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Root beer cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

I think I told you I’m writing a book. Aren’t we all? By “writing a book,” of course I mean spending four hours tonight on Facebook, Twitter, MyLifeIsAverage, and everyone-else-in-the-world’s blog. Four hours is probably not even an exaggeration.

As there’s no point in going outside for the next two to three weeks, and since this whole book-writing thing is much less fun than anything ever, today’s off-the-couch distraction was cookies. Root beer cookies, actually, because there was a little bit of a bottle of the stuff left in the back of my fridge and I get super neurotic about throwing anything out. Which explains why I have so many mostly empty jars taking space in my little fridge (at least eight of the jars are condiments that I felt compelled to purchase because they were so weird I couldn’t just leave them there to not be bought).

Most root beer cookie recipes I’ve come across call for root beer extract, which apparently is as easy to find as regular old vanilla, but I’d never heard of it, and, frankly, I can’t be bothered to go looking – why use root beer extract when a root beer reduction works just fine?

Well, maybe it would make the cookies more root-beery. But I like what I came up with here – it’s like sugar cookies high-fived vanilla, and the result is a chewy, sugary delight. A whiff of root beer, and that’s all you really need. If you wanted root beer hyperbole, you’d just drink the stuff, wouldn’t you? Yes. That’s what I thought. So here you go: my root beer cookie recipe. I hope you like it.

Root beer cookies

(About 30 cookies)

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 to 2 cups root beer, simmered until reduced to 1/2 cup (30 minutes to one hour), and cooled
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (for rolling)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Gradually pour in root beer reduction, then each egg individually, beating continuously until just after the last egg has been added. Stir in vanilla extract.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Pour into the wet ingredient mixture, stirring to combine until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Roll dough between your hands to form a ball the size of a golf ball. Roll the balls in the sugar, and place on a cookie sheet, about an inch and a half apart. Press each ball down with a fork.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, to desired doneness, or until golden around the edges. I like mine just shy of underdone, so that they’re still chewy, but I know other people like theirs finished. Serve warm, with cold milk, or store in a sealed container for about a week, if they last that long.

Tomorrow’s distraction? Cookie eating. I win two nights in a row!

Leek and bacon barlotto.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I’m. So. Tired.

We went to Las Vegas this past weekend, for the very first time, and it was wonderful. We ate nothing but meat and drank nothing but beer and Bloody Marys for three days, and though our bodies are suffering, our minds are at peace, the stress of our daily lives forgotten as we pissed away our American dollars and gorged ourselves at the meat buffets.

The hard part is getting back to our lives as usual. Early bedtimes and dinners with vegetables are the order of the week. Tonight was grain night, and half of a one-dollar bag of barley formed the basis for dinner.

The following recipe makes enough for four to six as a side dish, or two to three as a main. It will double very easily. We ate it as a main, topped with a poached egg, and there was a bit left over. It’s a hearty alternative to risotto, as barley is a whole grain rich in both soluble and insoluble fibre, which means that it’s a great way to recover from a vacation in which you ate nothing good for you.

Leek and bacon barlotto

  • 2 to 3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
  • 1 cup chopped leek (one medium leek, white and light-green part only, cut into sixths lengthwise and chopped)
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 cup pearl barley
  • 2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 cup dry white wine
  • 3 to 4 cups warmed chicken stock
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan, sauté bacon until crisp. About one minute before the bacon is ready, add the leeks, and sauté until glistening. Remove from heat and drain onto a plate lined with paper towel.

Drain the bacon fat, but don’t wipe the pan. Add olive oil. Return the pan to the stove, set to medium-high heat, and pour in barley. Stir fry barley and garlic until golden and toasted, about two minutes. The barley will smell toasty and will turn white before it browns slightly. Stir in the wine, and reduce to medium heat.

Once wine is absorbed, pour in one cup of stock. Stir frequently until stock is absorbed. Repeat two to three more times, over thirty to forty-five minutes, until barley has puffed and softened; you will want the texture to resemble al denté rice, slightly chewy but pleasing to the bite.

Once almost all of the liquid is absorbed, add bacon and leeks back to the pan, and cook with the barley. You’ll want the liquid to have almost completely disappeared. Once this happens, remove from heat.

Stir in butter and Parmesan cheese. Season to taste.

Serve with crusty bread, with more fresh-grated Parmesan cheese, possibly topped with a poached egg.

This is salty, cheesy, nutty, and thoroughly delicious, with just the right amount of chew and softness to make it the perfect comfort food to follow a weekend of gluttony, or just a hard, long week.

