Pasta with kale pesto and crispy garlic greens

Two textures from one favourite winter green in this speedy weeknight pasta: a bright-green kale sauce and a kale and garlic crunch. The sauce comes together in the time it takes to cook the pasta. This is my go-to sort of cooking: quick to bring together, but interesting and complex to eat.

Prep 5 min
Cooking 20 min
Serves 4
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800g kale (or cavolo nero), leaves stripped off the stalks and torn into bite-size pieces
Salt and black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 pinch dried chilli flakes, or to taste
2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
400g dried pasta – I use rigatoni
100g parmesan (I use a vegetarian one), grated

Put a third of the kale in a bowl, add a little salt and olive oil, and scrunch it all up with your fingers. Add the dried chilli and a good grind of black pepper, then leave it to sit.

Fill a large pan with very well salted water – it should be salty like the sea – and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, put four tablespoons of oil and the garlic in a small frying pan. Put on a medium heat, cook until the edges of the garlic begin to sizzle and turn light golden, then take the pan off the heat.

Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook for a minute less than the packet instructions.

While the pasta is cooking, put the fried garlic in a food processor with the remaining unseasoned kale, 60ml extra-virgin olive oil, a good pinch each of salt and pepper, and a little splash of the pasta cooking water, then blitz to a smooth, bright-green paste.

Put the frying pan back on the heat and add a glug of oil. Once it’s really hot, add the scrunched kale and fry, stirring, until it’s crisp and a little crunchy.

When the pasta is ready, drain it, reserving a mugful of the cooking water, then return the pasta to the pot and stir in the kale sauce and parmesan. Add the reserved pasta water little by little and toss until you have a smooth, silky sauce coating all the pasta.

Nigel Slater’s chipolatas and bread sauce recipe

The best bits of Christmas dinner.

The recipe

Peel, then slice in half, 4 medium shallots. Set a wide, shallow pan over a medium heat, add the shallots, then let them soften and colour to a pale gold.

Place 8 plump, herby chipolata sausages among the shallots and let them colour on all sides. Lift out the sausages and keep them warm.

Pour 600ml of full cream milk into the pan, add 2 bayleaves, 4 cloves, a few sprigs of thyme (lemon thyme if you can get it) and bring almost to the boil. Lower the heat and leave to simmer for 3 minutes then stir in 150g fresh breadcrumbs, salt and coarsely ground black pepper, 1 tbsp of grain mustard and 3 tbsp of chopped parsley. Stirring regularly, let the bread sauce thicken and simmer for few minutes.

Warm a little cranberry sauce in a small pan.

Serve the sausages with the bread sauce and a spoonful of cranberry sauce. Enough for 2.

The trick

Creamy, generously seasoned bread sauce and chipolata sausages are the highlight of my Christmas dinner. But the sauce stands or falls by its seasoning. Soft, sweet onions or shallots, bay leaves, cloves and plenty of salt and pepper are to my mind essential. Be lavish with them.

The watchpoint here is to keep the sauce moving in the pan, if you don’t stir almost continuously it will stick and burn.

The twist

Bacon, streaky and smoked, is a fine addition here, bringing with it even more of the essence of a Christmas feast. Add bits of bacon, cut into stamp-sized pieces, as you are browning the sausages. The more crisply you cook the bacon the better.

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for parsnip and carrot mulligatawny soup

The first time I ate mulligatawny, I was being watched by a man called Rudolph who was wearing stockings. In fairness to him, he was meant to be waiting the whole dining room at the hotel Windamere in Darjeeling, but I happened to be the only diner in it and the stockings were part of his “heritage British Raj” outfit.

So that we didn’t both feel awkward, I commented on the soup he’d brought in – “Tastes like it’s 200 years old” – and he smiled, probably out of courtesy. But I meant it. This heirloom of a recipe, which outdates any written records I have for my own family, tasted as if it could have only originated from some homesick Brit wanting a taste of home, but cooked for by Indian chefs. Not quite as soul-soothing, brave and committedly Indian as a dal, say, but still warming and elegant enough to sup with a silver spoon.

Although there are a thousand variations of the mythological mulligatawny, there are some things that most agree on: that it is made using a base of India’s finest trio – onions, ginger and garlic – with vegetables, spices (usually coriander and cumin) and red lentils, to thicken.

I have stayed true to that base here, but I’ve adapted it slightly to make it more homely. I’ve left it unblended, so the end result is more dal than soup, added some autumnal British roots for heft, and thrown on some parsnip crisps, which can be made while the mulligatawny cooks to make the overall experience more “busy kitchen” than “empty dining room”.

Parsnip and carrot mulligatawny
This hits the spot that a lot of soups fail to, in that it will fill you up, but if you’re sceptical, you could eat it (as many used to) with boiled rice spooned in for good measure. If you’re happy to multitask, make the crisps while the soup simmers. And do check that your vegetable stock is vegan-friendly: some contain lactose. Serves four.

3 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 large brown onion, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
3cm ginger, peeled and grated
1 green finger chilli, very finely chopped
2 carrots (250g), peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
2 parsnips (250g), peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
1 tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp ground coriander
150g red lentils, washed and drained
1¼ litres vegetable stock
Salt

For the parsnip crisps
1 parsnip
1 ½ tbsp rapeseed oil

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Heat the oil in a deep-sided pan over a medium flame, then fry the onion for five minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, ginger and green chilli, stir-fry for a couple of minutes, then add the carrots and parsnips, and cook for six to eight minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are sticky. Add a little water if the mixture is too dry, then add the cumin and coriander, stir for a minute, then add the drained lentils, stock and a quarter-teaspoon of salt. Stir, bring the mixture up to a boil, then turn down the heat to a whisper and simmer for 15 minutes, until the vegetables are tender. (If you’re blending the soup, now is the time to blend it, adding more water if you prefer a thinner consistency.) Season to taste.

For the parsnip crisps, top, tail and peel the parsnip, then use a vegetable peeler to shave off the flesh in long, thin strips. Lay these on an oven tray and coat with the oil (use your hands), then season, arrange the strips side by side on the tray and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until pale gold and crisp.

To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top each portion with a generous handful of the parsnip crisps.