CSA week 13 - Spinach gnudi in sage brown butter

For those who aren't familiar with this trendy Italian dish, gnudi and basically balls of ravioli filling. They're supposed to be light and fluffy and it's a serious challenge to get them to hold together while you're boiling them. That's why, most of the time, they're encased in pasta.

I considered trying to make ravioli, but I can't even make the pasta come out of my pasta machine in tidy evenly wide sheets. There's a whole set of challenges there I don't feel like dealing with on a weeknight. Plus I'd have to invest in a ravioli cutter which I can't imagine using very often.

The lasagne idea was still an option, but I couldn't find a recipe interesting enough to post about and since my komatsuna plans are a bit lame too, this had to be the bigger deal of the week.

I found pretty wide range of recipes for spinach gnudi. Well, they all had more or less the same ingredients, but the ratios varied quite a bit and the methodologies for most seemed sloppy, leaving out important steps. I incorporated all the tricks I could find to ensure success. I haven't actually made them yet so we'll so how well that goes.

Ingredients:
1 pound spinach, cleaned and washed
8 ounces ricotta
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
2 eggs
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper

I started by blanching the spinach, rinsing it in cold water to stop the cooking, draining and then squeezing out the excess water.

I also squeezed some water out of the ricotta. One of the recipes I found said that American ricottas are looser than proper Italian varieties. That's one issue that can cause integrity problems in the gnudi.

After I pulsed the spinach in the food processor a few times to chop it up finely, I mixed all the ingredients and left it in the refrigerator for a while to let the breadcrumbs absorb some moisture and for everything to firm up a bit.

After an hour I took the dough out, lightly formed it into balls and rolled them in flour. The flour is supposed to form a gelatinous enclosure in the simmering water. I could see that working.

Finally, I simmered them gently without stirring for about three minutes, until they rose to the surface of the water. Here's the first batch:


Three out of four held together; That's not too bad.

The sauce is just sage and pancetta browned in butter. Nothing fancy, but a nice complement. The dumplings are light and fluffy with bright spinach flavor over a creamy base. Very nice with the herbal notes and little crispy bits from the sauce.

The second batch was less successful, but not as bad as it looks. They didn't really fall apart; they just split open. I wish I had realized that earlier before I started doctoring up the rest of the dough. Then I wouldn't have added a full half cup of flour.



Here's the first test dumpling from the recipe:

Well, it certainly held together better but the dense texture isn't nearly as nice. Plus the flavors have been dulled. OK, I'm adding a couple Tablespoons of ricotta to lighten it up and more salt and pepper to bring out the flavors. Let's try this again:

OK, that's substantially improved. It's doughy and hearty, but not nearly as heavy. Still got a bit of raw flour flavor, though. I think these would be better fried than boiled. I'll try that tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Still, the first gnudi were the best. Now that I think about it, the problem was that I didn't flour the sheet I stored them on; A bit of the mixture stuck to the sheet leaving a small gap in the flour coating, an Achilles heel where the insides could leak out. All that extra messing about wasn't necessary at all.

Ah well, I'm sure deep-fried spinach and ricotta dumplings will have their own charm, too.

CSA week 12 wrap-up, week 13 start-up

Oh boy, more greens! Well, that's not entirely fair. I managed to use up all last week's greens in one shot so I wasn't eating them in various preparations all week long (although I have got around a dozen servings saved for later). So all I've got to do is stay away from Cajun and I'll have refreshed my palate.



My first thought is to do a spinach lasagne. Good for the cold weather and handy to keep in the freezer. For the komatsuna (if I don't need it for the lasagne) maybe a Japanese-style soup. The oyster mushrooms could go in either of those. And the sage would make sense with a northern Italian dish like spinach lasagne.

The kale I'll do anything but braise. I'll probably shred and flash-fry it Brazillian-style as a side dish with a chunk of meat. I've got a chicken I've deboned and am going pan-fry whole like I did last November. It should go well with that. Oh, I see I actually suggested using kale back then. Who am I to reject my own advice? The turnips should go nicely with that too.

The garlic chives I want to stir fry. There's not enough here to use them properly, but if I make a small batch I can probably come close. I may end up snipping them into the komatsuna soup instead, though.

That leaves the strawberries. There's absolutely no reason not to eat these out of hand, but I might make ice cream if I can think of some clever variation. I think I've still got that little bottle of lavender extract. That might be nice.

Potato Pandemonium at Possum Trot

Last night was an underground-ish dinner down at Possum Trot Tropical Fruit Nursery. Robert Barnum, the proprietor of the place (geez, now they've got me doing the alliteration) was our host and chef. Margie of Bee Heaven Farm helped organize it. Marian Wertalka of Redland Rambles did some previews on her blog and took a bunch of photos too so I think you can expect her write up on the event too. They both mentioned being part of the taste testing in preparation for the evening and I believe Margie supplied the potatoes. Robert of Robert is Here is also thanked on the flyer but his contribution isn't explained and I didn't meet him there to ask. That is a different Robert than Robert Barnum, right?

