Saturday, January 22, 2011

Scalloped Kale and Potatoes

Source: A colleague gave me this recipe about, um, 2 years ago. It's from "Quick Vegetarian Pleasures." One of my new year's resolutions this year was to make some of the things in my overstuffed clippings folder (and create a blog to talk about them), and there's a heck of a lot of Tantre Farm kale in the freezer and wrinkled potatoes in a box in the basement. So...

Rating: Very Favorable

Notes: What can go wrong when you use a ton of butter, garlic and Calder Dairy milk?



INGREDIENTS:
  • 1 pound kale
  • 5 medium/large potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 cups grated cheese (cheddar is good, others may want swiss)
  • 4 tablespoons butter, cut into bits
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • pepper
  • 1 1/4 cups milk

METHOD:
  1. Rinse the kale and shake off extra water. Pull the leaves from the stems, discard stems. Stuff the kale into a medium pot and add 1/2 c. water. Cook 7 minutes. Drain and cool and squeeze out extra water. Chop kale and set aside.
  2. Preheat oven to 425. GENEROUSLY grease a large casserole or medium baking dish. Spread half the potato slices on the bottom, spread on all the kale, then sprinkle the garlic, and half the cheese, butter, salt and pepper. Top with the remaining potato slices, cheese, butter, salt and pepper.
  3. Carefully pour the milk in and gently shake the dish to distribute. Bake 50 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and the top is browned.

4 comments:

  1. Do you think substituting yogurt for the milk would work? We never have milk in the house (just vanilla soy milk for coffee etc.), but always have yogurt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh, this looks yummy. However, kale is treated with grave suspicion by certain members of my household. I might have to make this recipe just for myself!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sara: I don't think yogurt would work terribly well; it needs something more liquid than that. I've had excellent results, though, cooking with soy milk. I intensely dislike soy milk plain, but for cooking it can almost be better than milk...

    Debbie: In our house, before the last 5 years of farm shares, kale was never called by its true name. It was always called f***ing kale. So, I really do understand! We are now huge fans, but... You can absolutely make this with spinach or chard, which are softer and easier to chew. Also, dragon kale (the one that looks bumpy) is the limpest of all the kales. If you can ever call kale limp.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yay! I'm glad this is Very Favorable. I just made it last week myself. Somehow, we have convinced the kids that everyone loves kale and so everyone loves this dinner.

    ReplyDelete