Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with Sage and Butter Sauce

Welcome again to my recipe blog. I'll be without Internet the rest of August because I'll be working on a farm in McMinville, Oregon with the WWOOF program. However, I'll try to write about food every change I get. I'll leave you with one of the most time consuming foods I've ever made: Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi. I hope I get to make homemade sheep's ricotta at the farm!

Good affordable dairy products, such as cheese and yogurt, are a hot commodity in Costa Rica. After making my first batch of yogurt, a friend of mine told me I could easily make ricotta cheese. So, one scorching day during a bus layover in San Isidro, I killed about two hours at an Internet cafe downloading how-to guides on making ricotta and recipes using ricotta. I came across this recipe from the blog Rachel Eats that is just wonderful. It's actually inspired from a recipe in The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. All of the photos in Rachel's blog are great and the recipes looks so delicious. Can I be Rachel's friend?

I thought it be really difficult to make gnocchi but it isn't; it's just time consuming. If you have plenty of spinach and about, oh, a half a day to spend in the kitchen, make this dish for or, better yet, with someone you really love. I made it with my host mother, Clemencia. We spent a good 30 minutes making all of the individual gnocchi by hand; you've been warned!

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with sage and butter sauce
serves 4

For the gnocchi:

450g of very fresh, bouncy, lively spinach
salt
25g butter
1 tablespoon very finely chopped onion
150g Ricotta
50g plain flour
2 egg yolks gently beaten
115g freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus more for serving
a pinch of grated nutmeg
more plain flour for dusting

For the butter and sage sauce:

50g good quality butter
10 fresh sage leaves

Soak the spinach in several changes of water and discard any wilted or bruised leaves and trim away any very thick, woody stalks. Put the spinach in a large pan with nothing but the water that clings to the leaves, add a heaped teaspoon of salt, cover the pan and cook on a medium flame until the spinach has collapsed and is tender. This should take about 5 minutes depending on the freshness and age of the spinach.

Drain the spinach and once it is cool enough, squeeze and press it gently with your hands to eliminate as much water as possible. Chop the spinach roughly and set it aside.

Warm the butter in frying pan then add the onion and sauté it over a medium flame until it is soft, transparent and golden. Add the chopped spinach to the pan with a pinch of salt and then cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often.

Tip the spinach and onion mixture into a bowl and allow it to cool to room temperature.

Add the ricotta and the flour to the spinach mixture and stir gently but firmly with a wooden spoon. Next add the egg yolks, the grated parmesan and a tiny pinch of nutmeg. Keep stirring the ingredients until they are evenly mixed, taste, add salt if necessary, stir again. Let the mixture rest in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Dust your hands with flour and working quickly makes small nuggets/pellets of the mixture – about 2cm across (even smaller if you have the patience) and sit them on a tray dusted with flour.

Bring a large pan a well salted water to a gentle boil, not too hard or the gnocchi will disintegrate.

Drop in about 15 gnocchi at a time, when the water comes back to the boil, cook them for 3 – 4 minutes.

While the gnocchi are cooking make the sage butter…..

Put the butter in a small frying pan and turn the heat to medium. When the butter stops foaming and it starts turning tawny but not brown, add the sage leaves. Cook for a few seconds, turning the leaves once and then remove from the heat

Now back to the gnocchi, they will be puffy, soft and have floated to the surface. Using a with slotted spoon lift them out onto a warm serving plate and pour over some of the sage butter and keep warm in a cool oven. Drop in more gnocchi and repeat the process.

When all the gnocchi are cooked, pour over the rest of the sauce, turn them gently to coat with butter and serve at once with more freshly grated parmesan.

Great Depression Cooking

I stumbled across this a while ago. I just had to share it with you guys. The recipe looks pretty good, too.

Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust

My grandfather loves eating single-serving pies from the grocery store. When he told my mom yesterday that he wanted her to pick up up some apple pie, I decided to make one myself. I've made several variation of apple pie, but never Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust. I was intrigued because I love savory-sweet desserts. I followed the recipe from Gourmet.com, making minor modifications and adding a teaspoon of cinnamon. You can't have an apple pastry without cinnamon, seriously. It tasted just like an apple pie wrapped in a cheese straw. What I like about this recipe is, unlike many pie recipes I've found, the dough goes a long way. I even had enough to make a few little leaves on top for ornament.


Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust

For pastry:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound extra-sharp white cheddar, grated (a little more than 2 cups)
1 stick cold unsalted butter cut into pieces
1/4 cup cold vegetable shortening cut into pieces
4 - 6 tablespoons ice water
1 tablespoon milk

For filling:
3 medium Gala apples
3 medium Granny Smith apples
2/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
juice of a lemon
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon cold salted butter cut into pieces


Method:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. With a spoon or clean hands, mix flour, salt and cheese in a large bowl. Add butter and shortening, mixing until it the lumps are pea-sized. It should look sandy.
3. Drizzle the water a tablespoon at a time and stir with a fork until mixed well. If the dough holds together when you squeeze it, you don't need anymore. If you overwork it, your dough will be tough.
4. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a 5 inch disk. Wrap the disks in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
5. Peel and core apples, and slice into quarter sized pieces 1/4 inch thick. Toss apples with sugar, flour, lemon juice and cinnamon until evenly coated.
6. Roll out 1 piece of dough on a lightly floured surface into a 13 inch round. Fit it into a 9 inch pie plate. Roll out the remaining piece of dough into an 11 inch round.
7. Transfer filling to shell. Dot with butter than cover with pastry round. Trim the edges and seal using the back of a fork or spoon, or use your fingers. Lightly brush the top with milk, and poke with the tines of your fork to make vents.
8. Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce to 375 degrees F and bake until crust is golden brown for about 40 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Raspberry Breakfast Bars

When I was living in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'd go hiking up the mountains on the weekends. I'd snack on the sweet wild raspberries for sustenance, and come home with a few to make raspberry lemonade or raspberry tarts. Then I found a recipe on the Lottie and Doof blog from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking for making Raspberry Breakfast Bars. Several other food blogs have written published this recipe, and with reason! I love it because it basically combines an oatmeal cookie with raspberry pie filling. I imagine you could substitute pineapple or even apples for raspberries.

The bars last up to about 3 days. Keep them in the fridge in a Tupperware container so they'll stay firm.

Raspberry Breakfast Bars

For the crust and crumb:
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
* 1 1/4 cups rolled oats
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
* 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces

For the raspberry filling:
* 1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
* 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
* 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
* 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1 pound raspberries, fresh or frozen
* 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled. (You can zap it in the microwave for 15 - 30 seconds.)

Make the crust and crumble first. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9x13 inch glass or light-colored metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper covering the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend over the two short sides of the pan and hang slightly on both ends. Butter the parchment. (It's so important that you use parchment or else everything will just stick to the pan!)

Put the flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until combined. Add the buter and pulse until loose crumbs form. (Don't worry if you don't have a food processor. I always just use my hands.)

Reserve 1 1/4 cup of the mixture and set aside. Pour the rest of the mixture into the prepared pan and use your hands, or back of a large wooden spoon to push the crust into an even layer at the bottom of the pan. Bake until golden brown or 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let the crust cool. Keep the oven on while you make the raspberry filling.

Make the raspberry filling. In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and flour together. Add the raspberries, lemon juice and butter. Use your hands to toss gently until the raspberries are evenly coated.

Assemble and bake the bars. Spread the raspberry filling evenly on top of the cooled crust. Sprinkle the reserved crust mixture evenly on top of the filling.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, rotating the pan every 15 minutes until the top is golden brown and the filling starts to bubble around the edges.

Transfer to a wire rack to cook completely, then cut into squares and serve.

Summer Tea

I don't know about where you're living, but in Texas it's hot outside. One of the nice things about all of this sunshine (and in our case sunshine and rain) is you can go out and grow stuff, like herbs. So why not make herb sun tea? I remember my mom used to always make a bunch of sun tea during the summer. She'd throw some tea leaves into a huge glass container and let it sit out of the all afternoon. She swears you can get the same result by pouring scalding hot water over the tea, and then pouring ice in immediately after. I think the taste is a lot more mellow when it's been out in the sun.

The Design*Sponge blog suggested mixing several herbs together and then adding simple syrup. For my batch of herbal sun tea, I put in oregano, mint, rosemary, lemongrass, ginger and lemon peels. Pour that over ice with a little bit of sugar, and drink up! I bet it would taste good with a little bit of rum, too.