Purple Passion
For Nicole Carrillo and Mirasol Gomez—friends who create farm-to-table special events as the Forage Sisters—beets are their go-to ingredient. This vibrant purple taproot grows well in Colora...
Ingredients
For the gnocchi dough
- 2 medium potatoes
- 4 medium red beets
- 1 egg
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (plus more to dust)
- Olive oil
For the Topping
- Butter or olive oil
- ½ cup pistachios
- 2 cups winter greens (arugula, kale, collard, beet greens), roughly cut
- Lemon zest (⅛–¼ of the lemon)
- Lemon juice
Optional
- Ricotta
- Fennel seeds
- Pork sausage
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 F. Wrap potatoes and beets individually in aluminum foil and roast them in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until soft.
Once veggies cool a bit, scoop the flesh out of the potatoes and run them through a box grater or ricer. Place in a mixing bowl. Peel the skin off the beets and pulse in a food processor until smooth. Place in the mixing bowl with the potatoes.
Add egg, salt, 2 1/2 cups flour, and a drizzle of olive oil into the bowl. Mix by hand until it feels like Play-Doh; add a dusting of flour or drizzle of olive oil if needed to get the consistency right. Gnocchi means “little pillow” in Italian, so to achieve its namesake quality of a light, airy, pillowy pasta, try to minimize any extra flour you might need to achieve the proper consistency.
Once the dough is smooth, flour the counter and roll palm-sized hunks of dough into snakes that are roughly 3/4-inch thick and about 9–12 inches long. Cut these with a knife into 1/2-inch pieces.
Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Working in batches, boil roughly 10 gnocchi for about 2 minutes, or until they float. Remove the gnocchi from the water and place on parchment while cooking the rest.
Heat butter or olive oil in a pan and brown the gnocchi on two sides. Salt lightly. Remove from heat. Toast pistachios briefly in the same pan and remove. Wilt winter greens of your choice in the hot oil. To serve, top gnocchi with pistachios and greens along with lemon zest, oil or butter from the pan, and a squeeze of lemon. Salt to taste and enjoy!
Note: This vegetarian dish can easily be made vegan by withholding the butter and egg in the dough (add more olive oil in the dough to replace the egg). You can also turn it into a complete meal for meat eaters by serving with whipped ricotta, browned fennel seeds, and local pork sausage.
Related Stories & Recipes
