Steak and warm kale salad

I am less than a week away from my summer holiday in the sun. A multitude of maxi dresses have been eBayed and I'm hoping my huge sun hat will arrive in time. I need to nip by Boots for some sunscreen and some other summer necessities tomorrow, other than that I should be more or less good to go. Although I'm hoping all I will be needing is a toothbrush, a bathing suit and a few dresses.

I should start packing soon, as we leave on Monday. Incidentally we are having some of the Culinary Consultant's family over on Sunday for a BBQ (this was agreed on before the summer holiday had been booked, have to admit the timing is not optimal). And I need to make the whole BBQ menu dairy free... oh deary (or dairy, hehe) me, I have no idea how to make a dairy free pudding. Anything I can think of has milk or butter. Maybe Eton mess with coconut cream instead of whipped cream? Or a nice dark chocolate sponge cake with oil instead of butter? I shall have to turn to my dear friend Pinterest to figure this out. At least doing dairy free BBQ should be quite easy. No cheeseburgers though... And I am thinking of having a salad station where everyone can make their own salad, bowls of ingredients like lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, feta, onions, sweetcorn, chorizo and whatnot. I just want to make it as easy as possible. And I'm happy the Culinary Consultant will be left to clean up the mess while I jet away to sunny Cape Verde. So expect an update on Cape Verdian food coming up!

Today's recipe is perfect for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. It takes less than 15 minutes to prepare if you multitask preparing the warm salad and cooking the steaks, and it will help you get rid of those last few leftover handfuls of spinach and kale. I always have a bit of kale left and never a good idea what to do with it.

Steak and warm kale salad (serves 2):
2 steaks of desired size
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
150 g mushrooms
2 big handfuls of kale
2 big handfuls of spinach
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper

The howto:
Slice the onion and mushrooms. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, and cook the onions over medium heat until starting to soften. Increase the heat a bit and add the mushrooms. Let cook for a few minutes. Add the kale, and cook until starting to wilt. Add the spinach and finely choppped garlic. Toss well, season to taste and cook for another minute or so. 

Cook steaks to desired doneness. Let rest in foil wrap for a few minutes before serving with the warm salad.

The verdict:
This was something I just tossed together from the left overs in my fridge. I had a few traditional, "cold" salads over the weekend, and with the weather all overcast and chilly today I thought I rather have a warm salad instead. And it turned out rather nice even if I do say so myself. The kale was still a bit crunchy and the flavour of garlic came through really well. The Culinary Consultant, who is back from his weekend of debauchery also enjoyed it, although I served him some boiled potatoes with butter and mint to make it a bit more substantial. And I might just have had one or two of those potatoes when I tidied up after dinner. Leftover calories don't count!