think the nuts add a really nice crunch to the salad too. These greens really sucked up the lemon and olive oil, and I wonder if kale would be a little less absorbent. I actually ended up using the juice of just one lemon and only 1/4 c. olive oil - and that was plenty for the komatsuna. Raw greens!

Kale Souffle

I have a lot of kale in the garden right now and am embarking on some new kale recipes. I just learned that kale has lots of calcium, and vitamins A, B, and C. Also it is highest in protein of all the cultivated vegetables. Who knew?! This recipe comes from "From Asparagus to Zucchini" - a cookbook/guide to cooking seasonal produce put out by a bunch of CSAs from the Madison area. I find that the cookbook is a good resource, but the recipes tend to be decidedly Midwestern: lots of pasta, potatoes, and eggs to go with the produce item of choice.

Somehow while paging through I settled on this Kale Souffle. I say somehow because I neglected to read the full recipe before I started...midway through, while realizing my eggs were not at room temp, I started remembering episodes of Julia Child and warnings of fallen souffles. I also found myself whisking egg whites by hand - thank goodness my pal Steve came over kind of last minute or I would still be whisking.

Softened butter to grease baking dish
2T freshly grated Parmesan
4T butter
4T flour
1 2/3c milk, warmed
salt and pepper
pinch cayenne
5 egg yolks
1c cooked and finely chopped kale, at room temp
1c grated gruyere
2T chopped fresh dill (or 2t dried dill)
7 egg whites, at room temp

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter bottom and sides of an 8-cup souffle dish or deep, round baking dish; sprinke buttered areas with parmesan.
2. Melt butter in saucepan; stir in flour and cook over low heat several minutes, stirring often. Whisk in milk until thickened; season with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cool 10-15 minutes. Beat in egg yolks one at a time. Stir in kale, gruyere, and dill.
3. Beat egg whites and pinch of salt in a clean bowl until firm peaks form. Fold a quarter of the whipped egg whites into kale mixture, then gently fold in the rest (don't overmix). Gently spread mixture into prepared pan. Place in oven, reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake until high, golden, and barely set in the center, 35-40 minutes. Serve immediately. Serves 6.