Saturday, October 4, 2008

Quick greens, garlic and pine nut dish

I just need to mention a dish which is a perennial favorite of mine. Essentially its a wilted greens, hot pepper, garlic, raisin/craisin, and roasted pine nut dish which is really great. Well, I supposes I've shown all of my cards by revealing all of the ingredients, so I'm not gonna give a formal recipe. Essentially take some sort of green vegi (fresh or frozen spinach, any type of chard, mustard greens, Chinese broccoli) and chop it up a little, but don't dice it or anything major. If there is any stalk like in Chinese broccoli, you should chop it separately and cook it longer than the leaves. Anyway, in your favorite cast iron pan roast some pine nuts and then let them cool a little. Meanwhile in a non-cast iron pan heat some olive oil and then put into it chopped hot pepper (or pepper flakes) and garlic and let it cook a little. Then add in any stalk type pieces of your vegi, and then, once that is half cooked add in the leaves. If you are using frozen spinach you can either premelt it, or do what I do and just throw it into the pan frozen and slowly scrap off the melted pieces until its all melted. Anyway, while this is going on you should add a handful of either raisins or dried cranberries. Once everything is cooked, and any of the excess water is cooked off, put the pine nuts into the mix, season with salt and eat. I often will eat this as a meal on its own, but for those who are not content to eat just one dish, you can probably pair this with some toasted bread. Thats too fancy for my tastes though and I'll just stick with the greens.

No comments: