Weekly Dish

You know how at some restaurants, no matter how much you want to be adventurous, you just keep going back to the same familiar dish? That’s how I felt every time I ate at Amerigo in Jackson, Mississippi, a great little Italian restaurant where I seemed to always end up on special occasions. My dear friend Angie took me there for my 16th birthday, and what I ordered then (12 years ago this Thursday!) is what I would order if I was there right now. Amerigo has a fantastic menu, with seasonal specials and lots to choose from, but regardless of how long I stared at my choices, I always returned to shrimp scampi.
Shrimp scampi is not a complicated dish, but for some reason, I could never quite capture the flavor of Amerigo’s version. This most recent effort comes closest, and I think I’ve discovered at least two secrets: lots of very fresh garlic and straight-from-the-Gulf-shrimp. Because there are so few ingredients, it makes sense that the ones that are required should be as fresh as possible. The rest of the recipe, really, is super easy and comes together in about 20 minutes.
Since I’m not in Jackson anymore, away from the comfort of familiar restaurants, it’s nice to know that I can create an old favorite myself. Until, that is, I find a new menu favorite to cling to.

Favorite Shrimp Scampi
1 pound angel hair pasta
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound peeled shrimp
1/2 cup good white wine (I used a buttery Chardonnay)
Parmesan cheese
Lemons and green onions, for garnish

Cook the pasta in boiling water until al dente; drain and rinse and set aside. Heat the olive oil and butter over low heat. Add the garlic and cook slowly, stirring, being careful not to let it brown, for about 12 minutes. It should be very soft and fragrant. Turn the heat up to medium-high, and add the shrimp. Cook for about 2 minutes and turn. Pour the wine over the shrimp, and continue to cook for another 2 or 3 minutes, until the shrimp are pink and opaque. To serve, spoon a handful of noodles into shallow bowls or rimmed plates, and pour shrimp and garlic sauce over. Cover with a layer of grated Parmesan cheese. Serve with lemon wedges and chopped green onions or chives. Serves 4 as a main dish.

One of my favorite things to do at the end of the week is to open up the produce drawer in my refrigerator and cook what’s left. This vegetable plate represents such a venture: rosemary roasted potatoes, roasted carrots, fresh corn with basil, and chili-spiced Vidalia onion rings.

For the carrots and potatoes, I simply toss them with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, (and chopped fresh rosemary on the potatoes) and roast in a 425-degree oven until they’re crispy on the outside.

These onion rings are simple too. Just don’t fry too many, they’re quite addictive, and they don’t keep well.

Chili-Spiced Onion Rings
2 medium Vidalia onions, sliced thickly
2 cups buttermilk, or enough to cover the rings
2 cups flour
2 T. corn starch
2 t. chili powder
1 t. paprika
1 t. cumin
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
2-3 cups canola or vegetable oil
Seasoning salt, to taste
Soak thickly sliced rings in buttermilk. Heat oil in a large pot over high heat, deep enough to completely immerse one layer of the rings. In a shallow dish, mix the flour, corn starch, chili powder, paprika, cumin, and cayenne. Dip each ring in the flour mixture to coat. Fry the rings in hot canola or vegetable oil (enough to immerse the rings completely) until brown and crispy. Be careful not to overcrowd the pan. Drain on paper towels, and sprinke with seasoning salt.
Besides the spices, flour, and olive oil, everything on our plate came straight from the Louisiana earth, and I can’t wait to fix seasonal variations of this meal over and over again. Or at least until the fruitful ground takes its next rest.

For my sister’s 19th birthday, she came for a visit this past weekend. Elizabeth is fun to cook for because a.) she lives in a dorm and shares a tiny kitchen with 120 other college-aged girls b.) she and I have very similar taste in food c.) she gets excited about everything (which also makes her really fun to buy gifts for).

This cake looks complicated, but as long as you allow yourself enough time, it really isn’t hard to make. The base is a buttermilk cake that is dense enough to hold itself together 4 layers high, but moist and loose-crumbed enough to happily soak up all the strawberry juices (especially if you have time to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before serving).

If you like super-sweet desserts, this cake may not be for you. Louisiana strawberries have been sweet this season, so I didn’t sugar the berries. The original recipe also suggests adding sugar to the whipped cream, but I prefer my strawberries English-style with unsweetened cream, so I omitted that step. In my opinion, the cake is sweet enough to provide a counterpoint to the tangy-sweet berries and the smooth, rich cream. Too much sweetener would blur the lines between the separate components too much for me, I think. Elizabeth and my mom agreed, but if you’re making the cake for a person with a real sweet tooth, this recipe would be an easy one to up the caloric ante.

