A lot is being written about kale these days (see Kale for Everyone! via NYTimes), and I must admit that I always seem to have some in my fridge. I’ve tried it with gnocchi and butternut squash (yum!) and often just toss into recipes in place of other ingredients like spinach or Swiss Chard. This recipe from Martha Stewart Living, chicken and kale casserole, caught my eye because it looked like it would please a crowd yet still be healthy. I picked up a rotisserie chicken and set to work. While cooking some large pasta shells, you cook some garlic, onion and kale in a bit of butter. Mix it with the strained shells, add shredded chicken, ricotta, lemon zest and parm. Transfer to a baking dish and stick in an oven at 350 for half an hour. The results were good, but a little dull. I found the dish a bit dry and I think it could have used a little something else. Maybe mushrooms? Maybe another kind of cheese and a bit of (gasp) cream?

What’s your favorite kale recipe?

Among my many obsessions are great cookbooks. If a cookbook is truly lovely, I can read it like a novel – cover to cover, ogling every photo and fantasizing about the event for which I’d make every recipe.

I’ve clearly been living under some sort of rock, as I didn’t know much about Melissa Clark before now, other than that she’s the food writer for the New York Times. But from the moment I cracked the spine of her latest book, Cook This Now, I was a devoted follower. Organized by month, Clark walks you through what’s in season and great to cook with every month of the year, so you can adhere to her strict localvore attitude or mix-and-match recipes throughout the year.

As mouth-watering as every recipe appeared, I had to give things a try before I committed to our new love. So, I tested her recipe for Roasted Chicken with Chickpeas. Friends…all I can say is that roasting chickpeas and lemons underneath a chicken is pure culinary genius. They get all crunchy and delicious from the long cooking time, and the butter-slathered chicken drips down on the chickpeas as it cooks…the whole thing is complete genius.

For once in my life, I made this recipe exactly as written. And I wouldn’t change a thing…but I do have a few comments/helpful hints:

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I enjoy making risotto, when I have the time. Since that doesn’t happen as much as I’d like and I had a container of arborio rice staring me in the face, I looked up “oven risotto recipes” online. To my surprise, there were quite a few, ranging from recipes that required just a few minutes of stove-top prep to ones that required closer to 15 minutes of prep. Since I didn’t have most of the ingredients for either on hand, the decision was easy: Keep it simple. After coating a casserole dish with oil, I threw a cup of rice in the bottom, grated a little nutmeg, stirred in some minced garlic and added three cups of low-sodium chicken stock. (Low sodium is important, since the liquid will reduce.) Then I covered the dish tightly and threw it in the oven. After 20 minutes, I jiggled the casserole dish and there was still an inch or so of liquid on top. I let it go another 10 minutes and checked again. Bingo. I cubed up the butter and gently stirred it in, then did the same with the parmesan and seasoning. Total effort? Five minutes for a creamy and flavorful risotto. Not bad. I’ll definitely try this again, experimenting with adding a few more ingredients. Click through to the next page for the recipe!

Another one-pan rice dish you may like:
Broccolli rabe with sausage and rice

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