Kale pesto is heartier than the more familiar basil pesto. It’s delicious tossed with our Potato Gnocchi recipe, but it’s also appealing in many other dishes. Try tossing it with roasted diced butternut squash or spreading it on chicken breasts before roasting. The possibilities are endless wherever pesto is used.
Can be refrigerated in tightly covered container for a couple of days or frozen for up to a month.
Double up the recipe and freeze in batches so you’ll have a small container ready in an instant for any dish.
Per serving:
Bring large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add kale and briefly blanch for less than a minute. Drain and quickly plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Drain well and tightly wrap in dry kitchen towel. Squeeze thoroughly to remove excess moisture.
Place kale in food processor. Add nuts, garlic, salt, and lemon zest and juice. Whirl until blended but still chunky. Whirl in Parmesan until blended. Then gradually whirl in olive oil until as smooth as you like.
Tourtière is, for me, the dish that best represents Québec. It can be traced back to the 1600s, and there’s no master recipe; every family has their own twist. Originally, it was made with game birds or game meat, like rabbit, pheasant, or moose; that’s one of the reasons why I prefer it with venison instead of beef or pork. Variation: If you prefer to make single servings, follow our lead at the restaurant, where we make individual tourtières in the form of a dome (pithivier) and fill them with 5 ounces (160 g) of the ground venison mixture. Variation: You can also use a food processor to make the dough. Place the flour, salt, and butter in the food processor and pulse about ten times, until the butter is incorporated—don’t overmix. It should look like wet sand, and a few little pieces of butter here and there is okay. With the motor running, through the feed tube, slowly add ice water until the dough forms a ball—again don’t overmix. Wrap, chill, and roll out as directed above.
My love of artichokes continues with this classic recipe, one of the best ways to eat this interesting, underrated, and strange vegetable. Frozen artichoke hearts are a time-saving substitute, though the flavour and texture of fresh artichokes are, by far, much superior and definitely preferred.
Cervelle de canut is basically the Boursin of France, an herbed fresh farmer’s cheese spread that’s a speciality of Lyon. The name is kind of weird, as it literally means “silk worker’s brain,” named after nineteenth-century Lyonnaise silk workers, who were called canuts. Sadly, the name reflects the low opinion of the people towards these workers. Happily for us, though, it’s delicious—creamy, fragrant, and fresh at the same time. Cervelle de canut is one of my family’s favourite dishes. It’s a great make-ahead appetizer that you can pop out of the fridge once your guests arrive. Use a full-fat cream cheese for the dish, or it will be too runny and less delicious.