Gnocchi with pesto and wax beans

We finally rejoined a CSA after I get us kicked out of the very exclusive Be Wise Ranch CSA last year for (accidental) non-payment. This time we are trying out J.R. Organics from Escondido. The first box is interesting, really good lettuce and some other greens, excellent tomatoes, a whole bunch of oranges and a couple apples (weird time of year for both of them, but apparently that's what's growing right now), and among other things some really beautiful green and purple wax beans.

K reminded me of this great simple dish I used to get in Bernal Heights at (the very sadly closed) Valentina, which had spinach fettuccine with potatoes, green beans, and pesto. I decided to give it a try with gnocchi instead of pasta and potatoes, probably because I am obsessed with anything that involves making dough.

After the first batch that I murdered by boiling too long in too-hot water, the rest of the gnocchi came out pretty close to perfect, pillowy, and looking an awful lot like bay scallops. I had a good friend in college whose dad owned an Italian restaurant who pronounced it nacky or sometimes nee-yacky, so feel free to join me in pronouncing it like that, if for no other reason than to honor and make fun of Jim.

Ok actually I'm starting to get a little self-conscious about saying "gnocchi" so much; there needs to be some non-pretentious alternative, something with an s at the end... Potato dumplings maybe? The potato dumplings took about an hour and a half start to finish, which was maybe a little long for a weeknight dinner, unless you are someone who finds cooking relaxing after a long day of work :) Annnd now I need one more sentence here because of the ridiculous formatting of this post. How do those real food bloggers do it??

Here is the recipe for just the gnocchi. We steamed the wax beans with a pinch of salt and topped it with a dollop of pesto. I won't embarrass myself by posting a recipe for pesto. If you want to do it right, I'd predictably look here. If you want to do it like me just put all that stuff in the food processor (and skimp on the olive oil because damn, it is expensive).

Basic Gnocchi
About 1 pound of potatoes (supposed to be russet, yukon gold worked fine)
3/4-1 cup flour (supposed to be AP, bread flour worked fine)
salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes whole with skin on for 30-45 minutes in salted water until they're very tender. Drain and let them cool a bit before peeling, which should be very easy with a small knife or your fingers.

Mash the potatoes with some salt and pepper. I used a wooden spoon but one of those wire potato mashers would work better.

Stir in half a cup of flour. Then add a little bit at a time and keep mixing until you can knead it into a smooth round dough. The goal is to add the least amount of flour possible that makes it a cohesive dough. You can pinch off a piece of the dough and place it in some water that is just shy of boiling to make sure it will stay together (if it doesn't, it needs a little more flour).

Roll a small piece of the dough into a snake about 1/2 an inch thick and cut it into small square pieces. Place a batch of the dumplings in almost boiling water. They will be done about a minute after they float to the surface of the water. I found the easiest way to handle the batches was to roll out all the strands first and then cut one strand right before adding it to the water.

They'll be best while they're still warm. Tossing with a little bit of olive oil in the meantime helped keep them from sticking to each other.

Mario Batali says that peeling the potatoes after you boil them is a big deal in Italy. He sounded a little dubious about the benefits of it but unwilling to mess with tradition, and so shall I be.

Rosemary foccacia

I reeeeaaally don't know if I'm cut out for making bread ... the waiting is terrible! I managed a 2+1 hour rise rise for this, but overnight? I don't think I could stand it. Kristen, in a brilliant stroke of empty-refrigerator-as-mother-of-invention, put together some excellent (and photogenic) edamame hummus for sandwiches this afternoon.

All and all the bread was fun and turned out decent enough, but I'm sure it'll take a few more tries before I make something I'm really happy with. The recipe I used was basically a pizza dough recipe with a little bit more oil (I also tried subbing 1/2 cup of flour for cornmeal, but I wouldn't recommend that). The dough was certainly wetter than french bread, but I have a feeling it's supposed to be even wetter (and that feeling's name is Peter Reinhardt)

I won't post a recipe, but I did want to put up a couple pictures, mostly so the blog doesn't think I forgot about it.

Rosemary goat cheese pizza

This was our celebratory Kristen's finally home dinner... and a totally worthwhile reason to break my short-lived vegan streak.

I have made this pizza dough a couple of times, this the first with bread flour. It definitely made a noticeable (positive) difference, but AP works great too.