Buttermilk Cake with Strawberries and Cream

Recipe from the Foster’s Market Cookbook by Sara Foster

4 1/2 cups flour
1 T. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3 sticks butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 t. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk
3 cups whipping cream
3 pints strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced lengthwise

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans. Mix the dry ingredients–flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a large bowl. (Sift if you are a sifting kind of baker. I never sift anything.) Set the dry ingredients aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs with the mixer running, and beat for a few minutes. The batter should be light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla.

Measure the buttermilk into a pourable measuring cup. Turn the mixer speed to low and alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl if batter gets stuck there. The ingredients should be just combined.

Pour the batter into greased cake pans. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the tip of a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. The tops of the cakes should be golden brown. Cool the cakes in their pans for about 10 minutes (the cake should be cool enough to handle without burning your fingers). Turn the cakes onto cooling racks or dish towels and allow them to cool completely. (Don’t omit this cooling step–slicing warm cake into layers is not pretty or fun!)

When the cake is nearly cool, whip your cream until soft peaks form, and slice your strawberries. Have them both at hand while you assemble the cake.

Now comes the tricky part: you need the longest serrated knife you can find. Slice each layer in half, carefully. I am not particularly good at this; mine always come out just a little uneven (as you can see in the picture), but the important thing is to take your time and try to watch your knife: make sure that the blade is always in the center of the layer. I start at the corner and then work my way around the cake. If you mess up, don’t worry, just make sure you have one pretty, even layer for the top.

Place the ugliest layer bottom-side down on a cake plate (so that the exposed part is the center). Spread an even layer of whipped cream over the cake. Lay the sliced strawberries evenly around the outside edge (they will be the ones that stick out, so you want them to be even and pretty); then fill in the center with sliced berries. Top with the next layer, and repeat this process. If you plan to refrigerate the cake, wrap it in foil when you’ve placed the last layer. Before serving, top the last layer with a handful of sliced berries and a dollop of cream.

Another fun thing about my sister is that she loves dessert so much that she often eats it for breakfast. In honor of her, that’s what I had this morning–leftover birthday cake!

Here I am making the cake for my sister; I wanted to show off my new apron that my sweet Aunt Prissy got for me. Isn’t it so cute? I almost feel like I should be wearing pearls and heels with it. I wore it a few weeks ago when I cooked for my girlfriends on our beach trip–they all agreed that it would make a really cute dress too. Thanks, Aunt Pris!

Fortunately, Thursday night’s dinner turned out much better than Wednesday’s last week. At least I was able to eat it!

We are not big breakfast people–usually, a bowl or cereal and a banana and a cup of coffee are all either of us eat before noon. But we love breakfast food, so I often plan to make dishes usually served before noon at night. I have fond memories of my mom doing the same–she especially loved to make omelets for supper.

Me, well, I’m a waffle girl. I don’t know if it’s the crisp texture, the pretty shape, or just because I’m a fan of all bread products, but I love waffles of all kinds.

These turned out pretty well–I like the way the strawberries lightly flavored the batter, but I think I should have chopped them into smaller pieces; the slices made holes in the batter, and the part of the berry directly exposed to the waffle iron browned a little too much for my liking. Small-diced strawberries would probably solve that problem.

I topped the waffles with a smattering of sliced strawberries, a dollop of sour cream, and a drizzle of locally made cane syrup. Served with a side of bacon, this meal made us very happy breakfast-for-dinner diners.

Strawberry Waffles
based on the Basic Waffle recipe in The Joy of Cooking

1 3/4 cups flour
1 T. baking powder
2 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt
3 eggs, beaten
1 stick butter, melted
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 cup small-diced strawberries

Preheat the waffle iron. Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, melted butter, milk, and vanilla. Dump the wet ingredients into the dry all at once, folding together gently until they are well-incorporated. The batter should be a bit lumpy, like muffin batter. Fold in the strawberries.

