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Greens, greens, greens. The profusion continues, and worry not if your favorite/possessed green hasn’t been featured, because I’m not finished yet. Today’s kale pesto pasta recipe is created using fresh Russian kale, but will work with other varieties of kale too.

Making a vegan kale pesto is about as easy as it gets, and similar to my spinach pesto pasta. (If you’re starting to get the impression that I sometimes use pesto as a cop-out for utilizing leafy greens, you are totally correct.)

Real talk: all things considered, kale is bitter and earthy. Some people (me) enjoy this, some people don’t. If you’re on the fence, though, you’ll probably like the kale in this kale pesto; it’s tempered with complementary sweet, acidic and nutty flavors from shallot, olive oil, lemon, and walnuts – and of course, a little bit of basil to bring it all home.

A lot of kale pesto recipes call for blending the kale with a bunch of olive oil and saucing it directly onto the pasta. As a lover of olive oil and bitterness, I’m totally on board, but I’m trying to go for more general appeal here. The addition of cherry tomatoes helps in that arena too… although, I could honestly put these tomatoes on just about anything. 🙂

Cooking the blended kale and walnut mixture in oil a little bit will soften and sweeten the kale just enough. It takes a little bit more oil than the spinach version to balance things, but in exchange you get all of those nutritional benefits like Vitamin A, Vitamin C, folate, and omega-3’s, all whilst using up an overflowing garden veggie that my dad once un-fondly referred to as “ditchweed”.

Following my advice is especially important because we don’t have the umami powers of parmesan cheese in this vegan version (although, a little vegan parmesan sprinkled on top is fantastic). In conclusion, go ahead and put raw bits of kale on your pasta, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In the pictured pasta, we used some penne made of wild rice that I found at MOM’s and I was pretty surprised with how good it was. The color was a bit ghastly though, so it’s nice that my vegan kale pesto enrobed it so effectively :).