gluten free gnocchi

It's definitely Autumn now!  Of course you can't have failed to notice that, the leaves are blowing from the trees, daylight fades at 5pm and the rain falls as much as the sun used to shine. Winter boots are replacing sandals and the central heating clicks on for the first time since spring.  I haven't altogether let go of my comfy birkenstocks but I am embracing autumnal foods very happily.
Here is a recipe for squash & sweet potato gnocchi.  These are free from potatoes and wheat flour so are great for both gluten free and nightshade free diets.  I was really disappointed when I thought that I would have to give up gnocchi, so I was relieved to realise that this wasn't the case.

The first time I cooked this recipe with just squash, but the little dumplings seemed to be a little bit squeaky in your mouth and just not substantial enough.  Adding the sweet potato gives a firmer dough which is easier to roll and much, much more satisfying to eat.  The extra starch means that these freeze a lot better than squash only, so you can make more and freeze for quick mid week suppers
I was looking for a slightly bitter sauce to cut through the natural sweetness of the gnocchi, so - as pictured - I served the gnocchi here with a drizzle made of blanched dandelion leaves, garlic and olive oil.  Making this again I will make the sauce with equal amounts of dandelion and either spinach or rocket to balance the strong flavour of autumnal dandelion, but I was pleased with the results as I have never tried cooking with dandelion leaves.

Gluten free Gnocchi with a dandelion drizzle (serves 4)

350g squash, or piece of  (raw and unpeeled)
1 x 400g sweet potato stabbed with a fork all over
1 free range egg (medium)
120 g (3/4 cup) rice flour
30g (1/4 cup) glutinous rice flour 
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Preparation

• Microwave* each vegetable for around 5 mins each for an 800W oven until they are soft and cooked throughout.  Set to one side to cool whilst you prep the flour.
• Sieve 120g rice flour with 30g glutinous rice flour and just under 1/5 tsp xanthan gum.
• Once the vegetables are cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh from the skins (scrape to get every last morsel).  Mash the vegetable flesh together with a potato masher (or whizz briefly in a food processor).  If the puree is still warm, wait for it to cool (rather than cold) before you move on to the next stage.

Making the dough

• Beat the egg gently and then add to the vegetables, stir through until the egg is combined making a smooth thick batter.
• Season with a bit of salt and black pepper (taste if you don't mind the raw egg).
• Some squashes are drier than other varieties and this will dictate the amount of flour you need to add.
• Sprinkle one tablespoon of the flour mix at a time over the vegetable batter, and stir until throughly combined.
• Continue doing this until the batter is too thick to stir and needs to be kneaded by hand (for me this was after adding 75g flour (i used a buttercup squash which is quite firm and dry).

Forming the gnocchi

• Sprinkle your work surface with more of the flour mix and scrape the dough out onto the worktop.  If the dough is still sticky, knead some more of the flour in until the dough holds it's shape.
• Form into a block and cut into 4 pieces, roll out 1 piece to make a long sausage no more than 2cm wide.
• With a wet knife, cut 2cm lengths along the length of the dough - it should make around 15-18 pieces per portion.
• Form the dough into gnocchi (see below for over complicated instructions - why didn't I take photos of the process?!
• Continue until you have rolled all the dough and then leave to dry for at least 30 mins before cooking.

To make the drizzle.

• Pick about 20 small (less than 7cm) dandelion leaves and wash them.  Fill a 1 pint bowl with cold water and set by the hob.
• Bring a little pan of water to the boil, drop the leaves in and let them boil for about 30 seconds.
• Lift them out with a draining spoon and dunk them straight into the cold water.
• Allow to cool for a minute or two, the scoop them out with your hand and squeeze hard to extract all moisture.
• Chop finely along with 1/4 clove fresh garlic.
• Put both in a small bowl and drizzle over some olive oil.
• Mix then taste, season with salt and pepper as required.

To cook the gnocchi

• Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil.
• Salt - approx 10g per litre of water.
• Add gnocchi and let the pan come back to the boil.
• As soon as the gnocchi rise to the surface (1-2 minutes) they are cooked, so drain them and serve with the drizzle, and grated parmesan if you can eat it.

Instructions for forming gnocchi (if you need them)

• Roll each piece of dough in the palm of your hand to make a ball (dust with a little flour if necessary).
• Balance the dough ball between your middle finger and your 3rd finger (ring finger in the UK) then grab a fork and drag the fork gently over the top of the ball - the dough will lengthen slightly as it moves and pick up the markings of the fork.  
• If you drag the fork across your fingers, the gnocchi will be stopped by your ring finger and slightly squashed - that will make a little dent in the back of the gnocchi which increases the surface area and makes it cook quicker.
• The fork grooves help your sauce stick to the gnocchi meaning you get a perfect portion of sauce & dumpling with each forkful.
  

*Microwaves:  I recently contributed to forum chat on the UK Food Bloggers Association discussing microwaves.  I realised then I don't really use mine much, and certainly not for cooking, just heating stuff up.  Using the microwave to cook these vegetables was much quicker and much more efficient than the oven.  I was suprised that the results were just as good as oven roasting, with a little caramelising on the cut surfaces of the squash.  I will definitely try this again.

what to do with the windfalls?

I was gazing out of the window at home, looking into our next door neighbour's garden.  This is a care home and though the patio is lovely, the main garden is just laid to lawn which lays all summer yearning for someone to walk, laze or play football on it.  There are 2 mature apple trees on the western side,  laden with fruit, it looks like a bumper crop.  Last year I watched them fall to the ground and rot slowly into the long grass around the trunks.  This year I am going to ask if they will let me collect some of the windfalls to bake and preserve.

I remember as a child being sent out to pick up windfall apples.  We lived in a suburb to the north of London. Houses and gardens were fairly uniform in size all around us, but our garden snaked up longer than every one else's then wound down the back of 4 or 5 houses. It was difficult not to be nosey as you wandered past everyone else's garden, peering over the fences and beyond the compost heaps at the end of their gardens.

To run to the end of the garden and back was 800m. Unsuprisingly that proved to be my best distance at school, but long before that I would creep up the garden on early autumnal evenings following instructions to collect windfalls from the old bramley the right behind number 102 or from my favourite trees - the 2 coxes behind number 100.

The timing was critical. Too early after school and the wasps would still be busily gorging themselves on fallen feasts. I happily admit I am no friend of wasps - not since one crawled between my fingers and my violin neck and stung me in orchestra practice. I tried to be cool but lost it completely after 2 stings (I wasn't tough - I was nine!) and burst into tears. Ever since then, I have tried to keep my distance from wasps. Anyway, when the shadows were looming and the wasps disappeared in their drunken late night stupor, it was my job to dash up the garden to the ancient 'apple store'where the garden tools lived. Reaching in through the door at floor level (don't open the door, it creaks and squeals) my hand would flap around till I felt the plastic edge of a dusty trug. Ease it out of the door without stepping foot inside or knocking any leant-up tools over and run on down the back straight of the garden to reach the particular tree.

The reason for the stealth was simple. Our garden was built on an Elizabethan (Elizabeth the 1st, not the 2nd) kitchen garden and the tall brick wall which formed the southern boundary of the garden was haunted. Yes really. My older brother swore it was, he'd seen a ghost - a knight in shining armour that clanked and dragged a chain. Believe me, at that age, even the slightest hint that the story may be true was enough to set my overactive imagination into hyperdrive. The ghost might linger in the apple store till it was dark enough to roam free so don't open the door and disturb him.  Carrying the trug (a classy 1970s khaki plastic number that bruised and grazed your knees as you bumped it against your legs) I bolted up to the end of the garden and eased myself past the 3rd and biggest compost heap to the old cox tree on the right hand side.

I think if you saw these trees in winter you would never imagine the beauty of the fruit they produced. Two knarled branches forked from a low trunk - maybe only 3 foot high. The branches reached out like ancient out-stretched arms offering a slightly scary hug. There were no more branches or even twigs for another 4 foot or so on either branch save a small leaf cluster part way up. At the end of either branch there was another fork then a cluster of weak and almost bare twigs.