Prepare the waffles, according to the specifications for your waffle iron. (Mine has a little light on it that goes off when the waffles are done, so I never time them.) To serve, stack two waffles on a plate, top with a dollop of sour cream or butter, a handful of sliced strawberries, and a drizzle of cane or maple syrup. Bacon makes an excellent side.
For those of you keeping up with my attempts to eat local, here’s a list of this week’s market purchases and my menu plan:

• Bought: corn, broccoli, carrots, green tomatoes, mixed salad greens, and shrimp
• Monday: Shrimp Scampi and green salad
• Tuesday: Vegetable plate–Hannah’s broccoli, corn on the cob, oven-roasted carrots, salad
• Wednesday: Shrimp and corn soup, green salad, and bread
• Thursday: Fried green tomato BLTs with Vidalia onion rings

I’ll continue to post recipes and reports for the dinners we actually end up having!

See that lovely tart in the picture? Yes, the one with the first-of-the-summer tomatoes, oiled and salted to bring out their sweet freshness, lying atop a bed of soft, buttery caramelized Vidalia onions. The one with the ooey gooey melted fresh mozzarella and the fresh basil leaves, wilted from the heat of the oven.

Would you like to know how delicious it tasted?

Yep, so would I.

Seconds after the photograph was taken, that lovely tart lay face down on my kitchen tiles, the victim of a violent combination: a super-slippery nonstick tart pan, an Orca oven mitt, and a slick plate. I turned to place the tart on a cutting surface to serve, just minutes before the next-to-last episode of LOST began, and, splat. Just like that, an hour’s worth of cooking and a market Saturday’s worth of tomatoes and onions lost to the not-so-recently mopped kitchen floor.

An hour later, Lebanese take-out assuaged my hunger, but the bitter taste of disappointment did not dissipate until morning.

Here’s the recipe anyhow; perhaps one day I’ll gather the courage to try it again and let you know how it comes out.

Tomato-Vidalia Tart
1 pie crust, refrigerated or homemade
3 small tomatoes, sliced into rounds
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. olive oil
Kosher salt
2 T. butter
1 medium Vidalia onion, sliced thinly into half moons
1/4 pound fresh mozzarella, sliced
1/4 cup basil leaves, chiffonade
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the tomato slices, olive oil, and 2 cloves of the minced garlic. Sprinkle with Kosher salt (about a teaspoon). Set aside.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Add the onions, and cook, stirring occasionally until they are golden brown (this process took me about 25 minutes, but it depends on the thickness and wateriness of your onions, so watch them carefully). When they are brownish, sprinkle liberally with Kosher salt.
Meanwhile, lay the pie crust over a tart pan; press into the sides and trim to fit around the edges. Sprinkle the remaining garlic clove evenly over the bottom of the crust. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the bottom is beginning to brown. Spread the caramelized onions evenly over the bottom of the crust. Lay the tomatoes on top of the onion bed in two layers. Top with the mozarella cheese and half of the basil. Bake for another 8-10 minutes, or until the crust is brown and the cheese is melted. Top with the remaining basil. Be VERY careful removing the tart from the oven, and lay it on a safe surface to cut the pie into wedges.

I hope it’s good…maybe I’ll find out someday soon!

When I moved into my first apartment, my Aunt Jennifer brought me a basket with a loaf of French bread, a container of homemade mayonnaise, and several Vidalia onions, the ingredients for my very favorite treatment of the sweetest onion of all–the Vidalia.

Aunt Jen has been making what she calls San Francisco bread for as long as I can remember, and I am now carrying on the family tradition. I love to serve this bread to guests because they can never guess just what exactly is on it. I know it might sound strange, but I urge you to try it anyway, especially if you find yourself in possession of a sweet, sweet onion. I’ve not had one unsuccessful attempt to convert doubtful guests.

A few caveats: you must, MUST only attempt this recipe with homemade mayonnaise. I try hard not to be authoritarian about much in my cooking instructions, but for the good of the onion, please do not contaminate its sweet spring freshness with storebought mayo. The results will not be the same. And, I know there are risks for consuming raw eggs. All I can say about that is that my family has lived on homemade mayonnaise for generations, and we’ve all survived. Do with that information what you will.

I served this bread with our paneed catfish (a dusting of Tony Chachere’s cajun seasoning and a few minutes in a inch of olive oil–nothing too complicated about that) and Ivonne’s lemony potatoes (with rosemary instead of oregano and red new potatoes instead of Yukon golds) last night to our dear friend Casey. Everything was yummy, but I love this bread best. Maybe it just reminds me of home.

