Last night, we made Real Simple’s Pan Roasted Steak with Creamed Kale. This was a perfect weeknight dinner – it only took about 30 minutes. It:

I didn’t have to do much in the way of prep for this dish. I just sliced up some garlic, cut the stems off the kale, and then tore the kale into pieces. In retrospect, I should have removed the stems from the kale entirely (this post on Barbecued Chicken with Short-Cut Collard Greens will give you a tip on how to do that). The kale turned out great but there were a few “stemmy” pieces that we could have down without.

I wanted to make sure that the kale and steak were done at the same time so I really looked at the timing of  the recipes. The kale basically gets cooked in two steps. In the first step, which takes a total of about 12 minutes, you want to make sure the kale is wilted. In the second step, which takes another 7 minutes, you mix cream and water into the kale. I figured this second step was more than enough time to cook the steak, especially since we like our meat on the rare side of medium-rare. (The is also a final step with the kale, when you add the cannelloni beans and warm them through, and I used this time to let the steak sit before slicing it.) Though I halved the steak part of the recipe, I made all of the kale, because: a) we really like kale, b) we didn’t want to have half a can of cannelloni beans floating around the fridge, and c) we really like kale.

Once the kale was wilted and the cream was added to the pot, I cooked the steak in an oven proof skillet, but, at Kim’s wise suggestion, avoided using a non-stick pan, so as to get a better sear on the steak. We adjusted the cooking time way down – about 2 minutes per side on the stove top and then about 3 minutes in the 425 oven. The steak was perfect – it came out of the oven with the center registering 130 degrees on the meat thermometer for a perfect medium rare. All that was left to do was slice the steak and serve it over the kale.

The kale turned out really well; aside from the stem issue mentioned above, it was soft without being mushy and had a nice creaminess to it. We did spice it up a little bit (literally) by sprinkling on a few red pepper flakes.  We paired this up with a Zinfandel that we received as a holiday gift for another lovely weeknight dinner.