When I was a little girl the autumn crop would be 15 maybe 20 small apples in a good year, but by the time I was grown up this crop had reduced to 3 or 4 (these trees were really in the autumn of their life). A pale yellow hue to the skin with faint pink or red stripes running vertically the apples. The tree on the left produced more fruit but not so stripey. The gnarled old tree on the right, though, produced these few amazing fruit. You could smell the fruit on the ground, a rich scent, a touch of alcohol from the older fruit missed and rotting on the ground and mingling with the smokey hues from the autumnal bonfires and the odd end of season barbecue. The day's windfalls would be tucked into the long grass around the tree. You couldn't really see the apples but there would be a gap in the grass tops were the apple had fallen - you could reach into the hollow and grasp the little apple deep inside. There wouldn't be more than 5 or 6 at a time, sometimes none at all but you had to crawl round the whole tree and sweep the ground maybe a metre and a half from the trunk, smoothing down the grass to check no treasures lay hidden beneath the surface.

Gathering the few apples into the trug along with a few bramleys if I happened to stand on them as I passed, I would shoot back down the garden attracted to the light at the back door like a clumsy moth. Without care, the apples would bounce and tumble from the shallow trug as I ran but on a good day I would arrive intact, briefly dazzled by the bright electric lights.  A pause in the kitchen to off load my spoils, a quick dip into the biscuit barrel for one last home made biscuit and off with a book to bed.

By morning, the kitchen would be clean and tidy but the apples would be gone.  Dad would check over the apples. Bruised eaters couldn't be stored so would be kept, or more likely swapped with neighbours or friends. The prize though, went to the perfect apples. Unbruised, without any knicks or cracks to the waxy skin, these apples would be carefully wrapped in wax paper and stored in ancient wooden trays in the apple store till Christmas.

Bramleys may be stewed and frozen but Dad's favourite recipe was for apple cheese. He would hold onto bramleys until the jam pan could be filled, then chop and trim the apples, into the pot they would go, core and all. Boil them down then through the pureeing sieve on mum's old kenwood mixer. Back in the pan, add as much sugar as apples then boil gently and stir, stir, stir. When the mixture was thick and bubbling like porridge, stir in a little fresh apple juice then decant into warmed sterilised old jars. Topped with circles of waxed paper and lidded, this was our standard breakfast spread.
"That'll put hairs on your chest" said Dad (almost every timethe jar left the cupboard).
Thankfully, I can report, it doesn't!

Apple Cheese
I love this recipe, it requires so little prep and lots of cider! Do take care when you are reducing the sweetened puree, the mixture really holds the heat and can hurt lots if you get spattered on bare skin.
Makes about 1kg

1 litre dry cider - my favourite to drink is Addlestone's here
 2/3 small stick of cinnamon
1.6kg cooking apples, unpeeled- just washed and trimmed of bruises

Sunflower oil (for oiling the jars)

Granulated sugar

2 sterilised jam jars (around 300ml) with sterilised lids, oiled after sterilising.

2 wax paper discs, cut to fit just inside the neck of the jar.


Using a non-corrosive pan (not aluminium or uncoated iron – enamelled casseroles are fine), boil the cider with the cinnamon stick until the cider has reduced by 1/3.

Whilst this is happening, you can wash & trim the apples. Once the cider has reduced, put the apples (yes even the pips and cores) and simmer until the apples are mushy – this should take about 1 ½ hrs.

Remove the cinnamon. Push the apple pulp through a fine sieve or mouli and weigh the puree you produce. For every 500g puree add 350g sugar (or slightly less if the apples are sweet).
Heat the puree and sugar in a pan and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Then, put on a long sleeved top, cover your knees & your feet and turn up the heat!

Bring the mixture to the boil and stir, and stir for around 25 minutes. You want to make a puree so thick that you can see the clean bottom of the pan as you stir. Don’t forget that this mixture will spit and pop so really do protect your bare skin (I totally speak from experience!). When the puree is ready, ladle (or decant with a jug) into the prepared jars, lay the waxed paper over the surface of the apple puree (waxed side down) and seal the jars with the lids and label them. This should store for up to one year.


I'm dreaming of eating... apple cheese on gluten free waffles with vanilla ice cream.