Parsnip Gnocchi with Sprouts, Sage & Hazelnuts

by Liz Child

Making gnocchi from scratch is a little intimidating, but it’s actually not that complicated. Simply mix puréed, seasoned vegetables with enough flour to form a soft dough, roll the dough into snakes and cut into bites. Then boil the bites until they rise to the surface and you are ready to sauté, roast or simmer them in sauce. This parsnip variety is ridiculously delicious. Give it Christmassy vibes with sprouts, sage and hazelnuts.

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the gnocchi:

  • 500g parsnips, boiled/steamed until soft
  • 2 tsp salt and a grind of pepper
  • 250g flour (plus more as needed for dusting and rolling)

To finish:

  • lots of butter (to sauté the gnocchi in batches)
  • around 20 Brussels sprouts, quartered
  • a handful of hazelnuts, chopped
  • fresh sage leaves
  • salt and pepper to taste

Method

  1. Mash the cooked parsnips until smooth. If they are a little stringy or you left the skins on, use a blender to get them very smooth. Stir in the salt and pepper and taste. They should be over-seasoned at this stage before you add the flour.
  2. Tip in the flour and use a spoon to roughly combine it with the pureed parsnips. Then tip out onto a floured surface and bring together into a soft dough. Don’t give in to the temptation to knead, you are not looking for stretchy gluten in gnocchi, you want a tender dough.
  3. Cut the dough into smaller pieces and roll into slim snakes. Use flour as needed to help avoid stickiness. Then cut the snakes into little bites and spread them out on a floured tray. If you feel up for some kitchen meditation time, you could roll each bite over a gnocchi board or the back of a fork to create beautiful grooves, but it’s not necessary.
  4. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and drop the gnocchi in in batches. After just a few minutes, they should start to rise to the top, scoop them out with a slotted spoon a place on a large platter. Keep going until you have boiled all the gnocchi.
  5. Heat up a large frying pan with a generous tbsp of butter. Add half the sprouts and season with salt and pepper. Sauté for 3 minutes until they start to colour. Then add half the gnocchi, half the hazelnuts and around 6 sage leaves. Add another tbsp or so of butter and stir fry to warm up the gnocchi and give it some golden colour. The nuts should get wonderfully toasted and the sage leaves impart gorgeous fragrance and flavour.
  6. Tumble into two warm bowls to serve and repeat step 5 with the other half of the ingredients. Enjoy!

Sprout Spaghetti

by Liz Child

Brussels sprouts are in season and are certainly not just for Christmas Day. Have you been adding them to your boxes? What’s your favourite sprout recipe? I love sautéing them like this with garlic, herbs, nuts and citrus, then folding them through pasta. They’re also brilliant stirred through rice or another cooked grain like barley, quinoa, buckwheat etc for a gorgeous warm salad. Here’s my sprout spaghetti recipe, it makes a stunning mid-week meal and will only take as long as the time to boil your pasta. Quick, festive and delicious!

Liz x

Ingredients (per person)

  • 70-100g dry spaghetti (depending on appetite) or other grain/pulse of your choice eg quinoa, rice…
  • 1 heaped tbsp butter (I use our new dairy free Natruli blocks)
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 7 Brussels sprouts, thinly sliced
  • a small handful of hazelnuts, roughly chopped
  • 3 sprigs of rosemary
  • 1/2 tsp lemon zest
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • salt and pepper to taste (it’s extra good with lots of black pepper!)

Method

  1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil, meanwhile chop your sprouts, garlic and hazelnuts.
  2. Generously salt the boiling water and drop in the pasta. Give it an occasional stir to prevent it from clumping or sticking to the bottom. While the pasta cooks, prepare the rest of the dish.
  3. In a wide pan, melt the butter, add the oil and sprouts, hazelnuts, garlic and rosemary. Stir fry for a few minutes then season well with salt and pepper.
  4. Add the zest and juice of the lemon when the sprouts turn bright green and are mostly cooked through. Stir well, taste and adjust the seasoning if need with more salt, pepper or lemon. Turn off the heat for now.
  5. Drain the pasta but reserve a mug or so of the starchy cooking water. Add the pasta to the sprouts and turn the heat back on. Add a few splashes of the cooking water and mix the pasta and buttery sprouts together. The pasta water and butter should create a delicious, light, lemony sauce. Taste again and you’ll probably want to add more black pepper.
  6. Serve in bowls and top with grated cheese or nutritional yeast flakes if you like. Enjoy!

Autumn Gnocchi

by Liz Child

Gnocchi are easy to make but they do require a bit of time and a fair few steps. So save this recipe for when you have the time to really take your time and enjoy the process. These colourful autumn gnocchi are made with an exciting new harvest on the farm, uchi kuri squash, and our beautiful beetroot.