Aunt Jennifer’s San Francisco Bread
One half of a loaf of French bread

1/2 cup minced Vidalia onion

Homemade mayonnaise (recipe follows)

Kosher salt

Cracked black pepper

Preheat the broiler. Cut the bread in half lengthwise. Spread each half with a thick layer of mayonnaise. Cover with onions; season well with salt and pepper. Broil for a few minutes, until the bread is brown and crusty and the onions are soft. Slice and serve. Serves 4-6.

Homemade Mayonnaise
1 egg

1 T. cider vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 t. Kosher salt

1/2 t. paprika

1/4 t. cayenne pepper

3/4 cup salad oil (canola or vegetable or a combination), divided

Place all ingredients in the blender, but start with only 1/4 cup of the oil. After the ingredients are blended, with the motor running, add the remaining oil in a very slow, steady stream. The mayonnaise should emulsify, creating a very thick consistency. The blender should start to spurt and sputter. It will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.

See, I knew it was a bad idea to post a menu with designated days. I never seem to stick to the chronology of a meal plan. Here’s how the switcheroo starts: I decided I wanted to have my friend Casey over for dinner one night this week because her husband is in New Orleans working on a movie for the month of May and she’s all alone. If she’d come last night, the paneed catfish would have been perfect food for company, and all would have been well. But, we didn’t catch up with one another until last night was out of the question, so at the last minute, I had to postpone the paneeing and opt for something else. Something quick too because I wanted it to be ready before the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy began (our guilty television pleasure).

Thursday’s meal slides into Monday’s spot, Monday gets bumped to Tuesday, and well, who knows what the rest of the week holds.

At any rate, the salad was simple and delicious–the pepper jelly added just the right sweet-spicy kick to a basic vinaigrette, and the combination of bacon, strawberries, and goat cheese is really hard to beat in my opinion.

I wanted to toast the goat cheese, you know, like they do in restaurants sometimes, where the top is all brown and crispy and the inside is perfectly creamy? Can someone please tell me how they do that? I tried to stick mine under the broiler (a bad idea), and I ended up with puddles, which I then had to reform into balls. They tasted good, but were not exactly what I had in mine. Next time, I’ll stick with the un-toasted cheese. And I’m sure there’s a more complicated version of Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette out there, but this simple one did the trick for this salad, and it comes together in a snap.

Strawberry Salad with Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette

For the dressing:
2 T. hot pepper jelly
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 t. coarse salt

Whisk the vinegar, jelly, and salt together in a bowl. Whisk in the oil, a drop at a time, until the dressing comes together.

Salad for 2:
Enough garden greens to cover two dinner plates
4 slices bacon, cooked and cut into slivers
Half pint of strawberries, washed and sliced
1/4 cup (2 ounces) goat cheese

Top the greens with the sliced strawberries, slivers of bacon, and mounds of goat cheese. Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve.

As strawberries, peppers, and greens are all rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants, this salad makes a great contribution to ARF Tuesdays at Sweetnicks.

Notes: Pepper jelly is a quintessential southern condiment. Made from the many varieties of hot peppers that grow down here, pepper jelly is served on everything from black-eyed peas to biscuits to ham. I’ve never been a huge black-eyed pea fan, but I love pepper jelly, so I was happy to find this alternate use for it. The jelly I used is made by one of the farmer’s wives at the Saturday market, but you can sometimes find commercially made pepper jelly in the condiment section of a grocery store (at least in this part of the world).

In other news: Today has been designated Save the Internet day by Chez Pim. You can read more about the threat to internet democracy here or on Pim’s site; she has a list of great resources. Instead of writing a long involved post about it, I plan to do some more research and write my congressman.

When I first started blogging, I was oh so ambitious. I planned to post a menu on Saturday (every Saturday), and then write about every dish I made during the week, every single day. Any of you who have been hanging out here regularly know that it hasn’t quite turned out that way. It became more interesting to me to write about the new things I was making one recipe at a time, and I just do not have the time to post every day, especially not several recipes at once.

Still, though, my most frequent question from friends who know how much I love to cook is, “How do you decide what to make for dinner?” The answer hasn’t changed–I still make my menu plan on Saturday morning after a trip to the market–but I haven’t written about it much. So, with some time on my hands between semesters, I thought now might be a good time to start trying to record my menus for each week again–at least to show how I look at seasonal produce, decide what I else I need, and create a plan for 4 or 5 dinners. It should also be fun to see how two graduate students attempt to eat well on a less-than-extravagant budget!

