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Let me paint a picture for you: chewy bowtie pasta, coated in a light, salty, barely-creamy sauce, flecked with red pepper flakes and little bits of tender sautéed garlic kale. Oooo-eee! This kale pasta is yummy.

The general mood of this meal is just beautiful and simple, which is… kind of how I’m doing life lately. Taking things back to the basics, not overcomplicating, working in lots of lovely and wholesome ingredients (kale, we see you), going big on flavor and texture without long ingredient lists or hours of work.

Let’s talk about the creamy-but-just-barely-there sauce that pulls this whole thing into a bowl of comfort food. It’s a food processor sauce (of course it is, this is how I operate) made of:

• pine nuts
• capers or olives
• herbs
• olive oil
• lemon juice
• salt
• pepper

The pine nuts make it a little creamy, so it’s like a less-herby pesto that has the perfect amount of sticky cling to hold the pasta and kale together.

Speaking of kale, we are absolutely not skimping on flavor with this. These little shreds of kale get sautéed with garlic and butter, and wowee. Simple magic.

Toss that with your sauce and your pasta and then ask yourself, really, why would you eat kale any other way?

You can add shrimp or chicken to this creamy hot pot of pasta, but this month we’re taking a hot second to build on our love for vegetables and plant-based proteins, so I would also recommend chickpeas or white beans or tofu, if that’s in your wheelhouse.

Plant-based or not, you have options, but pinky swear you actually don’t need to add anything. My whole family, toddler included, loved this just as it is!

Kale, you star, you! ♡

Watch how to make this recipe:

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