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I’ve mentioned before that I LOVE gnocchi. And I especially love it with nice saucy, wipe your plate clean with crusty bread, sauce. This tomato sauce is a great fresh sauce that is a riff on a tomato with lemon confit from Garden at the Cellar.

Ingredients

• Plain potato gnocchi (frozen, fresh, or homemade)
• 8 large tomatoes, blanched, peeled, deseeded, and crushed (for this recipe 2 tomatoes per person is a good rule of thumb, everything can scale to that)
• 2 lemons
• 3 T olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 t salt (more or less to taste)
• 3 T butter
• 10 large basil leaves, sliced
• Fresh ground pepper

Directions

In a large sauce pan over medium high heat, saute garlic in olive oil for about 30 seconds, careful not to burn the garlic. Add the tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes are pretty crucial to this. Canned tomatoes are a little too sweet and salty. Plus, it’s really fun to squish the tomatoes with your hands into the sauce pan.

Add salt and pepper to taste and mix well. Cook uncovered until to a consistency that you like. I typically just let it cook down while the gnocchi is cooking.

Place the gnocchi in deep bowls. Add the butter and lemon to the sauce and mix well. Spoon over the gnocchi and garnish with basil. Serve with a spoon or a big loaf of bread.

I LOVE gnocchi. It’s rustic, and homey, and just plain delicious! So I decided I was going to learn how to do it. I’ve made a few different kinds of gnocchi and I have two tips.

1. Practice, practice, practice. You likely won’t get it right the first time you do it. But somewhere between the 5th and 10th time you make it, you’ll start to get a feel for the way the dough should be.
2. Do not overcook. When the little pillows pop to the surface, get them out of the water or they will turn into mashed potato soup.

I’ve made a couple different varieties, but will start with the recipe for regular gnocchi and give variations in the notes.

Ingredients

• 4 dry white potatoes, like russet (this is pretty crucial, if you use something like  a new potato or yellow potato they will be too wet and they flavor will overwhelm the recipe)
• 2 or 3 eggs
• 1/2 C or so of semolina flour
• 1 C or so of regular flour
• 1/4 t of salt

Directions

Bake or steam the potatoes. When they’ve cooled to the touch, remove the skins and mash in a large bowl. Get all the lumps out and if you’re a perfectionist, push the potatoes through a ricer. Wait till the potatoes are just warm to start making the gnocchi (if you want to make this a two day process, put the mashed potatoes in the fridge).

To the potatoes, add the flours and salt. Make a well and crack the eggs into it. Scramble them and gradually start to incorporate the flour and potatoes. Then toss the fork aside, and combine the ingredients with your hands till mixed. Turn the dough onto a floured, wooden cutting board. Wash the gook off your hands and flour them.  Knead, adding flour as necessary to prevent from sticking to your hands or the cutting board. This is one of those places where you’re going to have to figure out what the right consistency is by trial and error. I typcially knead for about 5-7 minutes, but many recipes say to go as long as 8-10.

Cut the dough into eighths. Take one and roll out like a snake. I like to make mine about 2cm in diameter (Paul says it’s about the same diameter of a rolling pin handle). Don’t roll it too narrow or they won’t be pillowy.

Flour your knife and cut the rolled out dough into 2cm pieces. Then is the fun part! I didn’t get how to do this for the longest time, so I’m providing step by step pictures of how to do this.

1. Press one of the pieces against the tines of a floured fork. (Most will tell you to use the back, but obviously the front works, too.)
2. Push the dough towards the tip of the tines.
3. The dough will start to pull up from the fork, so just grab the bottom of it and pull it in on itself towards the tip of the times.
4. Roll it off the tip of the fork and place on a floured surface. Repeat about 100 times.

Once you’ve got them all rolled and forked you can either cook immediately or freeze. To cook, drop into boiling water, stirring occassionally until they float to the surface. If you want to freeze them, put them on a floured cookie sheet in the freezer. Once they’re frozen, transfer them into a container.