Our weekly market trip yielded strawberries, tomatoes (started in a hothouse, but ripened in the field!), a bag of salad greens, new potatoes, Vidalia onions, and fresh catfish fillets. Here’s the menu:

• Monday: Paneed Catfish and Rosemary Potatoes
• Tuesday: Strawberry Salad with Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette and San Francisco Bread
• Wednesday: Catfish Tacos
• Thursday: Tomato-Basil-Onion Tart and Green Salad
• Friday: Strawberry Waffles and Crispy Hashbrowns

I must confess that I feel brave posting the week’s menu before I’ve actually made any of these things; who knows what will actually end up happening? Tune in to see how it all works out!

I’d love to hear from some of my fellow food bloggers: how do you plan dinners each week?

See all of those lovely vegetables? Garlic, spring onions, asparagus, yellow and green zucchini, all grown right here in my home state, in the ground just days before they arrived on my cutting board.

Every Saturday morning, David and I journey the mile or so down the road to our local farmer’s market, and I try really hard to buy most of my produce there. I also try to buy Kleinpeter or Smith Creamery dairy products, both local companies, and locally produced meat or chicken, and whenever possible, I look for locally made jams, jellies, and cheeses. Why?

Well, the first and most selfish reason is that local produce simply tastes better. Logically, strawberries harvested on a Thursday and sold to me on a Saturday morning are fresher than strawberries that must be picked before they’re ripe and have unnatural things added to them so that they can spend a week or longer on a truck or in a storeroom. That just makes good sense, right?

Also, though, I love to look into the faces of the people who grow the food I eat. The guy we usually buy strawberries from has a picture of his little girl taped to the top of the cash box, and, call me a sap, but I enjoy knowing that the money I put into that cash box is helping support the family of an honest, reliable small business owner and not to fund a multimillion dollar corporation. I also know, both from an economics class I took in college and from simple common sense, that money spent in my local economy returns to my local economy; buying local makes me a good neighbor and a smart citizen. And with increased gas prices, I’m guessing that the fewer miles my food travels, the better for the environment and the energy crisis. I’m no expert, of course, so if you want to read more excellent and well-thought out reasons to buy and eat locally, check out this post.

For the month of May, food bloggers are tackling the Eat Local Challenge. Largely an awareness-building and educational movement, the challenge is designed to get us all to be critical consumers, to think about where our food comes from and where we’re spending our money. While I don’t think it’s realistic to eat completely local all of the time–even more unrealistic for my friends who live in less agriculture-friendly climates than I do–, I support any effort to help people think about what they’re putting in their mouths, or, as I teach my students about media literacy, their brains.

While I’m not the kind of person who believes in beating people over the head with my politics, religion, or grocery-buying practices in order to convert them, I still thought it might be interesting for some of my readers to take a look at how I approach eating locally. For me, this commitment is year-round; every Saturday morning I try to make it to the market, and fortunately, I live in a place that grows at least some foods year round. I also check the labels at my grocery; I buy from a locally owned supermarket–not a chain–and so the owner is also invested in bringing local goods into the store. Plus, he is a local consumer, spending money in my local economy.

If you aren’t concerned with eating local, that’s fine by me. But if you are, I thought it might be useful to see how one gal does it. Lots of other people have done more research than I have and have stronger commitments to the movement, but for what it’s worth, this month, I’ll talk about the ingredients I’m buying and how I make my consumption choices. If you don’t care, feel free to skip down to the recipe; I’ll never know.

This pasta dish quintessentially represents my efforts at eating locally: not everything in the dish is locally made, as the pasta, mascarpone, olive oil, and Parmesan were all imported. But the recipe resulted from my weekly trip to the market: zucchini, asparagus, onions, tomato, and peppers were all available from local farmers, and so I made them the centerpiece of the meal. And that’s exactly how I like to challenge myself: not necessarily to buy only local ingredients but to buy as many as I can as often as I can and use those ingredients to come up with fresh dishes that taste like the season.

I call this dish Pasta Primavera because (besides the fact that many other people before me have used the title) the Latin roots of the word can mean literally first (prima) and spring (vera). These vegetables were the first ones available this spring season, and so I offer them up in a simple cream sauce that highlights the crisp, fresh taste of seasonal, local vegetables. However you choose to enjoy the first fruits of this season, I hope you eat fresh and well.

I’m sorry my posting has been so sporadic over the last few weeks; thankfully, the semester is over, and I have a bit of a break!

