Turn Up the Beets!

Perhaps I was inspired to do this post from the clever name of the salad place near where I work-- "Lettuce Turnip the Beet", or maybe it was just because my roommate bought some beets and we needed something to do with them. Anyway, this post is about beet gnocchi. Handmade gnocchi is one of my favorite dishes to make, mostly because there are so many ways to make it-- with regular potatoes, sweet potatoes or beets! And also because the final product is quite delicious. This was a great meal to make in college because, like pasta, it did not require many ingredients. The gnocchi itself is just beets, flour and an egg.

The time is takes to prepare this meal depends upon how many people you are cooking for. The total prep and cooking time for 4 diners was about 2 and a half hours. If you are cooking for more than 4, plan on taking more prep and cooking time, since you will be making more gnocchi and it will take longer to cook them all. This may not be the best meal to cook if you have a lot of guests. We learned that the hard way one time in New Orleans, when we decided to be liberal with our dinner invitations and ended up hand rolling sweet potato gnocchi for about a dozen guests.

For this particular meal, I modified a beet gnocchi recipe I know to make it dairy-free, because I was cooking with a friend who does not eat dairy. The meal can also be modified even further to be completely vegan by simply not using the egg. I usually use eggs in all of my gnocchi recipes, but it is not necessary. I paired the gnocchi with a sage walnut garlic paste, a dairy-free version of a sage butter sauce. The paste ended up being similar in texture to a pesto sauce and is much healthier than the butter sauce.

To serve 4 people, here's what you need for the gnocchi:

3 medium sized beets, 3-4 cups of flour, 1 egg (optional), nutmeg, salt and pepper (to taste)

And for the sage walnut garlic paste:

1/4 cup of olive oil, 15-10 chopped sage leaves, 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts, 4 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper to taste

The first step of making the gnocchi is to cook the beets. There are multiple ways to do this, you can bake them in the oven, or you can boil them. What I did was a sort of combination of the two. First, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Then, cut off the leafy bits of the beets, and put the beets upside down in a baking dish. Brush the beets with some olive oil, salt and pepper and put about 1/4 of an inch of water at the bottom of the dish. Cover the baking dish tightly with foil. Here is where some improvisation was necessary for me, because I had run out of foil. This is a tragedy of the commons type of scenario I ran across a lot as a college student-- everyone wants to use the tinfoil, but no one wants to replace it. But it makes for more creativity in cooking. Instead of tinfoil, I just used another baking dish to cover the botton dish. It worked perfectly for me. Cook the beets for about an hour, or until tender. To test for tenderness, I stuck a fork in on the beets as far as it would go, and made sure it came out easily.

While the beets are in the oven, you have an hour of downtime, which you can use to prepare the paste. Just chop up the sage, walnuts and garlic, combine them with the olive oil, and put it aside. I chopped everything very small, so that the paste would be like a pesto, but you can chop them to any size you want to alter the texture. You can also food process everything together instead. I don't currently own a food processor, so I am forced to chop everything old school style, but I actually like the slightly chunkier bits for this paste and other pesto sauces that comes from chopping by hand.

Preparing the paste does not take the entire hour that the beets are cooking, so this is the point in the recipe when I usually open a bottle of wine. I was drinking a California Chardonnay while cooking and eating this meal, which I think went well with the beet gnocchi. It would probably go especially well with the sage butter sauce, since the buttery Chardonnay and the sauce would match each other in richness.

Once the beets are done cooking, wait for them to cool a bit, and then peel off the skin. At this point the skin should be soft enough to peel off using a butter knife and your fingers. Just a warning, since the beets have a very rich, red color, I would definitely recommend wearing an apron or clothes that you do not particularly care about while peeling and mashing the beets. There is definitely some potential for staining in the next couple of steps. Once the beets are peeled, cut them into 1 or 2 inch pieces and put them in a large mixing bowl to mash. If you have a potato masher, you can use that, or what I did was just use a fork. If you want to get fancy, you can use a food processor to puree the beets as well. But honestly, just a plain old fork worked perfectly for me.

After you have pureed the beets (in whichever way you chose to), add the egg, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Make sure that before you add the egg, the beets are completely cooled, otherwise the egg may cook in the beets. By the time I had peeled and mashed the beets, they were cool enough to add the egg, so it really does not take too long for the beets to cool. It took much less time for the beets to cool than for potatoes to cool when I have made potato gnocchi. I just added a pinch of nutmeg, salt and pepper after the egg. Altogether, I had about 1 and a half to 2 cups of beet puree before adding the flour.

Now for the flour! In total, I probably added about 3-4 cups of flour to the beet puree. Begin by adding a handful of flour at a time, and mix the flour into the puree with a wooden spoon. Continue to add flour until the dough is no longer sticky. This direction is vague, but what I mean is add flour until you can pick up the dough in pieces and roll it out. As you are adding flour, and feeling the dough, you will get a sense of when it is ready. You do not want to add too much flour, or your gnocchi will taste floury, and if you don't have enough flour, you won't be able to work with the dough.

Once you have finished the dough, it may be a good time to begin heating up a pot of water for cooking the gnocchi. Use a medium or large pot, and fill about half way with water.

When your dough is ready to roll out and form the gnocchi, flour a work surface, grab a handful of the dough, and roll it out into a log shape, about an inch thick. Next, take a sharp knife and cut the log into 1/2 inch pieces. Once you have cut the pieces, take each piece, and press it against the bottom of the prongs of a fork. Then, take your fingers and gently roll the piece of gnocchi forward, to create a sort of pool on one side of the gnocchi. This is meant to hold the sauce. On one side of each piece of gnocchi, there should be light fork marks, and on the other side there should be a little indent. This is probably the most difficult part of the recipe, and may take some practice. Even if the gnocchi does not look perfect, it will still taste great. Repeat these instructions for all of the dough, and set each piece of gnocchi aside on a plate. Do not pile the gnocchi on top of each other, because they are delicate and may stick together.

After you have formed all of the gnocchi, it is time to begin cooking the gnocchi. The temperature of the water is very important for cooking gnocchi. Once the water is boiling, add only a few pieces of gnocchi at a time, maybe about 6-8 pieces. Adding too much gnocchi will lower the temperature of the boiling water. When the gnocchi is done cooking, they will rise to the top of the water. This takes about 3 minutes. As the pieces finish and rise to the top, scoop each piece out with a slotted spoon and set aside in a large bowl or a colander. Continue, with only about 6-8 pieces of gnocchi in the water at a time until you have cooked all of the gnocchi.

Next, plate the gnocchi and drizzle the sage walnut garlic paste on top of each plate. Since I am not dairy-free, I added some freshly grated parmesan cheese to my dish. Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy!