The weather in the Pacific Northwest is pretty mild so hardy greens like kale, chard, brussels sprouts can live through the winter months and gift us with one more harvest right before Spring starts. So what do you do when you have an abundance of kale and tender kale flowers that have over-wintered and are perfect for the picking? You make salads, you braise them or you add them to pasta dishes…
Last year before we were told to stay put and the whole world started to shut down, we stocked up on dry goods just in case the food supply could be disrupted. We saw what happened with the toilet paper madness! Apparently, we weren’t the only ones. The funny thing is, most of the common stuff like white rice, regular pasta was flying off the shelves, and some of the articles that were left were specialty items like bamboo rice,ย red rice, green pasta. Apparently, most buyers weren’t interested in them, maybe because they didn’t know what to do with them. Good, more for us!
As you know, you can store dry goods for a period of time, but you have to use them and replace them. So we decided to use some of the SuperGreens pasta that we had bought last year. The pasta was made with a mix of spinach, kale, broccoli, and parsley. They were very green indeed. We were on a color theme with the green kale leaves and flowers!
So we decided to give them a try. They turned out really good. Not grainy or weird like some of the gluten-free pasta sometimes is. You have to venture and try new things all the time!
By the way, you can easily make your own fresh green pasta with this handheld simple pasta press and pasta drying rack (if you want to make more pasta than you are going to use). You don’t need fancy machines.
First, we cut the kale tops, flowerets, removed the kale leaves from the stems. Because the leaves were small, there was no need to remove the ribs. The kale flowers were so tender that they didn’t need to cook very long. A mix of soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, black pepper, and lemon juice did the trick.
Because pasta is kind of bland on its own, I prepared a nut-free cheesy sauce to make it creamy. If you want the pasta to remain green, omit the turmeric in the sauce because it made the pasta look yellow as if it was egg pasta.
NOTE: By the way, if you are in a hurry, you can make this dish using “Cafe Yumm” sauce in the time that it takes to cook the pasta! We always have it in the fridge because it is soo good and can be used on steamed, seared veggies, sandwiches, potatoes, rice, pasta… and the list goes on!
Green pasta with seared Kales tops
Ingredients
Nut-free cheese sauce
- 1 large potato
- 2 small carrots
- 3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp sea salt
Seared Greens
- 2-3 cups kale leaves or other greens
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp paprika
Toppings
- 1/3 cup sundried tomatoe strips
- 1 Tbsp cappers
- 1-2 Tbsp pine nuts (optional)
1 box of super green pasta
Instructions
Make the nut-free cheesy sauce
- Boil 3 cups of water with a pinch of salt in a saucepan.
- Peel the potato and carrots and cube.
- Boil the potato and carrots until tender (shouldn't take more than a few minutes).
- Add the potato, the carrots, the nutritional yeast, turmeric, salt and pepper to a blender and process until smooth.
Cook the pasta following the instruction on the package.
Sear the greens.
- Prepare the kale, cut the tops, wash and remove the leaves from the stem.
- Mix the marinade ingredients: soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic powder, pepper.
- While the pasta is cooking, stirfry the kale with a tsp of oil. Add the marinade and quickly stir.
Assemble the dish
- Drain the pasta and immediately pour the nut-free creamy sauce and stir. Add the capers.
- Place a ring of seared greens on the plate, add the pasta in the middle.
- Top with strips of sundried tomatoes, pine nuts.
- Eat immediately!
1 large potato
2 medium carrots
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp turmeric (optional)
sea salt and pepper
Toppings
Sun-dried tomato strips
1 tsp capers
Pine nuts
