Kale Pesto Pasta

My favorite new recipe: a kale pesto on pasta. Kale gets all kinds of great press these days for its many health benefits. I've had my eye out for great kale recipes and this one certainly fits the bill.

Kale Pesto Pasta
4 cups stemmed chopped kale (approximately 1 bunch)
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup nuts
2 garlic cloves
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1 box pasta of your choice

First wash, remove stems and chop kale.

 Next, you will want to blanch the kale. To blanch you will need a prep by boiling a large pot of water and setting a bowl of ice water nearby. Add the kale to the boiling water for just 3 minutes and then use tongs to quickly transfer the kale to the bowl of ice water for 3 minutes. This will stop the cooking and seal in all the wonderful nutrients.

 Then you want to wring the water out of your kale. That's right, wring it out like you would a wet rag. Put the wrung kale and the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and blend.

 It quickly turns into this wonderful kale pesto.

 Now you can put this pesto sauce over any pasta you want. I chose this new veggie pasta that is made with some pureed veggies. Anything to try to squeeze in more veggies.

A couple things to keep in mind: the pesto tastes better when it is allowed to sit for a bit so I went ahead and made it during the day and just refrigerated it until dinner time. Then I just cooked the pasta, drained and returned it to the original pot where I added the cold pesto. The hot pot and pasta was sufficient to heat the pesto. I then topped it with some more Parmesan Cheese. Yum!