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Dark Days Challenge Week 1: How to Make Potato Gnocchi

Erik — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:25:06 +0000

To motivate ourselves through the winter, we have joined the Dark Days Challenge, which asks that we cook one meal a week focused on SOLE ingredients (sustainable, organic, local, and ethical). Right up our alley! Each blogger gets to set their own parameters within these guidelines. We’ll be sticking to the following rules for our Dark Days recipes:

Our primary sources for ingredients will be our CSA through Red Fire Farm, the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, and our canned/dried/frozen stores from the summer.
If we need to supplement, we’ll use ingredients from within 150 miles of home or those that we get from the NYC Greenmarket system while visiting friends and family there.
Salt, dried herbs and spices, baking soda/powder, and vinegar are fair game, but we’ll try to find local sources.

I sort of feel like relying on the Greenmarket is cheating, but we’re still figuring things out here and will be spending a time in NYC for holidays, so I’m giving us a pass. On to the recipe!

This is actually two recipes, one for the gnocchi and another for the sauce. Both are variations on recipes from Lidia’s Family Table, which is a phenomenal resource.

Potato Gnocchi

Makes 4 servings

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
1.5 lbs	Potatoes		Red Fire Farm CSA
1	Egg	Beaten	Red Fire Farm CSA
2 cups	All purpose flour		Cayuga Pure Organics (NYC Greenmarket)
0.75 TBsp	Salt

Directions

Clean the whole potatoes and place them in a large pot. Fill with enough water to cover the potatoes plus a little headroom. Place on high heat, cover, and allow to boil for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender when poked with a fork but not yet falling apart. Drain the potatoes and let them cool enough to handle.

Rice the potatoes. This can be done either by peeling them and using a potato ricer, or by using a food mill (which will automatically remove and separate the skins). We used the attachment to our Kitchenaid stand mixer, which is actually two attachments, both the food mill attachmentand parts from the meat grinder attachment. It’s kind of complicated to put together, but it’s a real labor and time-saver. I wish we had taken pictures of the milling process (and construction), but we had just gotten back from Thanksgiving and were cooking for company coming over, so we were in a bit of a time pinch. Next time!

Rice / mill the potatoes on a sheet pan. Using a rubber spatula, mush and spread them out over the pan. Sprinkle the salt over the layer of potato. Let it cool and dry for lat least 20 minutes (up to however long you feel like it!).

Pour the beaten egg over the potato and then layer on the flour. [At this point in our timeline I finished the unpacking and cleaning up and made it to the kitchen to help, with the camera!] Start with about 1 cup of flour.
Using the rubber spatula, fold the bottom layer of the potato over the top around the edges. Repeat (gently) a few times until it begins to resemble a loose dough. Gradually add more flour until you have a kneadable dough. If you don’t add enough flough, the gnocchi will fall apart when cooked…but they’ll still be tasty!
Using your hands, finish the kneading process by making the dough slightly more consistent. Sprinkle on more flour if necessary and knead it in. It should feel more like a dough than mashed potatoes. Shape it into a ball and cut it into quarters.
Clean and lightly flour a work surface. (Up until now you could do it all on the sheet pan.) Roll out each quarter of the dough in an 18 inch rope. Cut each rope in half to make them easier to work with.
Cut each portion into pieces between 2/3 of an inch to 1 inch. Have a floury sheet pan nearby to start collecting the shaped gnocchi.
To give the gnocchi its classic shape, hold a fork so that the tines are facing downwards and push each piece onto the fork near where the tines join. The tines will make an impression on the one side and your finger will create a slight indentation on the other side. Then, roll the gnocchi off the end of the fork to make it more cylindrical and to create the tine impressions all around. Rumor is that eventually you can do this in one motion. I’m not there yet.
Once all of the gnocchi are shaped and on the sheet pan, toss lightly in the flour to avoid sticking and cover them with a towel. They should be boiled immediately at this point or frozen. They don’t sit around well in this form. Bring a large pot of water to boil (get this started in advance if you remember).

Using a kitchen skimmer / spider or slotted spoon, drop 5 or 6 gnocchi in the boiling water at a time. This is important because the water needs to be at the boiling temperature to form the “skin” that will hold the gnocchi together. The more gnocchi pieces are added to the water at one time, the more the temperature will drop and the longer it will take to recover. Limiting the number of pieces is annoying but in the end it will be easier and you will get better results.