Red bean soup.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

We’re going on a little vacation this weekend, so it’s nice to not have to buy groceries and also use up the stuff in the fridge. Also, periodically, I like to make a ton of soup, which can be frozen in containers for lunches. The timing was perfect for this soup, which is equal parts cheap to make and tasty to eat – the sweet potato gives the soup great texture and a touch of sweetness, and the combination of chipotle and lime makes it seriously flavourful.

It’s super good for you – low in fat, high in fibre, and filled with healthy stuff. Also, it goes very well with cold beer. So, no one loses!

Even if you don’t have this stuff in your fridge, I recommend a trip to the market to make this one on a weeknight. It’ll take you about an hour, not including the time to soak the beans – just plan ahead a bit, setting the beans to soak before you leave for work. And the leftovers are even better the next day.

Red bean soup

(Serves four to six.)

  • 1/2 lb. dried red kidney beans, soaked for eight hours
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 small sweet potato, diced (about one cup, but if you end up with a bit more, just use it)
  • 1 cup chopped celery
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 5.5 oz. can tomato paste
  • 2 to 4 chipotles (or to taste), chopped
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1 lime
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Water

Drain and thoroughly rinse beans. Don’t use the liquid you soaked the beans in, because that liquid contains something like 80% of the farty compounds that make beans so unpleasant sometimes. If you drain and rinse, you’ll wash that away. Set aside.

In a large pot, sweat onions, sweet potato, and celery in olive oil. Add garlic, and pour beans into the pot. Fill pot with four cups of water.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Maintain a boil for about five minutes, before reducing to medium-high heat, and stir in tomato paste. Let cook, uncovered, for thirty to forty minutes, until sweet potatoes are soft and beans are easily cut in half. Add chipotles. (Note: You can buy chipotles in cans in the Latin section of the supermarket, or in smaller Latin markets. They’re cheaper there. Or just get them for free from your friends who go to Mexico.)

Remove pot from heat, and blend until smooth with an additional two to three cups of water, adding extra water for thinner consistency, if desired.

Return to heat, and stir in cumin, coriander, and the juice of the lime. Add salt and pepper, taste, and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, topped with shredded cheddar cheese and chopped cilantro. A side of tortilla chips is a nice touch. And don’t forget the beer.

Another easy pizza crust, perfect for something unpleasant like Wednesday.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

So … burdock will have to wait until tomorrow. When you see prosciutto on special, you jump on it, and then you maximize its salty porkiness by cutting it into strips and baking it onto a pizza.

I make this foccacia bread that contains potato, and it’s quite delicious and always very moist. Sometimes I stretch the dough out and turn it into pizza, but it’s not a thing to make on weeknights, when I need to eat now-if-not-sooner the moment I get home. I thought tonight I’d try shredding potato into pizza dough and baking it that way, because it’s quicker than foccacia, and I might be onto something. Something awesome.

I topped the pizza with a sauce of a crushed bulb of roasted garlic and olive oil and some basil, strips of prosciutto, and a half-pound of mushrooms cooked in olive oil and garlic. And cheese, but not that much, actually, because even though it seems counter-intuitive not to load the thing up with an excess of cheese, on a pizza like this it’s better to use only what you need.

I’m only going to give you the recipe for the crust, because you can top it with whatever you want. But if you top it with roasted garlic and basil and prosciutto and mushrooms, I promise, you’ll be ecstatic upon eating it.

Potato pizza crust

(Makes one large-size pizza crust.)

  • 2 tsp. dry yeast
  • 1/2 tsp. sugar
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1 medium potato (such as Yukon Gold), grated
  • 2 cups + 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. cornmeal

In a large bowl, combine yeast, sugar, and water. Let stand about five minutes, until yeast is fluffy.

Add potato. Stir to combine.

Add two cups of flour, salt, and oil, and mix until a slightly sticky dough has formed. If your potato is bigger and causes an excessively moist dough, add a bit more flour. Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead in the additional quarter cup of flour.

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Cover dough and let stand for 20 minutes, as close to the oven as you can. Let it feel the warmth and grow just a bit.

Roll dough out into a relatively round sheet, a bit less than a half-inch thick, and lay onto a baking sheet sprinkled with the teaspoon of cornmeal. Top with whatever you like, and bake for about 25 minutes.

This is a bit unusual, and probably not what you want if you’re a die-hard thin-crust fan. It’s fluffy, because the potatoes get steamy as they cook, foofing up the flour and making this perfectly moist.