Robert served eight dishes for, I'd say five or six courses depending on your definition. He was aided in the kitchen by three interns or hired help or some such. I didn't get everyone on film or catch all their names so I'll have to refer you to Redland Rambles again because I'm pretty sure Marian was rather more conscientious about that than I was.

All the dishes featured potatoes; Several just were potatoes. Refined fancy cuisine this was not. Then again, professional chef Robert is not and the point of the evening was more to highlight the quality of the produce than to wow us with technique.

That causes a bit of a problem for me since that makes my usual write-up of bitchily picking apart and critiquing the dishes seem a bit mean-spirited. For the Cobaya dinners I know the dishes are experimental so maybe my feedback is helpful. For the other dining events I just expect professional results from professionals and the public ought to know if the chefs deliver. Robert told me straight out he's not going to be reading this so the first justification doesn't hold and he's not running a restaurant so the second doesn't really apply either. ... OK, I've given it a bit more consideration and I think I've changed my mind. Robert is intending to do more of these dinners if there's demand, it's easy enough for feedback to get back to him though Margie or Marian and he does have "Cantankerous Chef" on his business card. So bitchy critiques it is.

As usual, I let other folks take pictures of the people while I concentrated more on the food. I refer you again to the Redland Rambles blog if you want pics of who was there. I did take a few shots during Robert's brief tour of the farm immediately surrounding the house. Here he is proffering a, I think, cas guava or possibly an araçá.

I had some forewarning of local coffee but I had no idea you could grow cinnamon around here, miracle fruit or bay leaves. Funny you don't get more bay in tropical cuisines if it's a tropical plant. We also saw the smoker out back which will come into play later.

There were around ten of us in attendance. Two people expected didn't show. I barely made it myself given the weather, traffic and the Google Maps directions that sent me to the unmarked back entrance. Luckily, I stumbled across the front door where they had stationed a fellow with a red truck visible in the gloom to wave people in.

Before dinner, we had a bit of homemade wine. Ignore the labels, these bottle have been refilled. I had a brief tour of the winery after dinner. It's not a big operation, just 45 gallons this year. Robert had several varieties on offer (and several more not on offer including lychee and antidesma wines); I had the dry bignay wine which I found easy drinking--smooth, light and floral. Not complex, but nice. Miles better than Schnebly's tropical fruit wines to my mind.

The first course we sat down was the vichyssoise with potato chips. It needed a bit of salt, probably intended to be supplied by the potato chips, but I wasn't going to waste extra-tasty fresh potato chips by dunking them in cream soup. Luckily there was a small pot of salt supplied although I didn't see anyone else taking advantage of it. It's not an insult to the chef to add salt, you know. Experience of flavors is subjective and varies between individuals. If you, like I, have a low sensitivity to salt, you need to add more to bring the flavors out. That's just the way it is. Anyway, once properly seasoned, the soup had some good potato flavor with little potato shreds adding texture.

Next up was a potato salad with carambola relish and smoked eggs. The dressing looks heavy, but it was really quite light and the potato flavor came right through. There were several sorts of potatoes in there and I tried to taste the difference but if there was any it was lost on me. The carambola was the particularly sour sort which was an odd pairing, but not bad. A little more fo the pimiento, celery, curry powder and/or smoked egg would have added some dimension, but it was pretty much just potato.

The dishes started piled up at this point. Here you can see, in the back, scalloped potatoes with betel leaf and a beef stew with potatoes and carrots. In front are smoked potatoes on the left and parsleyed potatoes on the right.

There's not much more to the front two dishes than those names: smoked potatoes with a little olive oil and rosemary and boiled potatoes slightly mashed with parsley and a little butter. Neither really needed any more. Both had moist texture and a good balance of flavors and would have been fine side dishes in a more sensible meal.

Robert skimped on the betel in the scalloped potatoes. Partly as a deliberate decision and partly due to how badly the betel bushes fared in the cold. It really could have used more and the cheese he used didn't have a lot of flavor and the dish could have used something to punch it up. I saw a lot of this dish leftover at the end of the evening.

On the other hand, the beef stew was quite popular. I'm not entirely sure why, though. If the grass fed beef (from 4 Arrows Ranch in Citra, FL) was anything special, that specialness had been boiled out of it. The gravy was rich, but greasy and the vegetables on the edge of mushiness. What I really liked, though, was the raw white carrot that garnished the stew. That was sweet, bright and crisp--pretty yummy.