Leave each batch in the water for 2 – 3 minutes, until they plump up a bit a float to the surface. Fish them out with your skimmer, but be gentle with them! Cooking for too long will lead to mush, so don’t be afraid to pull them out a few at a time as they float.

Simple Tomato Sauce

Makes a lot

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
2 quarts	San Marzano / plum tomatoes	Previously canned (2 quart jars)	Cherry Lane Farms
1	Large onion	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Red Fire Farm CSA
1	Medium celeriac	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Enterprise Farm (Somerville Winter Farmers Market)
3 TBsp	Olive oil
2 cups	Water
2	Dried bay leaves
1	Dried chile	Crumbled (substitute 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes)	Northshire Farm chiles dried last summer
1 tsp	Kosher salt

Directions

Place the oil in a Dutch oven or large pot over medium-high heat. Once it’s heated, add the diced onion and celeriac (or you can substitute carrot, celery, etc.). Cook, stirring frequently, for 3-4 mintes. You want them to soften but not brown. [Note: we made this sauce using our own canned tomotoes. You can use store-bought canned San Marzanos, if you must.]
Add the tomatoes, salt, bay leaves, and red pepper flakes. Swish the water around the tomato jar or can to get out the last bits and dump it into the pot. Turn up the heat, cover, and bring the sauce to a boil. Check on it and stir frequently.

Once it boils, turn the heat down to medium / medium-high to maintain a bubbling simmer. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. At this point you can continue simmering and cooking down for as long as you like, up to an hour. When the sauce is as thick as you want, remove the bay leaves, blend with a hand mixer to your desired consistency, and add salt to taste

We served our gnocchi and sauce with another round of our arugula, beet, and peach salad. We quenched our thirst with some delicious cider from Eve’s Cidery and capped it off with little parfaits of home-canned cherries in wine and whipped cream. Yum! Nothing better than an impromptu Sunday dinner with good friends.

Leftovers and Tallgrass Burger

Erik — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:44:49 +0000

We’ve had a busy week, so we haven’t had time to do anything really interesting in the kitchen. We are doing a bunch of cooking tomorrow for the Superbowl, so we’ll have some post material after that.

We had a lot of leftovers from our party, and otherwise we stuck to simple meals that we’ve already posted about, such as frittata and roasted vegetables.

The picture below is a mix of roasting potatoes, celeriac, orange and purple carrots, and some sort of purple radish that I can’t remember the name of. It makes for a pretty mix, which we drizzled with some homemade honey mustard vinaigrette.

A very purple roasting mix

For those in NYC, we should also note that we ordered in one night, from Tallgrass Burger. The reviews online are mixed, which is surprising, because we had a great experience. Tallgrass uses only grass-fed local beef (the type we cook with). We both had “The Classic”, which comes with cheese and horseradish-mustard sauce which was both original and tasty. The garlic fries were also great.

Some people online complained about their burgers being overcooked or undercooked vs. their order, but Lindsay and I both commented how they nailed her medium and my well. Others online complained about the price, but we’re willing to pay for better ingredients. At $7 for the Classic, it’s not outrageous. It’s more expensive than McDonalds, but cheaper than a sit-down restaurant.

Plain and simple, the reason we are posting it is that they were the best burgers that we’ve had in a long time. A friend of mine went last night on our recommendation, and she agreed that they reminded her very much of In-n-Out Burger. The style is very similar: not to small, not too huge, thin-patty, reasonable portion size, and high quality. Boo to the naysayers.

How to Make Vegetable Broth

Lindsay — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:07:07 +0000

This is an incredibly simple, mindless vegetable broth. It mimics the boxed or canned brands, but is salt-free (a standard 1-cup serving contains 20-25% of your daily sodium allowance!) and allows you to control the quality of the ingredients. It also takes advantage of my favorite appliance, the slow cooker, so you can throw it together with about 15 minutes of hands-on time.

We’ve been making this about every two weeks, but that’s kind of atypical. If you don’t use it up all at once, I recommend freezing it in zip-top bags in 2- or 4-cup servings. You could also freeze it in a muffin pan for smaller (~1/4 cup) servings. Pop out the portions once they’re frozen and store them in a large zip-top bag.

