Day 24: Pasta with Cauliflower, Kale & Onions

It was the second Night of Hanukkah and I was scheduled to work from 2:30 until 10 pm. My husband usually stops by the hospital on his way home from work (and the gym) and has dinner with me. Now, Hanukkah is a minor festival - but it is a holiday, and we we ate out on the first night,so I wanted to have something a little more special than cafeteria food. There are still lots of veggies left from the last CSA share of the season, luckily they are winter vegetables and they keep well. I decided to use a head of cauliflower, a bunch of kale and some onions - that looked kind of like this










The list that came with the CSA share says they are pearl onions, but they look like spring onions or bulb onions to me. In any case, I halved a bunch of them (quartered a couple that were larger) and put them in a pan with some EV olive oil to cook for a few minutes while I washed the cauliflower and broke it into florets. I added the cauliflower to the pan and let that cook while I re-washed a bunch of Kale and chopped that up. After the cauliflower began to soften a bit, I added the Kale. I re-hydrated a handful of sun-dried tomatoes and sliced them up, and quartered a handful of Kalamata olives. I added those to the pan, along with a little dried basil and oregano and some salt and pepper. I let this cook while I boiled a pot of water and cooked some orichette pasta (just short of al dente). I transferred the pasta to the pan with the vegetables using a slotted spoon. I added about a cup of the pasta cooking water and simmered everything together until the pasta was done. Then, I added about a cup of crumbled Feta cheese and  about 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese and tossed. I packed two portions of that pasta up and took it to work. I re-heated it when we were ready for dinner and it was pretty fabulous.