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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Leafy Green Recipes

Ok, so apparently I have neither the time nor the attention span to keep two blogs going consecutively, so I have not been posting on my other blog, For the Love of Beans. Sorry about that (for the couple of you who have ventured over there), but to make up for it, here are a couple of great recipes that we have come across lately. We joined a CSA earlier this year and each week, we get a share of wonderful, locally-grown, organic produce, but the problem is that some of the stuff we get is a little on the obscure side and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Enter my good friend Google, and voila! Delicious recipes that utilize this fabulous produce!


Next time you're at your local farmer's market and you want to pick up that bunch of kale (which is super, super nutritious but not overly versatile) but you're not quite sure how to prepare it, you can use the following easy peasy recipe. You're welcome. And this was so tasty that my daughter, who we have to coerce and bribe into eating leafy greens of any kind, loved this so much that she asked us to make it again.

Roasted Kale
4 cups packed kale
1 tbsp EVOO (I actually used roasted garlic grapeseed oil, and it was delish)
Kosher Salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash kale and remove the tough stems by folding the kale in half (like a book) and stripping the stems from the leaves. Trim kale and toss it in a bowl with the oil. Place kale on a baking pan and sprinkle it with kosher salt. Roast in oven for 7 minutes. Turn kale over, sprinkle a little more salt over the kale, and roast it for another 7 to 10 minutes, or until kale is brown and becomes brittle. Serve immediately.


Another veggie we've gotten a lot of from our CSA shares is asparagus. We're bored to tears with just steaming it or putting it in our salads, so Aaron suggested we try a recipe we found for asparagus pesto. We jazzed it up with the chicken.

Butterflied Chicken with Asparagus Pesto
Pesto:
1 1/4 cups chopped asparagus
3 garlic cloves
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup EVOO

Run asparagus, garlic, and cheese through a food processor, adding EVOO slowly.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butterfly as many boneless, skinless chicken breasts as you'd like, and rub a generous helping of the pesto inside each chicken breast. Close chicken breast and rub an additional helping of pesto on top (we placed a small slice of pepper jack cheese on top of each chicken breast as well, just because we love cheese). Sprinkle each chicken breast with a pinch of kosher salt and bake the chicken breasts on a roasting pan for about 45 minutes, or until chicken breasts are fully cooked. Goes beautifully with a nice red wine.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell me more about the CSA; we've been looking into joining one. I ventured to your other blog and am interested in all recipes you've got.

I just found a store in Tosa that has a nice selection of vinegars and olive oils. It's a specialty place, so it's a big pricey, but soooooo yummy. We went in to by gifts and spent more on ourselves.

Carrie said...

Good for you for getting signed up for a CSA! It was on my to-do list this spring and now I fear it's too late (altho maybe not, I'll have to keep it on my list).

Thanks for the kale recipe; my dad grows a lot of it as a decorative plant and then I take it in the fall. It's really nice because you can keep picking it even in winter. And as you said, SUPER nutritious.

Sara said...

jenny--the csa we belong to is called Lotfl (living off the fat of the land). they have a stand at the south shore farmers market--that is how we found them. their stuff is great, and i would highly recommend them. i can't remember exactly what they charge for a full share, but i think it works out to be something like $25/week. if you want, i can give you the dude's email address. or, you and doug could meet us at the south shore farmers market when it opens on the 27th and we could introduce you to the owner!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Sara! I looked it up, and it appears Lotfl is at the Brookfield Farmer's market too, which is the one we go to the most frequently. We alternate between West Allis and Brookfield, it depends on what time we get moving :)

The South Shore farmer's market doesn't open until the 27th? That sucks. If you have time in the next few weeks, check out the West Allis one, it's the biggest that I've seen in the area.

http://www.ci.west-allis.wi.us/health/health_farmers_market.htm