Kale, Potato and Cherry Tomato Blend

This morning, a friend of mine blessed me with a gift of some kale from her garden.  I returned home and thought how nice it would be to have the kale for lunch, at its freshest.  The key to a simple but delicious meal is to start getting the hang of using what you have.  It takes time, it is an evolution, but I find that I do well with a few vegetables combined in familiar ways.  I used to follow a recipe in a cookbook by Deborah Madison, The Savory Way.  Now I find that I use the basic concept of this recipe and others that I have grown accustomed to preparing, but I feel free to change things according to what I have and sometimes I like to simplify things.  The easier it is to put some nice, fresh ingredients together, the more likely you are to cook healthy, sustainable food instead of relying on prepared foods that are more taxing on the planet.

So to prepare my lunch today, I pulled out a medium-sized yukon gold potato, a clove of garlic, my trusty olive oil, and 5 cherry tomatoes that were the last of a pint I had used over the weekend.  I also found a dried hot red pepper in the back of my basket where I keep potatoes, which was given to me by a friend last fall, from her garden.  I'm not sure what kind it is, I only know that it is small and red.  It gave this dish an obvious and very nice punch!

1 yukon gold potato, sliced thin 

1 clove garlic, pressed
1 bunch of kale, leaves stripped from the stem and chopped
olive oil
5 (or however many you want to use) cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
1 small dried red pepper, chopped
salt and pepper to taste


Parboil potatoes:  place sliced potatoes in a small pan of boiling water and boil for a few minutes, until tender.  Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Stir in the garlic.  Using a strainer spoon, transfer the potatoes from the pan of water to the skillet.  Cook, stirring occassionally, for a few minutes.  Next add the kale and saute until kale is tender.  Drizzle some more olive oil over the kale as you cook it, for good measure.  Stir occassionally.  Add salt, pepper and chopped red pepper, then cherry tomatoes.  Cook a few more minutes, stirring everything together, until everything seems cooked.  Serves one as a main course.  (This was all I ate for lunch).  You can adjust the amounts of greens, potatoes, and cherry tomatoes if you want to serve more people.  Yum!