After a few minutes wait so it could come out of the oven perfectly done, came a light and fluffy potato soufflé. I'm told that the trial-run soufflés fell and tasted like potato pancakes. These stayed up and tasted mostly of egg with a subtle note of hashbrown. I might have added a little maple syrup and/or hot sauce to round out the flavors myself, but since Robert didn't expect it to turn out so breakfasty, I can understand why he didn't.

And finally desert--potato pancakes with cas guava/passion fruit drizzle, chunks of mango and slices of another unidentified fruit underneath. Along with that we had small glasses of araçá wine. The wine had a liqueur-like intensity with caramel notes balanced against green apple. It was fairly tart, but much less tart than straight araçá (or so I'm told never having tried araçá before). This dish was the most professional of the night, with a lovely balance of sweet, savory, tangy and tart plus a variety of textures.

And that was the meal. Overall, a lovely evening and slow food in every sense but the capitalized one, but to be honest, that's way too much potato. I get the idea of featuring one item in multiple ways, but when your secret ingredient is something as meat-and-potatoes as potatoes, you've got to be extra clever to make it continually interesting over the course of an evening Robert is no iron chef. There were definitely some good dishes in there, but they'd be stronger in contrast, not surrounded by similar-tasting dishes. I'd certainly consider coming to another Possom Trot dinner, but I'd have to consider the concept and the menu first.

CSA week 12 - Gumbo z'herbes

I'm not entirely certain about this. There are lots of recipes out there but they all agree on simmering the greens two hours or longer. Collards, OK maybe they can handle that. But chard and turnip greens? And what about the dandelion greens? Most of the recipes put them on the list of greens to include but nobody prepares them to deal with the bitterness.

I'm going to try it, but I dunno.

First step, clean and prep 2-3 pounds of greens--whatever you've got, the more variety the better. For those who haven't read the previous post, I had 1 bunch collards, 1 bunch chard, 1 bunch dandelion greens, 1 bunch turnip greens and 1 bunch radish greens. I did this prep the night before to avoid having dinner too very late.

Next step, get a gallon of water and/or stock (I used two cups of shrimp stock and the rest water) to a boil in a large pot and add the greens. Simmer for at least an hour.

Meanwhile,make a roux. I used the in-oven method. Mix equal parts fat and flour (I used 2 Tablespoons bacon drippings, 3 Tablespoons canola oil and 5 Tablespoons flour) in a big cast iron pot and put it in a 350 degree oven for at least an hour. No stirring necessary. The recipes that specify call for a peanut-butter colored roux, but they all also call for filé powder added at the end too. I don't have any filé so I'm not going to get that thickening. And, as you probably know, the darker the roux, the more flavor, but the less thickening power. So I pulled it out of the oven at around 1 hour 20 minutes. It looks peanut butter colored, but it started a little dark from the bacon drippings so I think I'm in good shape.

After that time, the greens have wilted considerably. Here they are along with half a cabbage, 1 bunch scallions and 1 bunch parsley that are going back into the pot with them later.

But before that, the pot with the roux goes up on the stove and in goes 1 large white onion, 1 green bell pepper and 3 stalks celery, chopped. I cooked that for 10 minutes over medium-high heat before adding the reserved stock and greens which I've roughly chopped, the cabbage, scallion and parsley (although what good scallion and parsley added this early will do I dunno), a ham hock, 2 bay leaves, 4 stalks thyme, 1 stalk rosemary, 4 allspice berries and a generous amount pre-mixed Cajun spice blend because I'm lazy.

It's at this point that I finally understand exactly how huge this batch of gumbo is. I'm going to be eating this for a month; it better be good.

Normally, that's the dish. Just simmer an hour more and serve, but I wanted it a little heartier so I added a couple links of andouille sausage and, 5 minutes before the end, a quarter pound of shrimp.

And here it is served over rice:


Hmmm...no real thickening at all. Or roux flavor, either, disappointingly. This is basically a huge mess of greens in a bucket of pot liquor. Lacking the filé powder, maybe I'll make up a slurry and bring it back up to a boil to thicken it up. It'll probably add a little raw flour flavor, but I'll trade that off for making this sauce into gravy. The greens still have a tiny bit of texture to them--the cabbage a little more--but mainly it's just soft. It's not falling apart like I expected though, so it's still in a pleasant neighborhood.

The flavors of the greens have all melded together to just a generic tasty green. No notable bitterness, or skunkiness from the boiled cabbage either. The herbs and spices round out the flavor a little and there's a hint of smokiness there. The sausage and shrimp weren't in long enough to swap flavors with the greens so they've retained all their flavor. The shrimp are a nice match, the sausage a bit less so. That'll probably change as everything melds in the refrigerator over night, though. I'll have some for lunch tomorrow and report back in a comment.

