Kale Pesto

The other day, as I stared at a huge bunch of kale from our CSA, a thought occurred to me. I love basil pesto; I've heard of spinach pesto; why not kale pesto? We had two small sprigs of basil this week, so they were recruited -- along with said huge bunch of kale -- into pesto!

There wasn't anything fancy about the recipe itself -- it was a very standard pesto recipe, but with kale stepping in for the bulk of the greenery. It's extremely easy to make pesto; just put everything in the food processor and process the food until it has a nice smooth texture. This pesto was made of pine nuts, rice-parmesan, olive oil, garlic, kale -- with the stems removed and coarsely chopped, basil leaves, and a little salt and pepper.

It took just as long to wash and chop the kale, assemble the other ingredients, and prepare the pesto in the food processor as it took for my pot of water to boil and the pasta to cook. Quick and easy! And, to make it even easier next time, this recipe made three times as much pesto as I needed for tonight's dinner -- so I froze two individual servings of pesto for the next couple of times!

As easy as tonight's dinner was, I didn't have the energy even for this much work last night after I got back from doing work at school. I present you with a bonus photo of last night's dinner -- roasted CSA broccoli and farmers' market potatoes plus salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper.

I love roasting -- you just throw your vegetables in the oven and forget about them, then -- BAM! -- dinner's ready! Despite my intense love for both roasting and broccoli, I'd actually never had roasted broccoli before -- but this will certainly not be the last time. Roasting the broccoli gave it a fantastically nutty flavor; I may have just found my new favorite way to prepare my favorite vegetable.

Rice Noodles with Broccoli in Peanut Sauce, version 2.0

It's true that I've posted a similar dish in the past, but there have been some advancements made between the last time and Monday night, when we had this for dinner.

The first advancement is that I made my own peanut sauce this time, instead of copping out and using an already prepared variety. I found Thai culinary stock at Wegman's -- which was fabulous! --though any kind of vegetable broth would certainly have worked in its place. To make the sauce, I began by heating up some of the broth and then mixing in a couple of tablespoons of natural peanut butter so that it dissolved completely. I also added sriracha, lime juice, and a little bit of tapioca flour to thicken the sauce a tad more. I actually meant to add coconut milk, but completely forgot about it; the additional creaminess would be welcome in the future, but the sauce still managed to be quite tasty without it. Even though there wasn't much actual peanut butter in the sauce, it still had a nice, full peanuty flavor.

The second advancement is about the noodles themselves. Previously, I always would drop the noodles in boiling water for two or three minutes before using them; on Monday, I learned about a different technique! Instead of boiling, you can soak the rice noodles in cold water for about twenty minutes and (after draining them) they're all ready to use.

The noodles and peanut sauce, stir-fried with delicious broccoli from the farmers' market, are pictured above. Unfortunately, today was the last day of the farmers' market, so the broccoli we picked up this morning will probably be the last we have for awhile! In the past week, I've learned that there is one local farm market that will be open through the end of December -- so we'll be able to get winter squash, apple cider, and canned tomatoes there, though I'm not sure if they have anything else. It would be a very long winter on just squash and tomatoes! I would love to continue eating only locally-grown produce during the winter, but I'm sure we would get very sick of squash and tomatoes. I am still looking into the potential for growing some spinach inside, but I'm not sure how well that would work. More to come on this later!

Rice Noodles with Tofu and Broccoli in Peanut Sauce

I had entirely forgotten about the two small heads of broccoli that we got this week from the CSA, until P reminded me on the way home from class. Broccoli is my very favorite vegetable, so I was super excited about all the dinner prospects before me. I decided that I wanted something relatively quick and easy, since I was tired from teaching for four hours. But I also wanted something tasty that would use up our sweet, sweet broccoli.

Ultimately, I decided to make the first meal I ever made for P, back when we first started dating. It's also one of my favorite meals, though I don't make it all that often for some reason. On top of all that, rice noodles cook super quick -- so it would all assemble pretty quickly.

After pressing the tofu, it was cubed and fried in peanut oil until the sides were a nice crispy golden brown. The broccoli got thrown in with the tofu once it had browned, then everything was tossed with the cooked rice noodles and the peanut sauce. Quick, easy, tasty!