Kale and Quinoa Dish with Spice Roasted Cashews along with Quasi-Greek Salad

Why yes, it has been an eon since I've written.  A lot has happened, in my personal life as well as my professional life.  But I'm back on track now and will continue to share with you the simple dishes I come up with that center around plant-based, whole foods recipes.

No big pre-amble (other than the above)... so without further ado, here's last night's recipe.

It started like this... I eat kale but until now only ever raw.  I've never tried cooked kale but I can only eat so many salads before boredom sets in.  AND I had this huge bag of kale in my fridge so...

I poured a little EVOO into a pan, sauteed some onions for a bit then threw in handfuls of organic kale cut up.

Trying to cut back on salt, I decided to thaw my last lemon juice ice cube (when it's lemon season I juice the lemons and freeze them in ice cube trays... after they're frozen, I empty the cubes into a ziploc bag or other container and they stay in the freezer until needed).

So I ate this cooked kale/onion thing with lemon juice drizzled on top and, while not as good as cooked spinach, it was surprisingly tasty.

As you know, Friday nights are "company night".  Grandma (my mom) offered to bring carrot soup so I tried to think what would go well with that.  I decided on one more warm dish and one cold dish.

For the cold dish I did a quasi-Greek salad (no Kalamata olives on hand).

Quasi-Greek Salad

• 1 English cucumber 
• 1 pint of cherry/grape tomatoes
• 1/2 a small onion
• [omit if going vegan] 3T of sheep feta (a rare occurrence animal product, but I do have some in small quantities and infrequently)
• 1/2 of the following dressing...

Simple Greek Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup EVOO
• 1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar (a rarity for me, but it was Friday)
• Salt
• Pepper

Then for the warm dish...

Kale and Quinoa

• 1 cup of cooked quinoa (see below)
• 5 big handfuls of kale
• 3 small onions
• Oil (EVOO, coconut oil, Miyoko vegan butter, etc)
• Garlic
• Salt
• Stock, if desired

I cooked the quinoa in my instant pot... 1 cup of rinsed quinoa to 1½ cups of liquid (water or stock of your choice), a dollop of coconut oil (optional) and a bit of salt.

1 minute on manual with a 10 minute NPR.  But my quinoa was done before the other stuff so it sat in the pot warming for another 10 minutes... probably made it a wee bit fluffier than I normally like but it was still good.

While the quinoa was cooking I sauteed the chopped onions in some EVOO (or maybe it was coconut oil, I don't recall), then added two large garlic cloves (using my new handmade garlic thing which I really got for grating ginger, but it happens to do a bang-up job with garlic along with a bunch of other things). 

Then I threw all my cut up kale in there and added some water to kind of steam cook it (you can use broth or stock instead of water... I just wasn't thinking as sharply as I could have been).

Once the kale cooked down, I added the quinoa, mixed it all up and topped it with my spiced, roasted cashews.

Spiced Roasted Cashews

• Enough raw cashews to make one layer on the bottom of your pan
• Coconut oil or Miyoko vegan butter
• Red pepper
• Black pepper
• Thyme
• Celery Seed
• Smoked paprika
• Onion powder
• Garlic powder

I don't measure these things... I just use them and adjust as needed.  I turn the pan on high and put the raw nuts in and just start flipping them (not one by one... do a pan flip, like the chefs on tv) every 30 seconds or so.  You want to start seeing color but you don't want to burn them. 

When they look (and smell) the way I want, I add a dollop of oil, mixed them all up, lower the heat a bit and start sprinkling on the spices.

When I feel it's all mixed up and the spices have had a bit of time to gather flavor, I dump the lot into a paper towel-lined bowl or plate (to absorb excess grease).

So these, along with some lemon juice, got sprinkled on top of the kale quinoa dish, and it was served with the salad... and it was SOOOO yummy!

If you try any of these recipes, I'd love to hear from you.

Here's a link to my index of recipes and other musings.