The other thing about it is that it’s filling, which is perfect for weeknight dinner, but it’s unexpected, and so you’re surprised around slice number three that you don’t even want dessert anymore, and you’re tempted to change into pajama pants if you haven’t already. Which I guess is good? Well, maybe the n0-dessert thing. Nick keeps mentioning my pajama pants, and how other wives wear skirts or sexy yoga pants, and he can shut right up because I feed him better than the other wives feed their Nicks, and they’re less fun and can’t hold their liquor. My pajamas are a point of contention around here.

Anyway, make this. It’s delicious. And soon, I promise, something about burdock root, which is not actually a very good hook if I’m hoping to get you to come back.

Winter chili: Sometimes you’re just too lazy to go to the store.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Today was very busy, and I went into it tired, which never bodes well. I got home a bit early from work, and we were supposed to write tonight, because we’re doing that now, so I put on a big pot of chili. We never got to the writing – we were both malfunctioning creatively. Fortunately, chili is comfort food, and so as we vegetated, we at least did a little something good for ourselves.

I make this sort of thing a lot, and there was never really a recipe until tonight, when I finally wrote down everything that’s in it. It’s so easy, and you probably have most of what you need already. It’s a winter chili – in the springtime, and in the summer, we’ll have vegetarian chili with bell peppers, zucchini, fresh tomatoes, and things like that. This is a hearty dish making use of what’s available right now, things like the canned goods you have in your pantry and sweet potatoes. It takes a little longer than you may like for dinner on a weeknight, but it’s the kind of thing you can stick in a crockpot and cook all day, if that’s easier.

Serve this with cornbread.

Vegetarian winter chili

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 medium sweet potato, chopped (about two cups)
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, including liquid
  • 1 19 oz. can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 19 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 1 19 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 5.5 oz. can tomato paste
  • 1 cup beer, such as pilsner or pale ale
  • 4 tsp. chili powder
  • 2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • Salt, to taste

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat, sweat onions and sweet potatoes in olive oil. Stir in garlic, and add canned tomatoes. Reduce to medium heat.

Add beans to the pot, and stir in tomato paste. Stir in beer, add spices and salt, and simmer, uncovered, for ten minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed. Here is where you may want to add something like chopped chipotle peppers, or a dose of Tabasco or sriracha or something, but I didn’t feel like it. Had a spicy lunch.

Cover, and reduce to medium-low heat. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the sweet potato is soft.

Serve hot, in bowls. This makes quite a lot, so divvy the remains into dishes to take for lunches. I love meals like that, that you enjoy in the first place, and that you can revisit later on in lunch form. It makes good sense, and it saves having to trek out into the world in search of a mediocre deli sandwich.

Speaking of excess, today I bought some burdock root. I have what amounts to eight feet of it, because I watch too much Iron Chef and am never smart enough to know when I’m outmatched by an ingredient. I’ll show it to you tomorrow – it’s a little ridiculous, and was a pain to carry home on the bus. I think I am going to pickle the stuff.

Have you any good ideas for burdock root? A Google search turned up very little information – apparently all of Japan is confused by the stuff, and only has one recipe for something called Burdock Kinpira, and since it’s been done to death, I’d like to try a new approach. If you’ve tried it and have some good ideas, let me know. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a thinking day, and that I will have my wits about me. Wish me luck.

Lazy Sunday muffins.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was non-stop, and I had a bijillion things to do and I was exhausted at the end of it, so much so that I decided it would be appropriate to change into footie pajamas mid dinner party, and then went to bed early, while all the guests were still here. As of right now, I am still in the footie pajamas, on the couch. It. Is. Awesome.

I got up briefly, because breakfast is important and I like baked goods. You know, something you can eat while you sit on your ass in front of the TV? That’s all I wanted, and so: Muffins. Lemony coconut muffins – little breakfasty bites – perfect for a pleasantly aimless Sunday morning.

Lemony coconut muffins

  • 1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 1 lemon (1/2 tsp. lemon zest, juice of whole lemon)
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup toasted unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Drop in eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg. Add coconut milk, lemon zest and juice, and continue beating until batter is smooth.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into the mix. Add in coconut as well. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter until just moistened.

Fill a muffin pan with 12 muffin liners, and then divide the batter between the 12 cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of one comes out clean. Muffins should be yellow and lightly golden.

Remove muffins to a wire rack to cool, but serve warm, preferably with butter and a cup of tea or milk. These little muffins are so nice – softly coconutty, with a pop of lemon in every bite. Sweet, fluffy, and unexpected – I think I’ll make these next time we host brunch here. I bet they’d be nice with lime instead of lemon, if you wanted to switch things up. Lovely, and I tested them on the couch and they were perfect there too.

