The raw and the cooked. Delicious, complexly flavored pasta with kale and stewed red onions served atop a raw kale salad with garlicky dressing. Topped with delicata squash croutons, a quintessential early fall supper.

This all happened when I came home on a Friday night, fried from a ridiculously busy week, without a clue about what’s for dinner or how many would show up, and knowing that I’d be going to our CSA farm in the morning to face a staggering harvest. Holy cow. Or, as it turned out, holy kale. 

I was craving raw green salad, so kale it would be, dressed in a garlicky sauce. To tame the bite of raw garlic in this dressing, I simmered roughly chopped cloves in olive oil, let them cool and emulsified them with a combination of red wine vinegar and balsamic. With a little salt and pepper, this created a delicious counterpoint to the sturdy kale leaves.  You could pour it on the greens while it’s warm to wilt them slightly, or cool the dressing first.

To dress the pasta, I caramelized thin moon-shaped pieces of red onion, cooking them slowly (15-20 minutes) in olive oil and finishing them with balsamic vinegar. The onions created a sweet note to the lightly stewed kale. Here I preferred wide pasta, fettuccini, which was sprinkled with wonderful toasted butternut squash seed oil from the Finger Lakes district of New York. The company also makes delicata squash seed oil. The combination of textures, flavors and colors created a completely satisfying and nutritious meal. Yum. 

Categories: Greens, Pasta, Salad, Winter squash