I prefer gnocchi with some sort of saucy, sauce (I’m not a huge fan of it with pesto). I also really like sweet potato gnocchi. For that, substitute sweet potatoes for the regular potatoes and add a T or so of sugar and a t or so of nutmeg.

So what do you do when you’ve got a cold and you just got a HUGE delivery of greens in your farm share? How about cabbage soup? What a great fushion of good, old fashioned comfort food and fresh, healthy veggies. I basically made a quick and easy version of Vietnamese cabbage soup, honing in on the “simple” part of cooksimple.

Ingredients

• 32 oz. Free-range chicken broth (if you like it brothier, use two)
• 1 head Napa cabbage
• 12 medium crimini mushrooms
• Salt, to taste
• 1 bunch scallions
• 1/4 bunch cilantro
• 1 – 2 limes, quartered (optional)

Directions

Slice the mushrooms and throw in a stock pot. Cut off the end of the cabbage and then thinly slice cross-wise (if you like thicker chunks, just slice it thicker). Pour the chicken broth on top, stir, cover the pot, and turn on medium high heat.

While the soup is cooking, slice the scallions and chop the cilantro. Add salt to the soup and taste. Add more if needed.

When the cabbage has wilted (it will shrink to half the original size) and is tender, the soup is done. Pour into a large bowl and sprinkle with scallions and cilantro. If you like a little tartness, squeeze a little lime over it.

If you need a little more substance, serve the whole thing over some jasmine or brown rice.

As Carrie did last year, I thought it’d be a great idea to support local agriculture and buy a farm share from a CSA farmer. Holy green leaves of goodness! This image shows my HALF of one farm share for one week. And, mind you, this is only the second week that I’ve been getting part of this bounty. We haven’t even gotten to the loads of zucchini!

I have to say that I’m totally impressed by the quality and quantity of the food that I’m getting. It looks better than anything that you can get at even the finest grocery stores. And the variety! Bok choy! Swiss chard! Chickory! Pea tendrils?!?

So only in my second week, I’ve already got some advice on how to deal with the crazy influx of veggies:

1. Share: It is a farm “share”, but one share can really go a long way. Go in with neighbors or coworkers. Plus, you can divy things up along pickiness better if there are more people.
2. Stock up on paper towels: Most of the greens come from the farms sopping wet. That’s fine. Shake them off a bit and cut off any roots, then wrap them in paper towels before putting them in the fridge. This will help keep everything from wilting, because, believe me, there’s no way you’re getting all of this in your crisper(s).
3. Stock up on staples: I have no idea how to cook most of this stuff, but I can tell you that with a few staples you can make a meal or a great side dish with most of it. Namely, keep an assortment of nuts, cheeses, and starches (pasta, rice, and potatoes) on hand. For example, saute some chicory with garlic, pine nuts, and some white wine and mix with pasta, tomatoes, and some parmesean cheese.
4. Be flexible: The most interesting part of having a farm share is that you don’t know what you’re going to get each week. If you’re like me, you’re in a rut with the same 3 veggies every week. With a farm share, you’re going to have to take some of your old recipes and incorporate these new ingredients. Sometimes, it makes the old recipe even better.

I have to say that I really like thinking about the food I have and how to cook around it. The whole thing makes me feel so much more in touch with the food I eat, and the process it went through to get to my table.

I bought some grass-fed beef the other day and decided to make one of my favorite beef dishes with it – picadillo. I love the slightly sweet and tart taste of the tomatoes and raisins contrasted against the savoriness of the onion & garlic. This recipe is very easy and makes a huge amount. I froze half of it so I would have picadillo on hand. It is such a versatile dish: you can serve it over rice (with or without black beans) or use it as the filling for empanadas, tacos or burritos.

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 2 red or yellow bell peppers, finely diced
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 bay leaves
• 2 lb. ground beef
• 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 3/4 cup sliced green olives
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
• 4 teaspoons cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
• freshly ground pepper, to taste

Directions

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a heavy skillet. Add onions, peppers, garlic & bay leaves and sauté until vegetables are tender, about 3-5 minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until mostly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes to let the flavors merge together.