Kale pesto puts a fun winter spin on summer’s finest sauce
When I was growing up, I knew kale only as the curly leaves that served as decorative dividers inside grocery store meat and deli display cases. At some point, when I was a young adult, kale turned trendy, and I started seeing it on restaurant menus and in glossy cookbooks, baby food and in all kinds of packaged snacks.
But those who keep a garden year-round know kale well. In the depths of winter, one of a gardeners’ last spots of green will be the kale patch.
“On a blustery winter day, it’s not uncommon to find me out in the garden, brushing the snow off the kale I plan to fix for dinner,” writes Marian Morash
in “The Victory Garden Cookbook.”
Morash notes that kale can withstand a severe frost, and it’s even easier to grow than cabbage. She supplies all kinds of ideas for what to do with it, but her strongest recommendation is to blanch the thick leaves in heavily salted water until they wilt but still hold their bite. Dressed with chile oil or lots of lemon juice, topped with a tadka or a fried egg, it makes a simple side dish or even brunch.
But drop that blanched kale into a food processor or blender with garlic, nuts, olive oil and Parmesan cheese, and you’ve got a pesto made of winter’s deepest green, full of round, bold flavors and a texture that’s pleasantly velvety.
It’s great stirred into soup or risotto, makes a lush topping for crusty bread, can be stuffed into a sandwich, used as a marinade or drizzled atop roasts. But, as with pesto Genovese, it’s an ideal sauce for pasta.
The Italians knew this first, of course. Cavolo nero, or Tuscan kale, generally doesn’t grow south of Rome. Like all kale, it’s said to turn sweet right after a frost, when it’s picked and then blanched, braised or turned into thick soups like ribollita and farinata di cavolo nero, a porridgelike dish with polenta and Tuscan kale.
But we’re after pesto di cavolo nero. It’s an old Tuscan recipe, said to be popular when the season’s fresh olive oil, pungent and green, makes an especially good marriage with the hardy leaves of cavolo nero. Countless cookbooks have published recipes for the saucy, coldweather pesto.
I found this recipe for kale pesto buried in The Washington Post’s archives from 2008. It was adapted from one published in “The Real Dirt on Vegetables” by John Peterson, and its ingredients and method agree with all of the other variations on kale pesto I’ve seen over the years.
And while it’s ideal on pasta, don’t let that stop you from using it to top your morning eggs or savory oatmeal, stirring it into soup or braised beans, adding a touch of white wine vinegar to turn it into a dressing for salads or using it as a dip for or drizzle atop roasted vegetables.