Basic Vegetable Broth
Makes 10-12 cups, depending on the size of your slow cooker

Ingredients:

1 pound of carrots, scrubbed and chopped into big chunks
1 large celeriac (10-12 ounces), peeled and chopped into big chunks (see this post for directions)
1 pound of onions (about 3), quartered but not peeled
3-4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
6 whole sprigs of parsley or 2 TBsp chopped parsley – We chopped and froze a ton of parsley in ice cubes at the end of the summer, so that we could have local parsley all winter.
3 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
1 tsp dried thyme

Directions:

Dump everything into the slow cooker and fill it up with water. My slow cooker can handle 10-12 cups of water, depending on how bulky the veggies are.
Cook on high for 4 to 6 hours or low for 8 to 10. It really won’t be hurt by extra time, so don’t worry if you leave to have brunch with a friend, have an second cup of coffee, and get home late.
Put a colander on top of a large bowl (make sure it’s big enough to hold all the stock. Wet a piece of cheesecloth and wring it out well. Lay the cheese cloth over the colander. Use a ladle to transfer the contents of the slow cooker to the colander.
You can let it drain just like that or bundle up the cheesecloth and hang it over the bowl. We use this little set up to let broth and jelly strain hanging from the cabinet. Give it a little squeeze every now and then to get all the liquid out.
Once the dripping has stopped (probably in less than an hour), store the broth in the refrigerator or freezer or use it right away.

Using Up Leftover Polenta: Pan-Fried Polenta Cakes

Erik — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:49:47 +0000

We had a lot of leftovers from Saturday’s celeriac polenta. Lindsay came up with a great idea to use it up: pan-fried polenta cakes for breakfast.

We tried two versions. We went savory with the first batch, to which we added salt, pepper, and smoked Spanish paprika. This really worked. The smoked paprika really came through. We ate it with poached eggs, fresh pepper, and a black finishing salt.

With the second batch we tried to go sweet, adding cinnamon and sugar, and served with maple syrup. Because we were afraid of burning it in the pan, we went light on the sugar. This version was “meh”. The sweet flavors weren’t very strong and were a bit overpowered by the celeriac. I think sweet polenta cakes would normally good bet, but with the celeriac involved I would stick to the savory.

Polenta cakes: left = savory version; right = sweet version.

After plopping the brick of polenta out of its glass tupperware container, we sliced it into strips:

We heated a cast iron pan over medium heat and added the polenta strips. Because we keep it well-seasoned, we didn’t need to add any oil or butter to the pan, although that is an option for additional browning and to keep them from sticking. We then sprinkled the seasoning on top.

We cooked them until they firmed up and don’t stick, then we flipped them and repeated.

How to Make a Frittata – The Cook’s Leftover Disposal

Erik — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:11:03 +0000

Lindsay and I always make sure to have at least half-dozen eggs in the fridge. As an aside, we make sure to buy good eggs from healthy chickens, usually from Knoll Krest, Flying Pigs Farm, or Grazin’ Angus Acres. More about our eggs in a future post. The primary reason that we make sure to keep eggs on hand is that when we have leftover vegetables that are getting long in the tooth, we often like to make a frittata.

A frittata is a baked omelet. That’s all it is. Because there is no folding involved it’s actually a lot easier than a “normal” French omelet. And you can pretty much dump the kitchen sink into it.

Frittata isn’t a recipe so much as it is a universal technique. It’s the swiss army knife of leftover disposal.

If we have bell peppers that are getting wrinkled and rubbery and are no longer salad-worthy, we use them in a frittata. If we sauté leafy greens and don’t eat all of them, they don’t reheat well, so we use them in frittata. In today’s photos, we had been getting tired of eating leftovers of my roasted vegetables.

Get out a cast iron skillet. If you have more than one cast iron skillet, your choice will depend on how deep the ingredients are that you want to add. In our photos, the roasted vegetables are pretty thick, so we used a smaller pan to get a deeper frittata. If you only have one cast iron skillet, it’ll still be fine. If you don’t have a cast iron skillet, get one.
Start by mixing the eggs as if you were making an omelet or scrambled eggs. We use 4 -6 eggs depending on the amount of “leftovers”. In these pictures we used 5 eggs. Crack the eggs into a bowl, add a little milk (optional), and whisk.
Put the “leftovers” in the cast iron skillet and space them evenly. Pour in the egg mixture and heat the skillet over medium to medium-high heat.
Once you have the heat going, add some (Kosher) salt and freshly ground pepper. If you want to mix in cheese, now is the time to do so.
At this point, you should turn on your broiler. Frittata works best of you have a gas oven with a separate broiler at the bottom, because those literally shoot fire balls straight over the pan. However, it works fine if you simply have an oven that has a “broiler” setting for the main compartment.
Leave the pan alone on the stove top for a few minutes. The next step comes when the edges of the eggs start to brown against the side of the skillet:
If you want to add grated cheese on top of the frittata (as opposed to mixed in), add it now. Remove the skillet from the stove top and put the entire skillet into the broiler / oven. This step is why it is important to use a cast iron skillet. Do not put a non-stick pan in the oven. Set a timer for 3 minutes. Check in on the frittata every minute after that until it is nicely browned but not burned:
Get out a trivet, because you don’t want to scorch your counter. As a bone-headed man, I have damaged many things. Also remember to use a thick oven mitt or pot holder, because the handle of the pan will be hot. Among the many things I have burned is myself.
Let the skillet cool (on the trivet) for a few minutes. This will also give the frittata time to set. Once it is no longer steaming, cut into it with a spatula. If you cut cleanly and straight through, your first slice should come out of the pan quite cleanly.
Frittata can make a great breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Stocked full of leftover vegetables, it’s a healthy option.

If you have leftover frittata (meta-leftovers?), let the pan cool completely, and cut it into individual slices before refrigerating. It reheats well in the microwave.

In order to make our lives easier, Lindsay and I tend to cook in volume so that a meal will stretch a few days. The downside is that repetition eventually gets boring. Frittata makes the old new again. Enjoy!

Dark Days: Polenta with Celeriac and Mushrooms

Lindsay — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 02:52:43 +0000

After a pretty stressful week at work, comfort food was on the menu this weekend. This polenta hit the spot. It’s based on a NY Times article and the fact that I wanted a relatively guilt-free meal, that still tasted “naughty”. Had I not been wiped out from work, this would have been an easy meal. I was, however, sleep-deprived and stressed out, so Erik tagged me out and finished when I got (easily) frustrated. Thank goodness for level-headed boyfriends!!

We can’t get very much at the farmers’ market except for root vegetables and mushrooms this time of year, so it’s nice to use the same old Dark Days veggies in new ways. You can definitely taste the celeriac puree in the polenta, but it’s still a new flavor, due to the cornmeal. The egg is optional, I suppose, but the yolk adds creaminess to the mushroom sauce. We use these nifty silicone Poach Pods for poaching eggs. We often make random leftovers (roasted veggies, sauteed greens, rice, whatever) into a quick meal by topping them with a poached egg.

Polenta with Celeriac, Mushrooms, and Egg
Serves 4

Ingredients:

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it (* Union Square Greenmarket)
3 cups (~3 small)	Celeriac	Peeled and cut into 1/2 to 1 inch cubes (see this post for directions)	Paffenroth Farm *
1 cup	Cornmeal		Cayuga Organics *
1 1/2 cups	Mushrooms	Quartered or halved depending on size	John D. Madura Farms *
5 small	Shallots	Roughly chopped	Paffenroth Gardens *
3 TBsp	Butter		Ronnybrook Farm Dairy *
1 tsp	Dried oregano
1 1/2 cups	Red wine		Château Renaissance Wine Cellars
To taste	Salt
4	Eggs	Softly poached or fried (wait until everything is just about done to cook)	Flying Pigs Farm

Directions:

Heat a large pot of water to boiling. Add a large pinch of salt and the cubed celeriac. Boil the celeriac until very tender about 30 minutes. I got hungry and impatient and drained it too soon. Don’t be impatient. It will make your life much harder later.
While the celeriac is cooking, heat 3 cups of water in a second pot until boiling. Add a large pinch of salt. While whisking, slowly pour in the cornmeal. This will help avoid lumps. Our cornmeal was pretty lumpy (which I didn’t notice until I was pouring it in), but I just whisked away and crossed my fingers. By the time it was done, it was nice and smooth. Allow the polenta to boil for 15 minutes, whisking occasionally.
While your two pots are cooking, slice the shallots and mushrooms. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and add the shallots. Sauté the shallots over medium heat until translucent.
Add the mushrooms, salt, and oregano, and sauté until the mushrooms are tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Once they are done, turn off the stove, but leave the mushrooms in the pan. Our mushrooms were pretty dry, since we bought them a week ago and didn’t get around to cooking them until now. We added a little extra butter to compensate, but they looked pretty shriveled until we added the red wine later.
Once the celeriac is very soft, strain it and mash it very well. We used an immersion blender, but you could use a potato masher or a fork. We tried a blender, but there wasn’t enough to work well no matter how hard I tried. This lead to Erik telling me to take a time out. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Add a little milk or water to make it mash better if you want to. Aim for a smooth puree similar to the cornmeal.
After the celeriac is mashed, turn the heat under the mushrooms to medium again. Add the wine and cook until much of the liquid is evaporated.
Once the cornmeal is cooked, stir it into the celeriac mash to finish the polenta.
To eat, put a mound of polenta on the plate, add the mushrooms, and top with the fried or poached egg. Since you won’t have used the full bottle of wine, pour yourself a glass and relax.

