Cooking from Scratch
While we call this Swiss Chard Lasagna, it is really more of a Greens Lasagna, or, for those who are a bit less adventurous when it comes to eating different types of greens, it might be called Spinach Lasagna. They are all the same, except for the type of greens used, so consider this a core recipe that should become part of your go-to repertoire.
Continue reading “Swiss Chard Lasagna”
Before we quick whipped up a batch of gnocchi, we checked on the Internet for a few tips about gnocchi. While we’ve made it before, it never hurts to see if there are some good ideas out there.
And, we found ideas that seemed break down into three categories: 1) gnocchi is really difficult; so difficult that many people are afraid even to try making it, or that they tried and it was a disaster so they won’t try again; 2) to make gnocchi, you need one of the following: grater, grinder, ricer, dicer, shredder, masher, or some other specialized device to mash the potatoes correctly; and, 3) some ritual involving the cooking method of the potatoes: baked, boiled, boiled in salted water, boiled after being halved, hopping on one foot while the potatoes cool, etc.
We’re going to address all three of these in our gnocchi. To resolve the fear of disaster, we suggest that you put on steel-toed boots, ear protection, and safety goggles. Just kidding! Remember they are nothing but small potato dumplings and try again; we’ll attempt to give you a few tips as we work through this recipe. Specialized equipment? Bah. People have been making gnocchi for hundreds of years. In all kinds of conditions and kitchens. In fact, go rent La Strada and watch the background and let us know if you think there were many ricers available when that movie was filmed. And, to show you that you can make great gnocchi without anything special, we are going to make gnocchi with a knife, fork, and bowl. Actually, the bowl is optional; you could just use your counter. And as far as cooking goes, we’ll just microwave the potatoes. Sure, Italian grandmothers wouldn’t have a microwave, but the cooking method isn’t important. Continue reading “Potato Gnocchi”
When we first joined the CSA about six years ago — while we knew it was the right thing — we were sometimes daunted by the produce. As we found out, you get a lot of produce that you might not buy at the store, or that we weren’t buying, at any rate. One such example is fennel. Sure, we’d seen it at the store, but we didn’t know what to do with it, so why buy it? With the CSA, you get fennel sometimes. Sure you can trade, but we toughed it out and figured, hey, people eat this, let’s learn how. At first we’d use it along with a bunch of roasted vegetables, or maybe dice finely into a tomato sauce to give it a fennelly flavor, but it never got to the point of actually looking forward to fennel. Continue reading “Fennel Gratin”
If, like us, you bake a lot of bread using a natural starter — it’s coming back into vogue these days — you probably wonder what to do with the leftover starter. It’s a shame to throw it away; after all, it’s perfectly good, but there’s really not enough to make more bread, so out it goes. But not anymore. We fretted about the starter issue, and even though it’s only a cup a week going out the door, we really didn’t like the idea of throwing food away.
Continue reading “Sourdough Pancakes”
Does home-made pasta seem difficult? We thought so too, but once we tried it we found out that, not only is it really easy, but it makes your pasta-based dinners even better. Now we make fresh pasta about once a week.
UPDATE (5/21/2017): We’ve learned a lot about making pasta over the years, including the exact ratio of flour to liquid: 5 parts flour (by weight) to 3 parts liquid (also by weight), plus a pinch of salt. So to make 8 ounces of perfect pasta dough you need 5 ounces flour (pretty much any kind) and 3 ounces of liquid (pretty much any kind). Now you might find some people who claim the ratio is 3 parts flour to 2 parts liquid. This ratio will result in a dough that is too soft and a bit sticky. Do not be fooled, we make pasta dough weekly and have tried many ratios before settling on the 5 to 3 ratio.
Continue reading “Basic Pasta Dough”