Garlicky purple kale tossed into pasta with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. This is a light, fresh pasta dinner full of nutritious ingredients and Mediterranean flavors. It’s the perfect recipe to enjoy this vibrant and nutritious leaf, but you can easily swap in other varieties of kale if you need to.
Kale comes in purple! Who knew?
Purple kale is a ruffly curly leaf which has shades of both purple and green. It’s rather beautiful, as you can see, and it slots in nicely anywhere you’d normally use green kale. It’s flavorful is pretty comparable. Earthy, chewy, and substantial.
In this recipe, we make a simple pasta recipe that little bit more visually appealing, so it’s an easy win if you want something novel and interesting to serve guests but don’t have a lot of time.
The kale is cooked in garlic with cherry tomatoes and a little bit of wine, so it’s extra juicy tasty. There’s a great variety of textures with the chewy kale, juicy tomatoes, and creamy feta. And I really can’t get over how colorful it is. I mean, just look…
But most of all, it’s just a delicious, easy and healthy dinner with very few ingredients. And we all need more of those in our lives.
So if you can’t get any purple kale, just swap in green and try it anyway.
How to make it in 30 minutes – in pictures
Full printable recipe card coming right at you, but here’s the visual run through which you may find useful to browse first.
Other recipe ideas for your purple kale
If purple kale is something you have in abundance (lucky you!), I have some other ideas too. These recipes all call for green kale but I think the purple would swap in beautifully:
- Black Bean and Kale Tacos: these would be stunning with purple kale.
- Roasted Kale Caesar Salad: to make the world’s prettiest salad.
- Wine & Cheese Kale Mashed Potatoes: for fancy holiday food.
- Ramen with Shiitake Mushrooms, Kale & Avocado: nutritious and delicious.
Purple Kale & Cherry Tomato Pasta
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- 6 cloves of garlic, minced
- 200 g (7 oz) purple kale, washed and roughly chopped
- 400 g (14 oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 2 Tbsp white wine
- 175 g (6 oz) feta cheese, crumbled
- 300 g (11 oz) linguine
- Handful of basil
Instructions
- Start your pasta cooking, according to package instructions.
- Gently heat some olive oil in a large, deep saucepan – just enough to coat the bottom.
- Saute your purple kale and garlic for a couple of minutes, just until the garlic is fragrant and the kale starts to reduce. If the garlic sticks to the bottom, just add a little bit of the wine to get it unstuck.
- Add the cherry tomatoes and continue to saute until the tomatoes just start to release their juices and the kale is softened. I don’t like to let the tomatoes break down too much but you can cook them down a little more if you prefer. Season with salt and pepper as desired.
- Pour the wine into the pan. Let it bubble up and mix into the kale and tomatoes.
- Turn off the heat. Add the basil and most of the feta cheese (save a little for topping each serving) to the the top of the pan. Don’t bother mixing it in yet, just let it sit, covered, until the pasta is ready.
- Once the pasta is finished cooking, reserve a little bit of the cooking water and then drain the pasta and add it to the pan with the kale, tomatoes, basil and feta. Toss to combine all the ingredients and let the feta start to melt in a little. Stir in a bit of the pasta cooking water if it feels too dry.
- Serve up in bowls, topped with a little scattering of feta cheese on top.
Yum! Trying to find new veggies each week at farmer’s market. I try to like Kale but it must be an acquired taste BUT I liked the purple kale in this dish!
You are right that it’s an acquired taste but worth pursuing! So happy you enjoyed this recipe 🙂 I find purple kale a little lighter so it may just be the texture with kale – have you tried it chopped up really tiny?
Wow easy and delicious!!! For sure will be a go to as we get cherry tomatoes and purple kale often in our veggie farm share. Do you think black kale would work well too?
It should work great, yes! You may just need to saute it a little longer and cut it into nice fine ribbons.
This was a delicious recipe and quick and easy to prepare. I am trying to get more leafy green veg in and this was a tasty way to do it. Thanks for a great recipe! I will definitely be making this again.
Do you think you could freeze the kale/garlic/tomato mixture so it could be tossed with pasta and feta later?.I have so much kale s s so many tomatoes I am looking for ways to preserve.
I think that would be fine! It may change the texture and the tomatoes might turn more soupy, but it should still be tasty enough.
I made your recipe today and my Husband and my Son loved it, will make it again!