This Garlicky Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta Is a Weeknight Favorite
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When I was a kid, I thought having jars of capers and sun-dried tomatoes in the kitchen was the height of fanciness. I never quite got over that, so I still feel a little frisson of “I’m so fancy!” whenever I open my refrigerator and see them sitting there.
Both capers and sun-dried tomatoes deliver an enormous dose of salty, umami-packed flavor with just a tiny amount, and they basically never go bad. Sun-dried tomatoes elevate the most casually tossed-together sandwiches and pastas into savory works of art with basically no additional effort at all. Slice one onto your next turkey sandwich to see what I mean. Or try a killer pasta recipe like this one with sun-dried tomatoes and wilted kale.
Start by sautéing chopped kale in olive oil with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes until it starts to wilt. Then add garlic. Tons of garlic! Most pasta recipes seem to call for two cloves of garlic, which never seems like enough to me. This one calls for eight cloves of garlic, and it’s only meant to serve four people. That’s two cloves of garlic per bowl!
Once the garlic is fragrant, add the chopped sun-dried tomatoes and one lemon’s worth of lemon zest. Then deglaze the pan with about 3/4 cup of white wine and let it cook for a few minutes, then remove it from the heat and stir in some fresh lemon juice. Taste it for seasoning and adjust as you like. Then just stir in cooked pasta with some pasta water to help the pasta absorb the flavors of the sauce, and mix in some shredded mozzarella cheese and you’re ready to go.
The beauty of this recipe — besides the sun-dried tomatoes and the massive amount of garlic — is that it has a ton of mix-and-match potential. Don’t have kale? Try broccoli, or green beans, or whatever you have in the house. No mozzarella? It still sounds good. Do you have a bunch of mushrooms that you need to use? Go ahead and toss those in too. You could throw this pasta together with anything you have in the house. As long as there are sun-dried tomatoes and garlic involved, you’ll have a winner.
Get the recipe: Sun-Dried Tomato and Kale Pasta from What’s Gaby Cooking?
