Slowly but surely...

Last night, pizza again.  I found this recipe for Kale Pizza here.  Since I had two big bunches of greens staring at me, along with a ball of premade pizza dough (from Saturday's post  - it gets better if it sits in the fridge for a couple of days, you can also freeze it) I thought this would be a good way to go.

The recipe is from Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats.  He's known for his meticulous work on developing recipes, sort of an Alton Brown meets Cook's Illustrated on steriods.  I had to adapt the recipe a bit, but the two main ideas I used were:

1.  Pre-cook the pizza w/ cheese for about 5 minutes, then add the kale and cook for another 5-7 minutes.  This means the kale doesn't burn before the pizza cooks.
2. Massage the roughly chopped kale for a few minutes with olive oil, salt and pepper to soften it up.

Kale Pizza  (adapted from Charred Kale Pizza with Garlic)
Ingredients
1/2 recipe of pizza dough (from this post)
4-7 oz  roughly chopped kale
3 tbs olive oil, divided
4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup)
2 oz shredded gruyere cheese (about 1/2 cup)
2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper

1.  Preheat oven with pizza stone on bottom rack to 500°F
2. Remove the stems and roughly chop the kale (you'll have between 4-7 oz, about 5-8 cups).
3. Put the kale in an salad spinner, wash w/ 2 changes of water and spin dry.
4. Drizzle 1 tbs olive oil over the kale, season with salt and pepper, and massage/rub the kale until it is complete coated with oil.  Set aside.
5. Peel and slice the garlic cloves thinly.  Place in a small bowl or ramekin that is microwave safe and add 2 tbs of olive oil.  Cook in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften garlic.
6. Roll out pizza dough and place on a piece of parchment on a pizza peel.
7. Use a pastry brush to brush the dough with the garlic olive oil (you don't need to use all of it!). Fish out the garlic pieces and sprinkle them over the dough.  
8. Sprinkle the cheese over the dough
9. Bake for 5 minutes.
10. Using the peel, remove the pizza from the oven, discard parchment paper.  Sprinkle the kale over the pizza and put back in the oven for 5-7 more minutes until the kale is crispy on top.

I didn't take a bunch of pics but here are a few:

The massaged kale

The finished product

Overall it was very tasty, but there are a few things I'd do differently (other than take a better picture of the finished product!)

1. Use more of the gruyere cheese, and reduce the amount of mozzarella.  As Kenji points out, the gruyere is really good with the kale.  
2. Add more garlic, and add some of the red pepper flakes in Kenji's recipe.

So, how did we do on this weeks produce?

• 3/4 pound salad mix  just a little bit left, enough for some salad today
• 3/4 pound spicy salad mix (lots of arugula and other spicy greens) Used most of it for the pizza and pesto, I also tossed it into fritatas this week
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1 pound kale
• 1 pound collards
• 1 bunch beets
• 1 bunch carrots
• 1 bunch turnips I've used about 1/2, but found out I like them cooked too.
• 1 head lettuce (looks like butter lettuce) 

Left over from last week:

•  2 green onions 

Not so worried about the beets, carrots and turnips, they'll keep, but I need to do a better job on the greens (also the beets and turnips come with their greens attached, so you can add those greens to the collards, kale and salads).  CSA pickup is today, so we'll see what's next! (I'm guessing more salad...)