UPDATE: slightly different and decidedly better pizza dough recipe here! (no KitchenAid necessary)

• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 packet of active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp salt

Put the yeast in a cup of warm water and let it sit for a few minutes until it froths up. While that's happening, put half of the flour and all of the salt into a stand mixer (if you have a good food processor, supposedly you can just put everything in it all at once). When the yeast/water is ready add it to the flour with 2 tbsp of oil and combine. With the machine running, slowly add the other 1.5 cups of flour a little bit at a time. Add a little bit more water or a little bit more flour until the dough forms a ball. Knead for a few minutes on a floured surface, until the dough is smooth. Then let sit in a well oiled bowl, covered, for at least an hour. It should double in size.

Cut the dough in two pieces and roll each into a ball on a floured surface. Dust with a little more flour, cover with a towel, and let sit while the over preheats to 500. Right before you are ready to roll out the dough, push it into a small circle and let sit for another minute or two before rolling/stretching into shape.

At this point, you can do pretty much anything. We started with Mark Bittman's simplest white pizza which is just rosemary, olive oil, and salt and pepper (our olive oil seems to have gone rancid or possibly to have turned into olive wine? so I brushed the pizza with a tiny bit of canola oil and then finished it with a few drops of truffle oil when it was done cooking... Haha, a nice problem if you have it). Kris suggested caramelized red onions and goat cheese which were absolutely incredible. If you want to do this too, learn from my mistake and remember that the onions will cook a bit in the oven so maybe only cook them 50% beforehand. Also I think it's probably a good idea to add the goat cheese half way through cooking so it doesn't totally dry out and/or melt.

On the side is steamed asparagus with lemon, salt and pepper, and a little fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano (I try not to be snobby about things unless absolutely necessary, and in this case it is, absolutely. I thought the whole "reggiano" thing was totally stupid until we bought a different kind of parmesan and it was fruity and rubbery and disgusting... never again)

Fresh pasta with red wine mushroom sauce

I decided to take on menu planning this week on account of Kristen being really busy with dissertation stuff... Since I'm totally uncreative I just tried to pick an Italian thing, an Indian thing, an asian thing, and something with lentils since lentils are awesome. Italian thing first!

This morning Kris sent me a link to this great blog 30 Bucks a Week about making your own pasta. Apparently something you can do without some sort of pasta rolling machine from SkyMall?? (I was also totally incredulous that two people could eat on one $30 trip to the grocery store a week, but we'll get to that)


I had to add a little water in addition to the 1 egg & .75 cu flour to get it into the right type of ball, but after that their instructions worked pretty perfectly. It took me about forty five minutes (almost a whole This American Life) to roll out and slice all the fettuccines... which was kind of a lot of work but rather entertaining on a Sunday night that would have been otherwise "duller than rolling out a bunch of pasta by hand" as they say.

The red wine mushroom sauce they used sounded really good too (well, at least having an excuse to open the red wine sounded good). I sort of made up my own recipe. To wit:

Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes, chopped up a bit
1 carton of mushrooms, sliced (I used white, cremini or whatever else would probably be tastier)
~1/2 cup of red wine (cheapo Pepperwood Pinot Noir was great)

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Heat up a medium skillet over medium heat. Add a tbsp or two of olive oil, the onions, and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onions are translucent. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook them a bit, maybe 5 minutes, before adding the tomatoes and another pinch of salt. Once most of the liquid from the tomatoes and mushrooms is gone, add the wine and keep cooking until it's sauce!

We topped it with some fresh mozzarella that was left over from something or other, and here is the result:

Yum! It was totally bizarre to me that this actually worked and actually looked and tasted like pasta (really really good pasta), though I can't imagine it would have tasted nearly as good if I hadn't worked so hard for it.

OK, the $30 story real quick since this is already way long: I spent some time looking through that blog this morning, thinking they were crazy since we usually spend twice that for each of multiple trips to the store in a week (I am embarrassed about this). We had almost no food in the house, so I put together a pretty massive grocery list for 5 meals. A few hours later, I'm checking out at Henry's, and by the how-heavy-the-basket-is metric I'm expecting somewhere between $60 and $80... The grand completely unexpected total: $29.67!! Too weird