Kale Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash and Pecans via Lisa is Cooking

For a Good Food Awards Roadshow  event on Friday night, I was asked to bring a seasonal dish, using local produce.  Since the event was at Springdale Farm, I picked up some butternut squash at their Wednesday farmstand with a recipe in mind.

Last year around this time, a group of us got together and roasted a whole hog.  One of my guests, Lisa, (www.lisaiscooking.blogspot.com) brought an original recipe –  Kale Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash and Chile Pecans.  I had not forgotten that dish, and decided to try making it myself for the event.

I started by peeling and cutting the squash into 3/4 inch cubes.

Butternut

Then I seasoned with salt and pepper, before roasting the squash.

Season the Squash

Once in the oven to roast, I began cleaning the 5 bunches of kale, by cutting out the stem and middle vein.

Cleaning Kale

 

Once the kale was soaking, to get the grit off, I mixed together the egg white, sugar, salt and chili powder.  The recipe called for Chimayo or Cayenne, but I opted for chipotle for some smoke.  I tossed the pecans in this mixture and put them in the oven to toast.

While pecans were toasting, I finely diced the red onion, and tossed it into the kale.

Finly diced red onion

I then worked Basalmic Vinegar into the kale and commenced scrunching to tenderize the kale.  Once that was done, I put all of the component parts into separate baggies to take to the farm to assemble there.  Sadly, I have no photo of the final dish, but here is a picture of Lisa’s from last year at the hog roast, after it was mostly eaten.

What's left of Lisa's Kale Salad

This is a very Fall like dish that I would recommend to anyone.  The colors are vibrant so it presents well, and it tastes delicious.  And, the moral of this blog post, is that if you need a good seasonal recipe, check out Lisa’s blog.  Everything she makes is amazing.

http://lisaiscooking.blogspot.com/2010/09/kale-salad-with-roasted-butternut.html