CSA week 11 wrap-up, week 12 start-up

Wow, that's quite a load of greens. I've got, from left to right, collards, turnip and radish greens (in good shape for a change), baby bok choy from the extras bin, dandelion greens, chard and cabbage. I saw all this and immediately thought of a couple mixed greens stew recipes I've been reserving just for a week like this. My first though was tsigarelli, a stew from the Greek island of Corfu, but I'm leaning towards Cajun gumbo z'herbes. Tsigarelli traditionally uses just tender greens, but gumbo z'herbes is designed to use collards, scallions and cabbage too. Plus it calls for last week's leftover celery and parsley and fresh thyme and rosemary too. A darn near perfect fit.

I'll probably leave out the baby bok choy though since they're so good with oyster sauce. That just leaves the carambola and radishes to eat out of hand and a few turnips which I think I'll have glazed as a side dish with a chunk of meat of some sort.

Oh, I should mention last week. I found an interesting Transylvanian cream of green bean soup I was planning on making, but when it came to cooking time I was more in the mood for one of those CSA-standard throw everything in the pot vegetable soups. First time I've done that, I think. It turned out tasty, mainly thanks to all the bacon I started the dish off with, and nicely used up a fair amount of cabbage, potato and parsley as well as all the green beans. Not really worth taking photos of, though.

So I guess it's just gumbo for this week unless I change my plans and do something novel with the bok choy. I'm also heading down to Possum Trot for the big potato dinner Wednesday. Anyone else going?

CSA week 11 - Celery pesto

Looking at the widely varying recipes on-line for celery pesto, I get the impression that such a thing doesn't actually exist, at least not in any codified form. Each version seems like an independent invention rather than a variation on an established theme. Usually I try to find that theme and work my own variation, but this time I just winged it and saw what I got.

Like I said last Saturday, my celery was exceptionally leafy. I got a full two cups of leaves off of it. I added a handful of parsley to that along with 3 Tablespoons of lightly toasted pine nuts, a couple cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt. I blended all that together and drizzled in extra virgin olive oil until a loose paste formed. About 1/3 cup did the trick.


Now that I've got it, what to do with it? One of the recipes suggested adding Italian sausage and a bit more garlic and serving over pasta. Seems like a sensible idea to me.




The pesto is very light and fresh without being agressively celery-y. The chese helps it pair with the sausage, but the contrast between the fresh greens and the savory sausage is the main thrust of the dish and quite like how they balance. Whether that's better or worse than a standard pesto I can't really say; the lack of an agressively sharp basil or parsley makes this easier on the palate but that also means it's lacking in strong character. I guess it all depends of whether you've got two cups of basil or two cups of celery you need to find a use for; both have their charms.

CSA week 11 - Aloo palak

So my third thought for using the spinach and potato together was an Indian curry. There are lots of recipes for aloo palak out there, but almost all are basically the same: shred some spinach and cube some potatoes, put them in a pot with a little water and cook until done. Yeah, 15 minutes of cooking will turn spinach into a sauce of sorts, but that's an awful thing to do to an innocent vegetable. Better to take another approach that I've seen in Indian recipes--cook the elements separately and then combine them just before serving.

Ingredients:
1/2 onion, chopped
1 mild green chili, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed (garlic is rare in the recipes I saw, but I included it anyway)
1-inch knob ginger, crushed
1 large bunch spinach, roughly chopped

4 medium new potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
turmeric

1 Tablespoon ghee (or failing that, butter)
whole cumin
ground coriander
salt

cilantro, chopped
tomato, chopped
lemon
cream

1. Add onion, chili, garlic and ginger to a medium pot along with a quarter cup of water. Simmer over medium heat a few minutes until onion and pepper soften. Add the spinach in batch, adding more as previous batches wilt to make room in the pot. When all of the spinach is cooked, pour everything into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

2. Return the pot to the heat, add the potatoes, water to cover, generous salt and a bit more turmeric than you think you need (since most of both the salt and turmeric will stay in the water). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, around 10 minutes maybe. Drain potatoes in a colander.

3. Return pot to heat, turn heat back up to medium and add ghee. When it finishes sizzling add a few dashes of cumin seed. Cook briefly until it becomes fragrant and add spinach. Add coriander and salt to taste and a little cream if needed to loosen the sauce. Then add the potato. Stir to combine and heat through.

4. Serve with rice and/or Indian bread, garnished with cilantro, tomato a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of cream.



Pretty good. It's just spinach and potatoes so it's not spectacular, but both flavors are brought out well so: pretty good. The garlic, ginger and spices add a bit of interest but don't overwhelm the basic flavors. It could use a little acid, but I left my last lemon at work to fix up my ice cream. Maybe a little white vinegar...yeah, that's not bad. The sauce is creamy (cream will do that) and the potatoes soft. Not a whole lot of textural interest; I should have pulled the potatoes out a minute or two earlier.

The dish isn't entirely satisfying. Some paneer wouldn't have hurt. Or maybe a second dish with some contrasting flavors. A fine side component of a meal, let's say.