Roasted Vegetables – Winter Version and Misc. Techniques

Erik — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 03:40:18 +0000

We already covered the how-to’s of roasting vegetables in our techniques section. Since it’s such an easy meal, I made a winter version last week while Lindsay was away. We had some vegetables that we had neglected and needed to use up. I took some pictures to document some of the atypical winter ingredients and cover a few helpful tips.

Ingredients

Roasting potato mix (back left)
Brussels sprouts (back right)
Watermelon radish (front left)
Celeriac / celery root (front and center)
Golden turnip (front right)

Instead of reviewing the steps again, I want to focus instead on a few highlights:

Amount of Vegetables and Notes on Double-Roasting

The root vegetables alone filled the first roasting pan (left = before, right = after…mmm).

Lesson 1: this is way too many vegetables for a single roasting. I had a feeling that this would be the case, but took the plunge anyway. In the end I made two separate batches in two separate roasting pans, root vegetables first and then Brussels sprouts and potatoes.

In the past I have made the mistake of trying to perform a simultaneous double-roast, but I find it to be problematic. Because of the heat coming from the bottom of the pan above, the vegetables in the bottom pan tend to burn. I’m sure it’s possible to pull it off if you keep a close eye on the situation and swap the pans at some point, but that’s too much baby sitting for me. It was easier to just cook them in two phases, and I wouldn’t risk ruining them.

How to Deal with Aging and Sad Brussels Sprouts

A sad sprout.

These were probably the last robust Brussels sprouts of the season. These were beautiful when we bought them, but took to long to cook them. The good news about Brussels sprouts is that they can easily be revived. Wilting and yellowed storage sprouts may be available for a few more weeks, so this tip might come in handy.

Brussels sprouts tend to age layer by layer, so just keep peeling until you get to a healthy looking specimen. With some sprouts it will be only or two layers. With others (such as this one), it’s a bit more wasteful, but it’s better than tossing the whole sprout! Don’t forget to chop of the “stem” at the bottom.

In the end, a sad sack of Brussels sprouts was turned around into a beautiful bunch:

How to Peel a Watermelon Radish

Who can resist buying something that looks this cool? Luckily, it tastes as good as it looks. It has a slight flavor of horseradish, with none of the fire you would normally associate with horseradish. It crisps up nicely when roasted and makes a great teammate with celeriac.

However, as you can tell from the photo above, it has a thick skin. I made quick work of the turnip (below) with a normal peeler, but that just won’t cut it with the watermelon radish.

For the radish I used what I call the “pineapple method.” You need a good, sharp chef’s knife. First, remove the top and bottom so that you have a stable piece of vegetable that is nor rolling around as you work with it. Then, cut at small angles until you cut away all of the tough outer skin and all you have left is the bright red flesh. You will need to flip it upside down at some point and you will have to make a few passes to get it all.

It looks like raw tuna, doesn’t it?

Knife Skills: Quick Cubing (or Dicing)

I realize that when I say a recipe is “quick and easy” that it’s a relative term. I can make pretty quick work of any cubing or dicing that has to be done. I took some pictures of my technique. Two important caveats: 1. this probably isn’t the precise technique that you would learn in a “knife skills” course. 2. Be careful!

Cut the item in half. Always have an even, wide, flat surface on the bottom as the base of your cutting. The stability will allow you to work faster with less risk.
Cut the piece into strips of the desired size, but do so while holding the outside edges to make sure that the pieces stay together in their original shape. Be very careful. If a piece is sticking to the knife as you pull the knife out, apply gentle pressure to keep the piece in place. Your goal is to maintain the pieces as a solid block.
Separate the “strips” into two roughly equal groups and stack each on its widest edge. Again, this is for stability in the name of speed and safety.
Repeat step #2 with each of these two stacks.
Now you can just turn each stack sideways and make the final cross-cuts into cubes. Because you kept the overall shape intact the whole time, this is easier and faster that randomly chasing pieces around the cutting board.

I hope these miscellaneous tips, tricks, and techniques help!