Pasta Primavera

1 pound linguine or other thin pasta
1 yellow bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
1 white or yellow onion, sliced thinly into half moons
20 stalks thin asparagus, chopped
1 green zucchini, sliced
1 yellow zucchini, sliced
1/4 cup white wine
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup half and half or heavy cream
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parmesan cheese, to taste

Preheat the broiler. Wash and dry the peppers and place on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Roast, under the broiler, for about 20 minutes, turning about every 5 minutes or so to make sure each side blackens. When all sides are charred, place the pepper in a bowl, and cover tightly with plastic wrap to steam. Set aside.

While the peppers are roasted, bring a pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. You can also use this time to prep the other vegetables. When the pasta is done, drain and place in a large bowl.

In a large skillet, heat half of the butter and olive oil. Add the onion. Cook over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, until the onion is very soft and just beginning to turn golden. Add the asparagus and zucchini. Cook for 5 more minutes. Season well with salt and pepper, then pour in the wine and cover to let the vegetables absorb it. Cook about 2-3 minutes more. Dump this mixture into the bowl with the pasta and toss lightly.

When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel the skin from them, remove the stem and seeds, and chop. Add them to the pasta bowl.

In the same skillet, heat the remaining half tablespoon of butter and oil. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes over medium until soft. Add the chopped tomato and cook for another couple of minutes. Salt and pepper well. Stir in the mascarpone and half and half; cook and stir until it’s blended and creamy. Pour this sauce over the pasta and toss well. Top each serving with a healthy dose of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6.

Note: Seasoning is the key to bringing out the flavor of the vegetables; salt well at every stage and the vegetables will absorb it into their own flavor. If you wait until the end, you risk the dish being salty rather than flavor-enhanced. I’ve made that mistake far too many times!

If you’re interested in other ways to cook asparagus, check out Kevin’s growing collection of asparagus recipes over at Seriously Good.

So, it turns out that I love to make gnocchi. After my frustrations with the little dumplings, I would never have thought I’d say that. But it’s true.

It also turns out, as luck would have it, that gnocchi works with another thing I love: sweet potatoes. After Ivonne’s recipe convinced me that gnocchi was doable, I decided to experiment a bit. My love of sweet potatoes has certainly not been a secret on this site, so this is one more recipe to add to the sweet potato collection.

For those of you who don’t know, gnocchi are little dumplings, usually made of potatoes and flour (although Ivonne convinced me that an egg is the magic thing to bind the dough together; I’ll never make gnocchi without the egg). They can be served with a sauce, or vegetables, or simply topped with butter and cheese.

For the sweet potato gnocchi? I opted for simplicity: a bit of garlic, a bit of freshly grated nutmeg, a bit of mascarpone, a bit of fresh Parmesan. All I can say is that I’m very sad I did not double the recipe to have leftovers. Yum!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

2 medium-large sweet potatoes (about 2 pounds)
1 egg
1 t. salt
1 1/2 - 2 cups flour
3 T. butter
4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
2 T. mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan plus extra to serve
freshly grated nutmeg, to taste

Bake the sweet potatoes in the oven until they are easily pierced with a fork, about an hour at 350 degree works for my oven. Set aside until they are cool enough to handle. Peel and mash thoroughly with a potato masher or a fork. Be sure to get rid of any big lumps.

Mix the mashed potato with the egg; then, work in the flour with your hands, until the mixture sticks together and forms a dough-like ball (I started with 1 1/2 cups, but ended up using a little more than 2). On a floured work surface, knead the dough until it’s easily malleable but not sticky.

Form the dough into tennis ball-size rounds. Roll each ball into a long, snake-like coil, about an inch in diameter. Cut the coils into inch-long dumplings, sealing them with the back of a fork to make indentions. Put all the gnocchi in a bowl or on a tray, and refrigerate while you bring a large pot of water to boil.

When the water is boiling vigorously, add the gnocchi, one batch at a time, being careful not to overcrowd the pot. When they float, they’re done; remove with a slotted spoon to a colander to drain and finish cooking the remaining gnocchi.

When all the gnocchi are cooked, drain the water from the pot, and heat the butter over medium-low (I use the same pot). Add the sliced garlic, and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the mascarpone and Parmesan. Season with grated nutmeg and Kosher salt. When the sauce is well-mixed, pour over the gnocchi to coat. Top each serving with extra Parmesan and extra grated nutmeg. Serves 2 hungry people.
And, to make this dish even more satisfying, sweet potatoes, although heavy on the carbs, are also packed with Vitamin A, B6, and C, making this gnocchi a good candidate for ARF Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks!