Use Your Booty: Pasta with Kale and Pancetta

What a great way to use up kale. Plus, put enough crispy pancetta on top and you've got a chance at winning over kale-haters. From start to finish, this dish took less than half an hour to pull together.

Pasta with Kale & Pancetta

Serves 6-8

• 1 pound whole wheat spaghetti
• 2 bunches kale, leaves pulled from the stems and cut into thin strips
• 4 ounces thinly sliced pancetta (if you only have thick-cut pancetta, cut it into small cubes)
• 1/2 of a small onion, sliced into super-thin strips
• 1 egg, beaten, optional
• parmesan cheese
• salt & pepper
• sherry vinegar

Boil the spaghetti in a large pot of salted water. When the pasta is almost cooked through (just still a tiny bit chewy) add the kale to the pasta pot. When the pasta is cooked to your taste, drain the pasta and kale, reserving a cup of the cooking water (to make sure you don't forget this part, put a coffee mug in the colander to remind you to scoop out some pasta water).

In the meantime, sauté the pancetta in a skillet until it's crisp. Set aside.

When the pasta ia cooked, dump it back into the pot, add in the sliced onion, and stir in a little pasta water. Add in the beaten egg, if using, and keep stirring, adding more pasta water if needed to make a saucier consistency. Stir in a handful or so of parmesan cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste (I like this dish peppery).

Portion the pasta into soup plates and top with crispy pancetta. Drizzle a few drops of vinegar over the top. Enjoy!

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog. I paid for my livestock share. A full set of all the photos I've taken of this share is here.