Pasta with kale + crispy garlic greens
Two textures from one favourite winter green in this speedy weeknight pasta: a bright-green kale sauce and a kale and garlic crunch. The sauce comes together in the time it takes to cook the pasta. This is my go-to sort of cooking: quick to bring together, but interesting and complex to eat.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cooking
- 20 min
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
- 800g kale (or cavolo nero), leaves stripped off the stalks and torn into bite-size pieces
- Salt and black pepper
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 pinch dried chilli flakes, or to taste
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
- 400g dried pasta – I use rigatoni
- 100g parmesan (I use a vegetarian one), grated
Season the kale
Put a third of the kale in a bowl, add a little salt and olive oil, and scrunch it all up with your fingers. Add the dried chilli and a good grind of black pepper, then leave it to sit.
Bring water to a boil + fry garlic
Fill a large pan with very well salted water – it should be salty like the sea – and bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, put four tablespoons of oil and the garlic in a small frying pan. Put on a medium heat, cook until the edges of the garlic begin to sizzle and turn light golden, then take the pan off the heat.
Cook the pasta
Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook for a minute less than the packet instructions.
Blitz the pesto ingredients
While the pasta is cooking, put the fried garlic in a food processor with the remaining unseasoned kale, 60ml extra-virgin olive oil, a good pinch each of salt and pepper, and a little splash of the pasta cooking water, then blitz to a smooth, bright-green paste.
Crisp up the remaining kale
Put the frying pan back on the heat and add a glug of oil. Once it’s really hot, add the scrunched kale and fry, stirring, until it’s crisp and a little crunchy.
Drain the pasta
When the pasta is ready, drain it, reserving a mugful of the cooking water, then return the pasta to the pot and stir in the kale sauce and parmesan. Add the reserved pasta water little by little and toss until you have a smooth, silky sauce coating all the pasta.
Serve
Serve with the crisp kale scattered on top and lots of grated parmesan.
Sign up to my Newsletter
Sign up for my newsletter for joyful and inspiring recipes from me every week, as well as occasional takeovers from other brilliant chefs. I promise never to go overboard and you can unsubscribe at any time.