Week 21: Penne with Kale, White Beans, and Sausage

For this week's meal, I decided to go back to the blog Simply Recipes (written by Elise Bauer in California). I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating how wonderful all her posts are. She makes even daunting dishes accessible, and that's what I like most about her and her writing.

Anyway, I thought I'd continue the trend of making Italian food because I'll never get tired of it as long as I live. You know what they say about Italian food: "The trouble...is that five or six days later you're hungry again" (George Miller). I wouldn't say the dish is that filling, even with the beans, but it's still a funny quotation (the pasta that I made is actually quite light).

This is a great dish to make on a weekday because it's easy and relatively fast (it took me just 45 minutes to whip this one up, including a bunch of chopping and mincing because of the kale, garlic, and onions).

My dirty little secret is that this dish was not intended to be pasta. It was just supposed to be a simple side-dish to an Italian meal, and I turned it into pasta because it sounded like it would be good with some penne. Hurray for innovation!

The original recipe (which you are free to make as written and not as a pasta dish if you so choose) can be found at http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/kale_with_sausage_and_white_beans/. Ms. Bauer's directions are nice because she includes step-by-step pictures, which you might find helpful in your own cooking.

Says Bauer, "We used curly kale for this recipe, but you could use any kale, as well as chard, turnip greens, beet greens, or collards. A splash of vinegar (sherry, red wine, cider) is a nice touch right at the end of cooking."

"Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage, or other sausage [I used a full pound, and like the note says, any sausage or ground meat will do]
• 1 onion, sliced thin (about 1 1/2 cup's worth of sliced onions) [I would recommend cutting the onion in half lengthwise, then slicing half-moon slices from each half; then, you can "punch out" nice thin, curvy pieces from each slice.]
• 2 large garlic cloves [minced, and I used four]
• 1 pound kale (1 large bunch), center thick rib removed, leaves roughly chopped [I used two bunches]
• 1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock [I used vegetable stock, and I thought it was fantastic.]
• 1 15-ounce can of white beans, rinsed and drained [I used Great Northern Beans, which were perfect,  but you can use any kind of white bean, be it cannellini beans, white kidney beans, pinto beans, navy beans, etc.]
• Salt and pepper [to taste]

Method

1 Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and add the bulk sausage; if you can't find bulk sausage, remove the casings on the links. Cook for 3-4 minutes, then add the onion slices and turn the heat to high. Cook until the edges of the onions brown, about 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

2 Add the kale, sprinkle salt over everything, then add the chicken stock. Cover the pan, lower the heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes. 

3 Uncover, mix everything well (the kale will have cooked down by now) and add the beans. Cover the pot again and lower the heat to low. Cook another 5 minutes, then turn off the heat. Let stand 5 minutes, then serve."

If you want to make this a pasta dish like I did, just boil up one box of your favorite pasta, probably penne or rigatoni (I don't think it would work well with pasta that is too small or too thin and long--spaghetti, macaroni, and others come to mind).

Serves 4-6 people.

Because this meal was turned from a side-dish into an entree, I doubled the amount of sausage, kale, stock, and garlic while leaving the amount of beans and onions the same. I found this ratio to be satisfying. Too many beans could cause the dish to be overly filling, and too much onion could make the onion flavor predominant, which is not what you want unless you really, really like onions (in my opinion, onion is a nice complimentary flavor meant to enhance others and shouldn't overpower them).

It is relatively easy to remove the center rib from the kale. The leafy stuff seems to want to separate from the main stalk pretty easily, so that part of the prep should go pretty quickly.

While the original directions call for slicing the garlic thinly, I always mince garlic. I suppose it's because my mother told me I should, but I recently read in a magazine that mincing garlic breaks down barriers between chemicals in the food that combine to create a health-boosting effect. So, mincing garlic actually makes it better for you than simply slicing it. Who knew?

I noticed that as I was cooking this meal, the meat did not seem too scary at all. There was a time in my life when I would have been nervous to cook meat because I was always afraid that I would under-cook it and make people sick. However, I think this dish and others along the way in my culinary journey to where I am now have taught me that meat is not intimidating and that I can cook it well with confidence. Another important thing about this dish was that I bought most of my own ingredients for it. I felt much better doing it this way than asking my parents to buy specialty items for these new dishes that I am making, so I think I will continue to do this in the future (I'm sure Mom will be tickled pick to here so).

My family helped me make salads to accompany this dish, and we also ate some bread and ciabatta rolls with it. If you wish, you can also (as we did) grate some fresh Parmesan to top the pasta with. After all, what's Italian food without some good cheese? My family told me not to change a thing, and they all loved it and earnestly hope that I will make it again. It was a nice, light dish that was still satisfying. The kale makes it supercharged with healthful vitamins and minerals, so you feel really good after eating it, too (even though there's delicious-but-less-than-healthful sausage in it). The finished product ended up being a bit salty, so go easy on that seasoning when you get to step 2 of the recipe.

I suppose you could make this a vegetarian dish if you wanted (by leaving out the meat), but it's just such a good flavor that I wouldn't recommend it (sorry, veggies). I recently learned that there is a term for the way I eat (which is low-meat): flexitarian. This has earned me the nickname of Flexi at work, which I simultaneously like and dislike. Is that possible?

Overall, it was a fun meal to make, and the entire kitchen smelled really good when I was making it, especially when I added the garlic to the onions and meat.

Looking at this dish now, I'm wondering if mushrooms would be good in it. . .Image enhanced with Instagram filtering.

 We also brought home our second farm-share box on Saturday, so now we have more organic goodness to eat. This past week's box included strawberries (they are perfectly red without any blemishes and taste like sunshine), chard, salad greens and romaine lettuce, cilantro, summer squash (I can't wait for my own to grow), baby bok choi, broccoli, sugar snap peas, kohlrabi, and garlic scapes. Kohlrabi, if you haven't ever heard of it, is a strange sort of vegetable, but it is really tasty, especially grilled. It is relative of cabbage, so I guess you could say it does have a sort of cabbage-like flavor, but the flesh is crunchy with a little bit of give to it, sort of like an apple.Wikipedia, that great pool of unquestionable knowledge, tells me that kohlrabi is also called a German turnip.

It looks like this:

"This" being "alien cabbage-apples." Image courtesy of simplyrecipes.com (complete coincidence!).

 Garlic scapes are basically like green onions, but they taste like garlic instead of onion.

They look like this:

"My salad days,/When I was green in judgment" (William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 1606). Photo courtesy of doriegreenspan,com.

So, that was our exciting week at the Hart Lodge. We've had great sunny weather, which our plants love, so I hope that keeps up and that I can start using my own vegetables in these recipes soon. Until next time, happy eating!