Serve simply sautéd with butter, garlic, herbs and kale, or make a rich tomato pasta sauce to pop them on. Here’s a 30 second video to show you the process, otherwise, read on below. Liz x

Ingredients (serves approx 8)

  • a small winter squash like our uchi kuri (or sub with a butternut squash)
  • 8 small beetroots, or 4 large
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • plain flour (or a gluten free plain flour blend) – amounts vary, see method below
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 6 sprigs of rosemary (or sage?)
  • enough butter (or more olive oil) to sauté
  • 8 leaves of kale (sub with beetroot leaves if you have any fresh)
  • a few handfuls of hazelnuts (we sell compostable bags of organic hazelnuts here)

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 200C and get two baking dishes ready.
  2. Chop your squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Chop the squash into chunks and put it into one roasting dish. Scrub the beetroots and chop them into chunks too. Put them into the other dish. No need to peel either of these lovely, organic vegetables.
  3. Season both dishes with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Then get them into the oven to roast until soft. This usually takes around 20-30 minutes, just keep an eye on them.
  4. Allow the roasted veg to cool a little, then blend the squash into a purée. Taste and slightly over-season with salt. It needs to be a little too salty as you will be adding a fair bit of flour next.
  5. Add 4 large serving spoons of plain flour to the food processor and gently pulse the mixture together. Be very careful not to over-mix as this can make the dough tough. I do this in a large food processor with the ‘S’ blade attachment, but you can use a stick blender to purée then just fold in the flour in a large bowl. Add more flour as needed (amounts vary as different vegetables have different water content) until you achieve a soft dough.
  6. Scoop the dough into a bowl, then repeat the process with the beetroot. You will probably find that the beetroot dough needs less flour.
  7. Cut the dough into manageable portions. Generously flour a clean work surface and roll the dough into thick snakes. Cut the snakes into bite size pieces.
  8. Gently roll each bite over a ridged gnocchi board or the back of a fork. Place the gnocchi onto large, floured plates or trays.
  9. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Then drop the squash gnocchi in, in small batches. Boil briefly, just until they start to rise to the surface, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and place in a tray, ready to sauté. Repeat this process until all the squash gnocchi are boiled, then do the same with the beetroot. Do the beetroot AFTER the squash so that the squash gnocchi don’t get stained pink.
  10. At this point you can space out any gnocchi you won’t be needing right away on a tray and freeze. When they are frozen solid they can be tipped into a box in the freezer to use another day.
  11. Gnocchi can be sautéed, roasted, boiled, baked in a sauce… I think they are best sautéed in butter or olive oil and winter herbs. Get a large frying pan on the hob with a very generous knob of butter, tumble in as many gnocchi as you like and sauté until hot and starting to take on some colour.
  12. Add torn kale leaves, sliced garlic, rosemary and chopped hazelnuts to the pan and cook until the kale has wilted and the nuts are toasty. Season as needed and serve.

Courgette Risotto

by Liz Child

To me a risotto should elevate a single vegetable. It should celebrate it. Add too many ingredients to your risotto and the flavours will mingle and become indistinguishable in the long simmer. Courgettes are incredibly versatile. Fantastic cooked down low and slow into a silky mush, griddled and seared, battered and deep fried, raw… So for interest and texture in this dish I’ve cut each courgette differently. One diced and simmered with the onions into a meltingly soft sauce, one sliced into rounds for texture and body in the risotto and the last one peeled into raw ribbons to go on top. Serve with a swirl of pesto (try my salad bag pesto here), a drizzle of good olive oil and some toasted hazelnuts. Heaven.

Leave a comment if you tried this recipe or show us your photos on Instagram or our Facebook group. We love seeing your amazing recreations. Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4)

  • 1 onion
  • 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 sticks of celery
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 3 courgettes
  • 1 mug of risotto rice (or however much you like to serve 4)
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 stock cube
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 3 tbsp (or more to taste) pesto
  • extra virgin olive oil to serve
  • toasted, chopped hazelnuts to serve

Method

Dice the onion and put it in a wide pan with the butter and oil over a medium high heat. Add a pinch of salt and sauté and soften for around 6 minutes.

Dice the celery sticks, garlic and one of the courgettes and add them to the pan to soften too. Cook, stirring often until soft and golden. Around 10 minutes.

Rinse and add the risotto rice to the pan with the zest and juice of the lemon (or a glass of white wine). Crumble in the stock cube and add a generous grind of black pepper. Stir well to coat the rice in the seasoning then add a mug of warm water.

Slice the second courgette into rounds and add it to the pan. Simmer and stir until all the water has been absorbed then add another mug of water. Keep simmering and stirring.

Meanwhile use a vegetable peeler to slice as many ribbons from the third courgette. Chop up the middle bit and add it to the pan. Keep simmering and stirring and add another mug of water. Taste and adjust the seasoning with more salt, pepper or lemon once the rice started to swell up and become softer.

Once the risotto is cooked (the rice should be soft and creamy but still with a little bite) turn off the heat. Stir through a few tbsp of pesto, pile on the raw courgette ribbons, drizzle everything with extra virgin olive oil and scatter over the toasted hazelnuts.

Take the pan to the table and serve with the jar of pesto handy to add extra swirls through the bowls of anyone who wishes for more.