After a while I get sick of pasta and jarred tomato sauce, don't you? I hate the way the leftovers taste. And it's just...blah. My husband, being the awesome chef that he is, cooked a delicious pasta dish the other week w/o the jarred tomato sauce. The "sauce" was olive oil and garlic, and REAL tomato juice essentially. He used cherry tomatoes, baby spinach, chicken, and a touch of balsamic (for the tomatoes). And some spices of course. YUM.
Well....last night was my attempt to replicate his dish. Except we didn't have spinach. We had Kale. Still worked out beautifully (beautifully tasty!).
Here's how I did it (sorry there aren't any measurements or anything....I rarely measure anything while cooking...only in baking...sometimes it bites me in the butt...but most of the time it works out lol).
1. Start boiling your water for the pasta (don't forget to salt the water! cause who likes bland pasta? not me.)
2. While waiting for the water to boil, chop up some fresh garlic (I used 3 cloves, but you can add more or less depending on your taste)
3. If you don't have leftover chicken from the night before like I did, I'd start cooking off the chicken at this point (chicken is optional I suppose...but it's protein! and it's yummy)
4. Add olive oil and garlic to the pan, saute away! (just don't burn the garlic!)
5. Next, throw in the Kale- after you've cut off the stems (or baby spinach), and turn up the heat
6. Add salt and LOTS of coarsely ground black pepper
7. Throw in cherry tomatoes (with a few drops of balsamic vinegar)
8. Throw in your chicken
9. Turn on your broiler! (broil is an option on your oven-usually...). Basically it heats something from the top only, with very high heat......
10. Put the whole pan in the oven to broil for a few minutes (I don't have an exact time, just watch for the skin of the tomatoes to look a little wrinkly)
11. Take the pan out of the oven, and back on the stove top (turn it back on to about medium heat)
12. Now grab a utensil of some sort (I used a wooden spoon), and gently smash all the tomatoes! Watch and drool as the juices flow into the rest of the dish with its tomatoe-y goodness!
13. Add your pasta (assuming at some point you added it to the boiling water and cooked it to about al dente and then drained it)....I forgot to mention all that....but I'm sure you know to do that :)
14. TASTE IT! And determine if it needs more salt and pepper. In my case, it almost always does. I would also recommend adding a little crushed red pepper to it.
15. Cheese it. I had a block of Parmesan Reggiano, so I took my trusty cheese grater to it and went to town. I mixed it into the whole dish...and then grated more just on top of each individual serving once it was on the plate.
Then enjoy :)
I wish I would've taken a picture of it, but the lighting in my kitchen would've made it look gross....and it definitely wasn't gross. It was delicious. I never want jarred tomato sauce again.
Give it a try! And I apologize if it fails miserably due to my lack of measurements and cooking times. I'll take full responsibility
:)
Mrs. Griffiths
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