Eating Dirt

Sweet Potatoes with Chard, Green Garlic and Spring Onions aka Indian Spinach

 

Sometimes dinner needs to be fast and furious, and a plan made in haste goes badly awry. But occasionally a crazed forage through the pantry yields exciting surprises, like last night. In this case, Nigel Slater's Indian Inspired Spinach and Potatoes were on the menu (from Tender, my second favorite kitchen garden cookbook), but after dumping my son in front of TV and gearing up for dinner, I found no spinach and only a single potato in the house. Luckily, we had some sweet potatoes leftover from a past CSA box, fresh chard, spring onions and green garlic, all of which remade a semi-traditional take on saag aloo into a delightfully Springy Californian version. For a little extra protein, and something besides rice that the kids would eat, I warmed some frozen chickpeas with a little bit of curry powder and tossed those on top.  

Here's the recipe below. For more info on what I did with the rest of this week's produce box, check out the CSA section of this site.

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Indian Inspired Spinach or Springy Californian Indianesque Chard (adapted from Nigel Slater's Tender)

1 large bunch spinach or chard

3 medium potatoes, sweet potatoes or a mix of both

2 T vegetable oil (I like canola)

1 large onion or 2 large spring onions

2 cloves garlic or stalks green garlic

1 inch piece of ginger

1/2 t black mustard seeds

1/2 t turmeric

1/2 lemon, juiced

1 c cooked chickpeas

1/2 t curry powder

rice to serve

Start by putting on a pot of salted water on to boil, enough to cover the potatoes. This is good over rice, or with naan, so start the rice now if you're having that or send someone to collect some takeout naan. In a small pot, stir the chickpeas and curry powder together and warm over low heat.

Wash and scrub the potatoes (peel the sweet ones), then slice into 1/3 inch rounds or so and put them in the pot. While the potatoes boil until tender (5-10 minutes, just keep poking them with a fork to check), wash the spinach or chard, remove and discard the spinach stems or  if using chard, separate the leaves from the stems (the easiest way to do this is just grab the stem with one hand and pull toward the outer edge of the leaf with the other, tearing leaf off the stem as you go).  Chop the chard stems finely and put them aside. Next wash and chop the onions, garlic and ginger.

By now the potatoes should be tender. Dump them in a strainer in the sink, wipe out the hot pot with a towel and put it back on medium heat. When it is dry, add the oil, then onions and sauté for a few minutes until softened and add just a pinch of salt. Next add the chard stems and cook for a few minutes, then add the garlic, ginger, mustard seeds and turmeric, stirring occasionally. Add the cooked potatoes and about 1/2 cup of water. Bring it to a boil and simmer until the liquid is absorbed, just a few minutes.  Add the spinach or chard leaves  and cook until they are wilted to your liking. Add a squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice, with chickpeas on top.

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Gnocchi Soup with Chard or Fun with Snakes

You will almost certainly think I am out of my head when I say this, but I had a really great time making homemade gnocchi with my three and a half year old son last week. It was the most enjoyable cooking experience I’ve shared with either of my kids, and there have been quite a few. While I like to get messy and watch my children engage their senses, I am not a particularly patient parent, so fully enjoying their help in the kitchen is, as shocking as it may sound, somewhat rare for me.

I should probably mention that I’d spent that afternoon planting pea seeds with my daughter’s boisterous Kindergarten class, something I suspect only a madwoman would take on. The day before, I’d planted some sort of native plant in the school’s garden with two classes of first graders, which while a little more mellow, was also fraught with insanity. These events may have clouded my judgement on the making of gnocchi, but I’m planning to do it again regardless.

If you don’t know this already, elementary school children love to dig in the dirt. If there is one thing they could choose to spend their fifteen minutes of recess doing, it would be that. Even the kids who cry when they get messy and don’t like to touch worms or eat mayonnaise like dirt, they just might not know it yet. Everyone I gardened with last week was itching to get their hands in the ground, so much so that they forget their manners, lunging for plastic shovels and throwing their classmates out of the way to be the first to dig in. They shrieked and beat watering cans on the pavement instead of sharing, and were so overzealous that some forgot their numbers and stuffed more than thirty seeds into planters meant for five. They hovered by the hose, hoping for a chance to spray themselves and others. Luckily, I outsmarted them and kept myself dry by turning the water off with a magic key given to me by a wise custodian. But we had fun nonetheless.

The gnocchi, in comparison, was a sweet, loving time I shared with my son, while his sister covered our deck in chalk. We put on our aprons, floured our hands and our table and rolled potato flour snakes together. He then took great pride in cutting them up all by himself. The wonderful thing about gnocchi is that the pieces don’t need to be perfect, or even close to the same size. Just smush them long ways with a fork, then use your fingers to sort of roll the dumpling off, turning it almost into a tube. That way they all look presentable. Sadly, my son refused to eat his gnocchi once they were made into soup. 

“Too slimy!” he yelled, “I don’t think its healthy!” 

I’m hoping, that like the tamales he formerly refused to eat and now asks for by name, he’ll come around in time.

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Potato Gnocchi (adapted from Cuisine at Home Magazine):

This is a recipe that should be done in two stages. Cook and mash the potatoes early in the day or even the night before, then make the gnocchi later.

 1 1/2 lb russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2” chunks

2/3 c flour, plus more for dusting

1/4 c grated parmesan

1 egg

1 t salt

1 t olive oil

pinch grated fresh nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cook the potatoes in boiling water until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain into a colander in the sink, then spread the potatoes on the baking sheet and dry them in the oven until they look white and chalky, about ten minutes. Mash the potatoes. I like using a potato ricer, but you could also push them through a mesh colander or sieve. Leave them to cool. If you are going to be continuing the project more than a couple hours from now, put them in the fridge.

When you are ready to make the gnocchi, knead the rest of the ingredients into the potatoes to make a soft dough. Flour your work surface and hands well, then divide the dough into five pieces and roll each one into a thin log, or snake. Cut your snakes into 1/2” squares. The pieces don’t need to be perfect, but smaller seems to be better than larger. Shape each piece by pressing it with a fork, then roll the gnocchi off the fork with your fingers into a nearly tubelike little pillow.

Boil the gnocchi in batches for about two minutes, until they float. Drop them in cold water to stop their cooking, then drain them in a colander and toss with olive oil to coat. You can eat them a million different ways, but I tried the soup below.

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Gnocchi Soup with Chard (adapted from Canal House Cooking Vol 5)

1 large bunch chard

2 T butter

2 T olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

6 c chicken broth

1 bunch parsley leaves, chopped

1 recipe fresh cooked gnocchi

grated parmesan, for garnish

Trim the chard stems from their leaves, then wash both and finely chop the stems. Tear the leaves into small pieces and put them in a different bowl. Melt the butter and olive oil in a pot over medium-low heat, then add the onion, chard stems and garlic. Cover the pot and let it cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or so. Stir in the chard leaves and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the broth and bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are as tender as you want them to be. Taste and add salt if necessary. Then put some gnocchi in a bowl, ladle the soup on top of it and stir in a small handful of chopped parsley. You can grate some parmesan on as well, if you’d like.