Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Lemon and Herb Butter Sauce
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
This baby that I’m posting now has been sitting on my flickr for ages waiting to get posted and loved. It truly deserves some love, it’s so good it should be restaurant food. And not one of those cheap restaurants you go to when you’re really hungry and you need something right now. No, it’s like that restaurant you go to on your first date when you want to impress your date with good food, nice wine and show them that you’re a sophisticated person, really. Never mind the fact that in a few hours you’ll be trying to go for third base when you didn’t even cover first and second yet. Anyway, it’s a good recipe!
This is not a healthy recipe, but it’s tasty and great with a salad. The butter sauce tastes light and isn’t at all heavy. Yum!
Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Lemon and Herb Butter Sauce:
Serves 4
- 200 gram (7 oz) sweet potato
- 200 gram (7 oz) potato
- about 3 dl ( 1 & 1/4 cup) (bread) flour
Microwave the sweet potato for about 6 minutes until it softens, or bake it in a 200C (390F) oven for 40-60 minutes. Boil about 250 grams (9 oz) of potatoes until they are soft. Cut the sweet potato in half and press it in a potato ricer into a large bowl. You don’t have to peel it, the peel stays in the ricer. Take the peel out of the ricer and discard. Peel the potatoes and press through the potato ricer. Add most of the flour and mix together. Put dough on a floured surface and knead. You might have to add more flour. You want a smooth dough that doesn’t stick, but be careful not to add too much flour. Roll the dough into rolls about the thickness of your finger (if you’re a fatty like me, they’re a bit thicker, if you’re skinny, use your thumb as a guide). Cut off little ‘pillows’ from the rolls, about 2 cm (or 1 inch) long. Using the back of a fork, press the gnocchi against it to create ridges for the sauce to gather in. Put the ready made pieces on a floured piece of parchment paper and stick them in the fridge until you’re ready to use them. Boil the gnocchi in well salted water for about three minutes, until they float to the surface. Only cook as much gnocchi as you need for every meal.
Lemon Herb Butter Sauce:
- 50 grams (3 tbsp/2 oz) vegan margarine
- 1 clove garlic
- 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 2 tsp grated lemon zest
- 3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
- a bunch of garlic (about 20 leaves or so), julienned
Melt the margarine in a pot. Finely mince the garlic and add it to the pot so it heats up with the butter to release all the lovely flavour. Add grated lemon zest and the lemon juice. Add the chopped parsley and the basil, salt and pepper to taste. Take the sauce off the heat.
Put the gnocchi in a bowl, pour the butter sauce over it and mix well. Serve immidiately with some extra basil as garnish and enjoy!
I’m a cheap vegan. Our food budget is very limited and doesn’t allow for extravagances and neither does our non food budget. Need a haircut? Maybe next month. A new pair of jeans? It can wait! With that said, I can finally confess that I’ve never tried any store bought vegan cheese. And that I don’t think I’ve ever bought any pate for our sandwiches. We try to buy organic produce when it’s possible but I just can’t justify paying buttloads for something I can make myself. I make un-cheese at home on a regular basis, we think it’s tasty and it’s relatively cheap. My sister who’s been a vegan for years was visiting recently and I made some un-cheese for her too. She disliked it intensely because it tasted nothing like normal vegan cheese. I wouldn’t know and gladly gobble it down every day we have it.