Homemade soy milk? Not difficult, and cheaper than anything ever.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

There are probably hundreds of thousands of food blogs to stumble upon, a percentage of which are beautiful and amazing and full of fantastic recipes and the percentage is higher than you think. It’s sometimes overwhelming, all this blog-stalking one gets to in pursuit of a diversion and something clever to do with all of these odd groceries one picks up because they were on sale or they were weird and it turns out one is not as creative as one thought.

One. Not me, of course. Of course. In the course of my regular stalking reading, I stumbled upon a beautiful food blog that made me want to pick up and change everything that I am. Or something like that. I found it through Tea and Cookies on Twitter – Tea and Cookies also makes me want to change everything that I am, and at this point, the thought of everything I need to do to improve is so exhausting that I think I’ll stay me, at least until I win the lottery and can afford to be someone better. Everyone notices a train wreck, and so that is what I will cling to.

Anyway, the thing is this blog, and this soy milk. Go there, and make it right now and wonder why you ever bought that crap at the market, even if it was on sale. This is so much cheaper than on sale: Using the organic dried soybeans, one batch cost me around thirty cents, and its yield was about one litre. Drink it hot or ice cold, or use it in your coffee before you head out for your weekend. Me? I’m using it in homemade chai lattes, which I am using to fuel a weekend of cookery, recipe development, article writing, and ego boosting in the form of a foodie photo shoot, which I hope to tell you all about tomorrow or the day after.

Have a great weekend!

Quiche is nothing to sneer at and is plenty manly, thanksverymuch.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I made quiche for Nick.

In a different time, I’ve heard, it wasn’t so manly to eat quiche, never mind to want it. I met Nick in poetry class. The generations, how they gap. He wrote very long poems about damp shorelines and dead horses, and he wore scarves and I was convinced there was something wrong with him because he wasn’t madly in love with me. I thought he was the kind of guy who’d like quiche, you know?

It’s just as well: I was never interested in the kind of  boy who’d frown at quiche. And as it happens, that kind of boy was never interested in me either.

And here we are, a couple of years later and that’s all, and I mentioned quiche the other day and he kept reminding me I’d mentioned it. Nick wanted quiche. So I set out to buy some seasonal greens and a bit of whole milk for ricotta, and I made Nick an eggy pie for dinner.

I wanted to tell you about the quiche that had the chard in it, but my market was out and I was too lazy and too high up in heels to try another store, so I guess I’ll tell you about the spinach quiche, though I’d like for you to imagine it with chard. It’d be easy enough to substitute the chard for the spinach, just blanch the chard first. You don’t have to do the same with the spinach, because it’s wimpier.

Nick would have liked the quiche with chard better, I think, because chard is a manlier green, probably. (It’s perfectly lovely with spinach too, I’m just being unpleasant.) I suppose we’ll try again next week, maybe Monday when the shelves have been restocked.

Ricotta and greens quiche

Crust

  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 8 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk, beaten
  • 3 to 5 tbsp. ice water

Filling:

  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • 1 cup fresh ricotta cheese (this is a very good recipe, and I keep wanting it, even now after it’s gone)
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 2 large eggs, plus the white left over from the crust
  • 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
  • 1 1/2 tsp. Kosher salt
  • 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups packed fresh spinach leaves or blanched chard (my estimate is two bunches, chopped and lightly packed once blanched; this is what I would use, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

Assemble pastry in the typical way, crushing the butter between your fingers into the flour, salt, and Parmesan. Stir in beaten egg and ice water until dough forms. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough out with a bit of flour, and press into a nine-inch tart pan. Roll the rolling pin across the top to trim away the extra dough. Line the pie crust with parchment and fill with dried beans or pie weights. Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes.

Remove pastry from the oven. Cool slightly, remove beans and parchment, and continue to cool. Until cool. Meanwhile, leave the oven on.

Sauté shallots in butter. Remove from heat and set aside.In a large bowl, whisk together your ricotta, milk, eggs and egg white, mustard, salt, pepper, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Add your shallots and butter to the mix, and whisk again.

Taste now, and adjust your seasonings as needed. Stir in your spinach or chard, and pour into the pie crust.

Bake mixture in shell for 4o to 45 minutes, until golden and slightly puffed. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 20 to 30 minutes before serving. Remove from tart pan to slice and serve.

Enjoy. It smells so good, and is the creamiest quiche in the history of ever, because of the fresh ricotta and because when you’re making something like quiche, you just sort of will it to work, and those happy thoughts make it into the oven with the pie. Serves four for brunch or dinner, or more if you’re cutting it smaller to make it an hors d’oeuvre.

Nothing dainty about it. Isn’t it nice that anyone can have this sort of thing now? Yes. Yes it is. And besides, I wouldn’t serve something like this to anyone who’d sneer at any sort of homemade pie. We don’t take kindly to those types around here, poets or not.

Miso Monday.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Today is a very stiff day, in which I am confined mostly to the couch with inflammation and unbrushed hair. Fortunately, I’ve got three seasons of Sex and the City on DVD and close at hand, so even though I am stuck here, I can’t say I mind. Painkillers and television are such wonderful things when used in combination.

For sick days or lazy days or days where you can’t do much with your hands, miso soup is a great thing, easy, and only four ingredients. Five if you have scallions, but I did not. I stole this recipe, sort of, from my friend Tracy, who eats this stuff every day for lunch – when you amortize the cost of the ingredients over the length of time they’ll last for, it’s a meal you can make for literally cents and little more. It’s filling enough and good for you, too.

You can buy kelp and miso at stores like Whole Foods or at Asian markets, where it’s likely to be cheaper.

Also, the darker your miso paste, the more flavour you’ll get. I only had white miso paste (shiro miso), but I like the red stuff a lot better. But you can make do with what you’ve got, and adjust the amounts of each ingredient to your own taste.

Miso soup

(Serves one; multiply for additional servings.)

  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • 1 strip macro kelp, trimmed into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1 heaping tablespoon miso paste (or to taste – if using red or black miso, use less)
  • 4 mushrooms, sliced
  • 6 bite-size cubes of medium-firm tofu
  • 1 tbsp. chopped green onions (optional)
  • A few drops of sesame oil (optional)

In a small pan over medium-high heat, add kelp to water and bring to a gentle boil.

Reduce heat to medium-low, and add miso paste. Taste as you go, adding more to taste.

When paste is dissolved and you’ve reached your desired flavour, stir in mushrooms and tofu and simmer gently, until just heated through, about two minutes.

If adding scallions and sesame oil, stir into soup just before serving. Serve with tea, or with a refreshing glass of ginger ale. And then take a nap, if you feel like it.

UPDATE: I tried this again, with two kinds of miso, and it was even more fantastic. I also sauteed the mushrooms quickly in a bit of butter and the tiniest bit of garlic before adding them to the soup, and the results were a revelation, totally serious.

Things that are delicious: Kale.

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

My lips are all tingly, we had kale for dinner. Or, rather, with dinner, because we had a little bit of wild, bloody, brother-in-law meat, and we felt like sexy savages and we also had kale, and the kale involved bacon and lemons and chilies and it was fantastic.

The winter 2009 edition of Edible Vancouver has been moving about my apartment for all of winter 2009 up to now, and in it there is a recipe for lemony kale from Campagnolo, which is a fabulous new restaurant that everyone who’s anyone has been to and raves about, though I’m clearly not anyone because I haven’t been there, because this is not the kind of blog for which I get free meals or even very much attention, and also I am poor so I can’t pay for the food on my own. There’s got to be a way to remedy that. The free meals thing, of course – my paycheque is supposed to remedy the poverty thing, but for some reason, it does not.

Anyway. This recipe for kale, it’s been calling to me, but every time I go to the market to get kale, it’s always wilted. Fortune smiled on me yesterday, however, because there amongst the cabbages and other green things, there were bunches and bunches of gnarly, leafy goodness. You’re supposed to make this recipe with guanciale, which is cured pork jowl, but I’m normal and only have bacon in my fridge. Turns out, that’s plenty good enough. More than good enough even. So here’s my version of things: It’s kale for the layman.

Campagnolo Lemony Kale

(Adapted from Edible Vancouver, Winter 2009)

  • 2 to 3 slices of bacon, thinly sliced
  • 1 lb. kale, washed, large stems removed, and blanched
  • 2 small or one large lemon(s), zest and juice (two to three tablespoons)
  • 1 tbsp. good olive oil
  • 1 tsp. red chili flakes
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Fry bacon over high heat until crispy. Add the kale, reduce to medium-high heat, and sauté kale until hot. Add the lemon zest, juice, olive oil, chili flakes, and salt and pepper. Taste, adjust seasonings as needed, and serve hot, alongside something equally tasty.