A flavorful casserole made with frozen, organic produce? You can grow that! This is what I’d call a “world beat” casserole. It has southwestern flavors, with all sorts of other ingredients invited into the cross-cultural party. It’s a great dish to use frozen Tuscan kale and winter squash from the garden.
Sometimes I get an idea for a dish based on what I have on hand and it turns out to be OK but not worth making again. Those dishes never make it to my Wednesday for Foodies posts. This casserole is something that I will prepare again because the flavors and textures worked very well and it tastes delicious. I started off thinking that I’d do something in the Mexican flavors direction…maybe because it was Super Bowl Sunday and everyone was talking about nachos. But I wanted to use chickpeas, an distinctly un-Mexican legume, not to mention some of the frozen kale and winter squash from my vegetable garden. Not a traditional combination, but one that I thought would work. Fortunately, it did work and it was yummy.
Ingredients
2 Poblano peppers (you could use red or green bell peppers)
1 onion
2 cups frozen or fresh Tuscan Kale, chopped
2 cups cooked winter squash
2 cloves garlic, smashed or chopped
4 to 5 tablespoons cilantro paste/pesto
2 1/2 to 3 cups frozen tomatoes or one large can of Italian tomatoes
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (NOTE! these are extremely spicy. Drain the sauce from the peppers and add that to your tomatoes first before you add the peppers themselves. We love food that’s pretty spicy and the sauce with only one small diced chipotle pepper was plenty of heat for us.)
1 8 oz package grated cheese of your choice. I used a six-cheese Italian blend. (Hey…it’s cross-cultural, remember?)
Here are the ingredients, with the exception of the frozen tomatoes which were in the microwave being partially defrosted when this photo was shot. (Why is it the “talent” has to be herded like chickens for a photo shoot?)
Sauté the peppers and onions in a bit of oil until they are slightly browned and wilted. Add three tablespoons of the cilantro paste (or fresh cilantro if you’re so lucky to have it) and stir it well. Grease a casserole pan and dump in the chickpeas. Note: I liked how the chickpeas were so different in texture from the other ingredients, but if you’d like the dish to be a bit more homogeneous, chop the chickpeas in the food processor until they are in pieces but not mushy.
Strain the adobo sauce from the peppers and either chop one or more to add to the dish, or reserve these for another use. When chopped they can be put in a container in the fridge and used sparingly when a bit of heat is needed in a recipe.
Put the canned or frozen tomatoes into a pan with the adobo sauce and about a tablespoon of the cilantro paste. Cook these down for about ten or fifteen minutes over medium heat.
On top of the chickpeas pour on the onion and peppers and top with spoonfuls of the winter squash.
Put the fresh or frozen kale leaves over the squash.
Top with the tomato and adobo sauce mix and put this in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes. Once it is bubbling, remove it from the oven and top with the grated cheese. Return to the oven for ten minutes.
Remove and serve! This is one of those dishes that actually improves in flavor if you make it the day before. It could be baked for about 30 minutes and then re-heated with the cheese added in the last ten minutes if you’d like to prepare this casserole in advance.
Note: What to do with so much winter squash and Kale from the garden? Bake the squash until it’s mushy, scoop it out of the skins and freeze in small containers. Wash and chop the kale leaves and stem them with about a cup of water until they are well wilted, stirring once or twice. Strain the wilted leaves and pack loosely into freezer bags. Freeze them flat on a cookie sheet. You’ll be able to take out as much kale as you want through the winter as you’re cooking.
