Beet, Orange, Fennel & Kale Salad

Beets are great with walnut. The beet leaves from this weeks box are small , so make lovely salad leaves. 

Orange and fennel have always been friends & this week's tiny fennel bulb is perfect for salad.  Together with walnuts it gives great crunch.

Lien was right about eating the small kale leaves raw, the nutty texture and flavour is amazing. So I made a salad from this week's box:

Beet, Orange, Fennel & Kale Salad

From the box:

Beetroot

Fennel

Kale

Oranges

and you need:

extra virgin olive oil (EVO)

lemon juice

salt/pepper

walnuts

Method:

Chop the stems off the beets and cook till soft in vinegar and water.  The beets are so small you don't have to peel them, just pull the hairs off.  When the beets are cool cut in half.

Peel and segment an orange.

Cut the beet leaves very roughly.

Take the fine kele leaves.  Slice nice and fine.

Rough chop walnuts.

Finely slice (or shave) one fennel bulb.  Keep the fluffy tops (it goes great in soups, scrambled eggs etc).

Make a dressing from EVO & lemon juice.  Or from balsamic and EVO. Season your dressing if you want.

Assemble the salad.

Eat with rice.

Posted by Kerry T.

Cooking with Kale...

Hello veggie boxers!  I hope you're all enjoying this week's gorgeous box.  For those of you who didn't order this week the photo above is a peek at what you're missing out on. I'm going to try and stop in here a few times this week and show you what I've been doing with all this lovely produce.

Monday nights are usually a little hectic at our house so I usually try and make a fairly simple dinner.  Tonight I decided to use some of our kale since like most leafy greens it's best eaten super fresh.  

This is a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from his book Veg everyday!  

Orecchiette with chickpeas and kale

2-3 heads of kale

6 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion finely sliced

1/2 red chilli deseeded and finely chopped

2 cloves garlic finely slivered

250g orecchiette

400g tin chickpeas

pinch cumin

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a low heat.  Add the onion and cook gently for 10mins or until soft.  Add the chilli and garlic and some salt and pepper and continue to cook for about 3mins.  Add drained and rinsed tin of chickpeas with a good pinch of ground cumin.  Heat thoroughly

Remove the tough bits from the kale and shred the leaves.  Cook the orecchiette and add the kale 3 minutes before the end of cooking.

Drain the pasta and greens and toss through the onion, chickpea mixture.

I had a bit of a vague moment while cooking and accidentally used 500g of orecchiette so ours was a little pasta heavy.  It was a nice easy dinner and very tasty, though the two smaller members of the family picked out all the kale.  

I still have a little kale left over so I'm thinking we might have kale pizza later in the week.

Does anyone have any exciting plans for their kale?  Anyone going to make kale chips?  Leave a comment so everyone can get some more great ideas.

xx Susan