Risotto with Kale

Risotto is such a delicious, satisfying, and diverse dish--I don't make it nearly often enough.  Last night we got home late, were starving, and wanted to use some of our dark leafy greens but do something other than braise or sauté them.  So, we threw them in a risotto.

We didn't follow a recipe, but you can find something similar to what we did here.

What's nice about risotto is you can simply follow the directions on the Arborio rice box but add different ingredients according to what you're feeling: seafood (my favorite!), mushrooms, butternut squash, asparagus, sausage...the list goes on.  For our dish, we sautéed some onions and garlic in olive oil.  I then added some vegetarian italian sausage that we had.  After that cooked for a while, we added the risotto, let that sauté briefly with the onion and sausage, then started adding vegetable broth.  As the Arborio rice soaked up the vegetable broth, we added more, finally throwing in the kale and tomatoes.  I threw in some oregano, ground pepper, and red pepper flakes, and the dish was done in about 30-40 minutes.

Sautéing in our risotto pan.

The finished product!