#dump a bag of veg into a pot and let it cook for half an hour. and then that's like three or four meals done.

[supercantaloupe]

tjs pre prepped veggie kits are a game changer

[c-is-for-circinate]

C’s infinitely modifiable recipe for vaguely niceish dinner-including-vegetables 20 minutes after walking in the front door

Like many of us, my executive function is dead by the end of the day, especially if I’m tired, especially if I’m hungry, and figuring out How To Food when I need it most is hard as fuck, especially if my kitchen’s kind of messy and I stall out on needing supplies or space.

Also like many of us, I have a really hard time figuring out How To Vegetable, because I’m very afraid of buying fresh things that might go bad before I have the spoons to use them.  And IDK about you, but I get really tired of eating the same thing all the time, so the only way to actually make myself get excited about cooking and eating is to have the option for variety.

Luckily for me, I’ve nailed ‘many, many pasta dishes I would not be ashamed to serve my mother’ down to a familiar, easy formula that I can follow with whatever I have on hand in the freezer and cabinets.  Even better, knowing this formula helps me go grocery shopping, because I can buy specific canned, frozen, jarred, and refrigerate-able things knowing several different ways I can use them.

Maybe it will help you too!  Maybe not!  But it has made my life SO MUCH BETTER, so, as a gift from me to you, A Recipe (of sorts).

To start: Drop your shit by the door.  Get out one frying pan, one pasta pot, and a wooden spoon or plastic spatula or whatever you have to cook with.  It does not matter that the counter is a mess; all you need are two clear stove burners.  There are almost no prep steps to fuck with your executive function and block you from starting this process as soon as you get home.

Step 1:  Veggies Get some olive oil heating up in your pan on medium/low.  While it’s warming up, go to your freezer and grab any frozen veggie you own: broccoli, peas, sliced bell peppers, zucchini, spinach, mixed medley, whatever.  When the oil’s hot enough that a couple of drops of water sprinkled into it sizzle a bit but don’t spit, pour the veggies straight into the pan.  (About 1/4 to 1/2 of a bag is usually plenty for me to make dinner + tomorrow’s lunch).  If the oil is Way Too Hot, turn the burner down, wait briefly, and toss the veggies in anyway.  They’re frozen, they’ll survive.

Step 2:  Carbs If you’re doing regular pasta (or those great frozen raviolis they sell at the grocery store, for extra flavor/protein), stick a pot of heavily salted water on the hottest burner cranked up to high, slap a lid on it, and wait for it to boil. If you’re doing couscous or some other fun grain that cooks in 10 minutes or less, get that going however you usually make it. If you’ve got a bunch of leftover rice in the fridge from the other day’s takeout, wait until the veggies are mostly thawed and then toss it right into the frying pan.  Break it up with the wooden spoon and add a little extra oil to make sure none of it’s too dry. (Sadly, this recipe is not scaled for potatoes.)

(Optional: Seasoning #1 If you happen to have minced garlic in your fridge, throw that shit in the frying pan when the veggies are mostly thawed.  If all you’ve got is dried, that’s cool, wait for later.  Make sure you add the liquid soon after, b/c garlic burns fast.  This is also a good time to add ginger, if you have it on hand and the ingredients you’re planning to use work with it.)

Step 3: Liquid Grab a can of [black beans/tomatoes/coconut milk/crushed pineapple/literally whatever, use the condensed soup if you want, this recipe is ANYTHING GOES] from the cabinet, drain about half the liquid out of the can and throw the rest straight into the pan.  OR snag a jar of [pre-made pesto/harissa/salsa/whatevs] from the fridge, and spoon in a big glop.  (Use judgment here.  Save half a can of things like coconut milk instead of draining it down the sink.  If it all looks super dry you can add some a splash of broth, or juice, or milk, or wine, or whatever, but you shouldn’t need much--you’ll have pasta water for that in a minute, and your frozen veg probably produced a ton of liquid to begin with.)

Step 4:  Cooking Get that pasta in the water as soon as it’s boiling.  If you’re doing grains, check on them and do whatever you’re supposed to do to make the grains cook right. Turn up the heat on the stuff in the pan so it bubbles a little around the edges.  The wetter all the stuff in your pan is, the hotter you want the burner.  You’ve got a fair bit of leeway here; so long as you’ve still got liquid in there, and you vaguely keep an eye to make sure it doesn’t burn, this can keep going without damaging anything until your carbs are done.  (Sugary liquids like orange juice or the syrup from canned fruit are more likely to burn, so keep a closer eye on those and cook them a little cooler.) This is a good point to wash out a bowl to eat out of if you don’t have a clean one.  Shove just enough dirty dishes aside to make sure you’ve got enough space in the sink to drain the pasta.

(Optional: Meat/meat substitute We’re cooking fast tonight, so we’re going for precooked meat options.  I’ve used canned tuna, frozen Ikea meatballs, leftover grocery store rotisserie chicken, frozen shrimp, fancypants gourmet chicken sausages (which freeze very well), jarred pulled pork I made in my crock pot three weekends earlier...  Like everything else in this recipe, you can go as low-budget or as pretentiously gourmet as you like.  Microwave frozen things on 50% for a minute or two in the bowl you’re planning to eat your dinner in, then throw them right into the frying pan.)

Step 5: Season (for real this time) Taste the stuff in your frying pan and decide what it needs.  You can throw in dried spices or fresh or dried herbs, or splash in soy sauce or vinegar or sriracha, or anything else you use to season food.  Season heavily, because your carbs are going to stretch all the flavors out, except for salt--you can add that once everything’s in the same pan.

Step 6: Combine When your starch is mostly-almost-done, drain most but not all of the liquid, and dump the pasta or quinoa or rice or whatever-you’ve-got right into the skillet.  (Leaving in a little bit of pasta liquid will help thicken everything and stick it together.)  Mix it all up with your trusty wooden spoon or plastic spatula or whatever you’re using and let it all hang out for a minute while you get your bowl.  Here’s where you taste and add more salt if it really needs.

(Optional: Cheese If it’s been that kind of day and the stuff in your pan + the contents of your fridge offer up a tasty combination, turn the heat off and just dump a shitton of shredded cheese right into the pan.  Mix everything fast so it all melts together from the heat of the pasta and it all gets melty and a little stringy and delicious.)

And that’s it!  One Frozen Veggie + One Carby Base + One Wet Canned/Jarred Thing + a few minutes of cooking + some spices + optional meats and/or cheeses = dinner, fifteen to twenty minutes after walking in the front door, plus probably lunch for tomorrow along with it.

This is also very often my base recipe even when I’m working with fresh veggies or raw meat.  Chopping fresh veggies adds an extra 5-10 minutes at the front end, depending on how many different kinds of vegetables I’m using.  (Make sure any raw veggies go into the pan before any frozens, because they’ll take longer to cook.)  If I’m working with raw meat or fish, or I’ve marinated tofu and I want it to get brown and tasty, I’ll generally season my protein and sautee it in the pan before I do anything else, then set it to the side in the bowl I plan to eat dinner in and cook everything else just the same as normal.

Obviously this takes a little bit of flavor-matching when it gets to the seasoning stage, but the whole ‘match a frozen thing to a canned/wet thing’ part is surprisingly forgiving, particularly if you stick to individual veggies instead of trying to play with one of those mixed vegetable medleys.  

I generally season a few different ways based on my ‘wet’ ingredient:

Canned tomatoes --> tons of garlic, any vaguely Italian herbs like basil/oregano/fennel, mozzarella or Parmesan cheese

Black or red beans --> lots of chili powder, some garlic, sometimes other spices with a bite like paprika or ginger to round out the flavor for fun, usually cheddar or “southwestern cheese blend”

Canned fruit, orange juice or canned baby corn --> heavy ginger, some garlic, soy sauce, sometimes Chinese Five Spice if I have it around, no cheese

Coconut milk --> just ginger and garlic, OR something vaguely garam masala-like (cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, coriander, cloves, chili, plus also non-c spices like nutmeg and whatever else seems like it might be an okay idea), no cheese

Just broth --> any of the above, OR mustard and paprika, usually with cheddar (particularly if I can add frozen or fresh diced apples to a frozen veg like broccoli)

Pesto, harissa, salsa, and other jarred ingredients usually have tons of seasoning in them already, so I season lightly to enhance whatever they’ve already got going on

(Worth noting that I grew up on Italian cooking, so I think garlic belongs in everything and I’m very much not an expert on many flavor profiles--these are things that taste good to me, and a place that might work for you to start from if you don’t have a lot of ideas what you might like.)

Good luck!  Happy cooking!  

[senshilegionnaire]

hgggggghhhhhhhh

ok best stock i know how to make without using boxed stock or cheating with boullion which is maybe saltier than you want:

step 0: anytime you've got celery, carrot, onion, whatever that get a little sketchy in the fridge, chop em up (toss the actually bad parts) and freeze them. if you're prepping fresh veg (above) then set aside carrot tops, celery leaf &c, onion tops, whatever.

step 1: you roast a whole-ass (well i mean plucked and prepped and w/e, we'll say you bought an oven roaster from the supermarket) chicken (after taking the little bag of organs out and refrigerating it) and you roast it with some chopped up onions (and whatever else, seasoning, etc). serve the chicken with some of those roasty half-caramelized onions and whatever, and don't let people eat the drumsticks like they're at a renfair, ffs they can cut it off the bone, or you can, YOU WANT THOSE BONES. (it is easier to get meat off bones if you just boil the whole chicken but i dont like boiled chicken)

step 2: pick that chicken as close to the bone as you can when you're getting the littler bits of meat off after you serve it. (you can use the meat for whatever, after. chicken salad, idk, stick it in the stock later to make soup, idc.)

step 3: break/splinter the bones as much as you can so the marrow is exposed too. now you've got skin and bones and gristle and that bag of organs and fat and whatever juices were left in the pan from roasting the chicken that got a little crispy brown, and whatever onions nobody ate. ok?

step 4: put it all in a giant spaghetti pot. scrape the pan into the pot too, and use like a cup or two of super hot water to get remaining congealed stuff out of the roasting pan and dump into the pot.

step 5: SEASONING. you can use premixed stuff. i use a mix of whatever of these i have on hand: parsley, tarragon, garlic salt, marjoram, savory, celery seed, basil, thyme, and black pepper (not a whole lot, pepper you can always add but you can't remove. same for salt. if going low or no salt then use garlic instead of garlic salt.) you can sub out whatever herbs for stuff you like better, but i recommend researching what goes good with poultry. the whole mix together for one chicken carcass ends up being like a quarter to a third of a cup of dried seasoning.

step 6: veg!! dump in those fresh ends & peelings you set aside earlier. dump in those frozen saved-just-in-time chopped veg.

step 7: put in enough water to cover everythingggggg and then like 3 cups more. this is gonna look gross. put it out of your mind.

step 8: bring to a rolling boil on high, go down to medium until it cooks down by like a cup (maybe 20-25m?) then put a lid on it and set it on simmer for an hour.

step 9: turn it off. set up a bigass bowl in the sink. put a bigass strainer in the bowl. use tongs or something to get the biggest pieces of carcass & bone out and throw them out.

step 10 warning: now listen DONT GET BURNED WHEN YOU POUR THIS OK, POUR AWAY FROM YOU AND WEAR OVEN MITTS OR USE POT-HOLDERS AND WRAP TOWELS AROUND YOUR FOREARMS IF YOU THINK YOU'RE MESSY. IT WILL STEAM. IT WILL SPLASH. THERE IS OIL IN THE WATER. ok? be fuckin careful bc nothing spoils a day like getting burned and being startled and jerking away and spilling the whole fucking project you already spent hours on and that smells amazing by now

actual step 10: carefully pour this literal hot mess into the strainer over the bowl.

step 11: mash the dripping mass of boiled Don't-Eat-This into the strainer to get more liquid out high enough over the level of liquid in the bowl that you are not basically running a bath with the drain open

step 12: throw out the stuff in the strainer, the nutrients and flavor are mostly all in that broth in the bigass bowl.

step 13: pour the stock back into the big pot, then strain it into whatever container you will be using to store it in. unless you are planning on using it tomorrow i recommend freezing it.

IT IS AN UNDERTAKING. it's really good but like. use the boxed stuff if you dont got time for all that

i didn’t even read the recipe bc they literally started with an assumption i don’t know how to cook cauliflower just because i know what it tastes like so i knew it was gonna be bullshit but

hey buddy if you boil a chicken breast and keep the water you do not have chicken stock. you have sad water. stock is also, you might wanna sit down for this, supposed to have a flavour.

[kimberlyscharf]

Better Late Than Never

So I had a week there where I made nothing interesting, so here I am, coming at you with a post of something!

I made beans.  Wow, you say.  Well, I made mexican beans, with dried chipotle chiles.  They were a nice change from canned, and really easy to prepare.  I did not use them all immediately, so I froze what was left over, to dump into soup or use in burritos, quesadillas, what have you.

Frijoles de Olla (The Border Cookbook)

2 cup dried pinto beans

8 cups water, more if needed

1 whole head of garlic, minced

2 dried chipotles

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

(the recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of dried epazote, I omitted it)

Pick through the beans and rinse them carefully, looking for any gravel or grit.  Rinse the beans a second time.

Place the beans in a stock pot or large, heavy saucepan.  Cover them with water and add the garlic, chipotles and epazote, if using.  Bring the beans just to a boil over high heat, them reduce the heat to low and simmer the beans, uncovered.  Plan on a total cooking time of 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

After 1 hour, stir the beans up from the bottom and check the water level.  If there is not at least 1 inch more water than beans, add enough hot water to bring it up to that level.  Check the beans after another 30 minutes, repeating the process.  Add the salt after the beans are well softened, and continue simmering.  Check every 15 minutes, keeping the level of the water just above the beans.  There should be extra liquid at the completion of the cooking time, but the beans should not be watery.  If you wish, remove 1/2 to 1 cup of the beans, mash them, and return them to the pot for a thicker liquid.  

Serve warm.  The beans keep for several days and are even better reheated.

NOTE: I did not use all of mine, so I stored them in a freezer bag.  Internet wisdom says no more than 1 month, most likely correct.

I love quiche, I really love quiche!  Like, you can throw anything in a pie crust with eggs and milk and have dinner ready once its done baking. And leftovers are always amazing!

For this one I threw in some Trader Joe’s meatballs and some veg....listed below.

Meatballs in a Quiche

Look, you can find a quiche recipe practically anywhere!  I’ve tried many, and I really don’t prefer the ones with alot of half and half or heavy cream.  They taste too soggy and creamy...gosh, just not good.  

Honestly, you can’t really mess up a quiche.  As long as you have a base recipe you are fine.  For this recipe, you can add a little more cheese if you want, less meatballs, all veggies, whatever.  I would say no more than 2 cups of add ins to the base recipe of milk, eggs, and half and half.

1 Trader Joes Pie Crust

About 15 Trader Joe’s Party Meatballs, thawed, cut in half

about 1 cup cooked veg, broccoli is excellent, mushrooms, asparagus, red or yellow pepper

1 1/4 cups milk

1/4 cup half and half

4 eggs

1 cup cheddar cheese, grated

1. Fit the pie crust into a 9 inch pie plate. 

2. Turn oven to 350. Place milk, half and half, eggs, and salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk until blended. Arrange half of the cheese in the bottom of the crust, top with the halved meatballs, veggies or whatever floats your boat, then add the remaining half of cheese. Carefully pour milk mixture over the top. Bake for 45 minutes or until filing is set. Let stand 10 minutes.

Baking some stuff for my next post, well, that’s the plan!

[jeanjauthor]

This is a great thread to remind everyone how thousands of years of our farming & hunter-gatherer ancestors made their much more limited supplies of preserved foods last all winter long.  They didn’t have supermarkets with foods available from all around the world.

Most of us have refrigeration & freezers, so we don’t have to be quite so quick to use up everything all at once, but we still have to be cautious about not letting leftovers sit out on the counter.  Get it packed away as soon as possible after eating, even perhaps as soon right after serving but before eating! The US FDA recommends refrigerating leftovers within 2 hours of it being made, but I’d say the sooner you get it in there, the better.

Caveat: Hot Things!  If you’re pouring boiling hot soup into jars with screwtop lids,

1. Preheat the jars with hot running tapwater to prevent thermal shock cracks, then covering it with a clean lid and letting it sit long enough completely covered to cool to palm-warmth.

2. If you’ve just pulled a casserole out of the oven, COVER IT, preferrably with a solid lid, tinfoil / aluminum foil (be mindful: plastic wrap will melt if it’s still fresh-from-the-oven hot!) or even just enough paper towels or a tight-woven tea towel large enough to cover the container plus extra for at least a fingerlength all the way around the edges.  Wait until the container is comfortable to handle with your bare hands, then put it away.

3. Smaller containers of hot food will cool faster! If you have single-serving size tupperware containers, reynolds or ziplock tubs & containers, even those leftover deli-meat lidded bowl things or reusable cottage cheese containers with their lids that have been thoroughly washed...portion out that bigger meal into them.  You can also use ziplock style baggies, or wrap portions of solid foods in tinfoil / aluminum foil. (do NOT reheat anything in the microwave that is still wrapped in tinfoil, etc...and yes you probably know that, but if you’ve frozen a food and unwrap it frm tinfoil, make SURE there’s not a tiny torn-off scrap stuck in the food...which is something I will neither confirm nor deny might have possibly happened in my utterly coincidental presence near said microwave one time... >.>*)

As for how to reuse leftovers...presuming you have refrigeration, let’s take the ubiquitous example of the great American Thanksgiving Turkey Leftovers:

Day 1: (Big) Roasted Turkey

2 Turkey sandwiches w/gravy

3 Something Else (SE)

4 Turkey soup

5 (SE)

6 Turkey casserole

7 Turkey pâté on toast

8 (SE)

9 Turkey soup with different veg

10 Turkey gravy on mashed potatoes (if there's any left by this point).

...And just do the same thing for other foods.  Beef pot roast that’s been slow-cooked overnight can be redone as roast beef sandwiches, shredded (if you truly slow-cooked it) into picadillo beef for taco night, and of course minced and plonked into beef soup, etc.

I currently have a covered bowl in my fridge of beef & veggie soup.  I made it from the above listed pot roast (HUGE sucker, 4 pounder, BARELY bit in the crockpot, lol), which started out AS a slow-cooked-to-shredded-perfection pot roast.  My mother & father had pot roast beef sammiches for lunch the next day from some of the slices refrigeraged from the meal, and we had something else for supper.  We also shredded the rest and put it in the freezer, separated on a tray to freeze it as portionable pieces, then baggied it up.

About a month later, we used some of it for tacos, and a while after that (about a week and a half ago), I made an absolutely delicious beef soup out of the last of it, boiled up with frozen veggies, and even frozen spinach (we didn’t have lettuce in the house, but needed our leafy greens for folic acid & micronutrients, etc).  It made a delicious all-in-one-bowl meal with broth simmered overnight in the crockpot from various veggie scraps I’d tossed into a bag in the freezer.

There was enough left over from that (mostly solids with very little liquid) that I put it in a lidded bowl in the fridge, and about 5 days ago, we had smaller bowls of soup along with grilled cheese sandwiches, with the soup thinned out with yet more broth...but also with leftover veggies tossed into the pot from other containers in the bridge, and everything got boiled a full 10 minutes before I served it...after doing the sniff-test to make sure it smelled okay.

And there was enough left of THAT that I can do it one last time. (More liquid is in the current iteration than round 2 started with, but still, about a small cup’s worth of soup per person, best served with sammiches or something else.)

Tonight’s meal was a casserole made from gluten-free spiral noodles (2 of the 4 of us are celiac), frozen veggies, a mix of sauce stuff, and the LAST of the shredded turkey leftover from Thanksgiving...from a baggie that got to the bottom of the freezer and forgotten, since we accidentally used up the last of the turkey leftovers from my birthday dinner in February, thinking the November turkey was gone. (I bought a turkey that was 49-cents a pound after Christmas, and saved it in the freezer specifically because I wanted a Turkey Dinner for my birthday, lol...and it was delicious!)

We also have one leftover from my birthday Turkey Dinner still in the freezer...a big jar of the stuffing.  It’ll have to be reheated to 240F (116C) if we use it as a side dish stuffing (even frozen right away, better to be safe than sorry!)...but I ALSO know how to make Stuffing Soup.  Because we ALWAYS slow-cook the carcass in the slow-cooker overnight, covered in water and set on Low for at least 24 hours, to soak out all the nutrients & vitamins & minerals we can from the bones, skin, ligaments, and those tiny scraps of meat you can just never completely get off a turkey (or chicken, etc) carcass.  And that means we often still have frozen jars of strained turkey broth waiting to be used.

Which, after we reuse the beef soup (probably tomorrow night!), might be a soup we’ll have next week.  And yes, stuffing dumped into turkey broth and brought to a boil, with maybe a little more poultry seasoning, is surprisingly good!  Since we don’t have turkey meat leftovers, I’ll probably bake up some (frozen) chicken tenders (unbreaded) to go with it.

...For those of you wondering “she’s got people with celiac disease and she’s going to make STUFFING soup??”  Relaaaax...!  It’s a basmati & wild rice stuffing with veggies (carrots, onions, etc) in the mix, no gluten I promise!  Mother always makes cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner...but I get so tired of it, tbh...  I love wild rice and wanted THAT for my birthday dinner’s stuffing.

And stuffing soup is really no different than making any soup with a starchy component, like barley soup, or bean soup.  It’s going to come out tasting of whatever seasonings were used, whatever it may have been stuffed into...but hey, that’s not a bad thing! After all, you probably liked it the first time around, right?

[pizzabass8-blog]

Carrot Gnudi with Creamy Walnut Sauce

Thanks to Vitamix for sponsoring this post!

Hello lovelies! After that brief hiatus I am well and truly back. Like properly, this time, as I’ve just actually finished all my coursework and finals for university. I haven’t *officially* graduated yet but I will officially have my Food Science and Nutrition BSc degree in about a month and a half.

So now that I’m properly moved back to London I can focus on creating recipes again! And that break has given me ample time to get inspired so there’s much content in the works. I’m also going to Portland and New Mexico in a few weeks which I’m sure will inspire some future recipes. Today, however, we’re focusing on these little gnudi (pronounced nyew-dee) dudes!

You may be wondering what these are: think of them like ricotta gnocchi but less flour-y and more ricotta-y. As a result, the dough is a LOT wetter than a classic gnocchi dough and thus, they have a little clever step to help you form them; you blob the mixture into a tray generously lined with semolina and sprinkle even more semolina on top. This then sits in the fridge for 2-48 hours so that the gnudi soak up that semolina and form a light crust around the outside. This stops them falling apart when you boil them.

Usually, gnudi are plain but here I’ve used my Vitamix Ascent Series blender to blitz cooked carrots into a puree which I folded into the dough. They’re boiled and then fried in a bit of sage butter to get super criiiiispy. I made a classic Italian walnut sauce which the Vitamix is perfect for, blitzing the nuts into THE MOST smooth, luscious sauce which sits under the gnudi. I even scattered on some roasted carrot coins to add extra flavour & veg to the dish. All in all it’s a pretty easy yet impressive dish to make (so perfect for dinner parties) but it’s also fun and a bit hands-on so is great to make with kids!

Makes 35-40 gnudi (serves ~6 people as a main or 12 people as a starter) 

Ingredients

For the carrot gnudi:

1250 g carrots, tops removed

250 g semolina

1 tbsp olive oil

2 medium eggs

500 g ricotta cheese

150 g plain white flour

salt + black pepper

For the creamy walnut sauce:

150 g walnuts, toasted

1 slice (~50g) bread, crusts removed

200 ml water

30 g Parmesan cheese, grated

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic, peeled

To finish:

3 tbsp olive oil (refined)

1 tbsp unsalted butter

12 sage leaves

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200oC (400oF). Dust two baking trays with half of the semolina.

Take 500g of the carrots and slice into 2mm thick coins. Toss on a tray with the olive oil and roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes until golden.

Make the gnudi:

Cut the remaining carrots into quarters and add to a pot of boiling water. Leave to simmer on the stove for 20-30 minutes until super soft. Drain and tip into a blender and blitz until you get a mostly smooth puree (I use the tamper stick with the Vitamix to help it all blend up). Tip the puree into a large bowl. 

Line a plate with two pieces of paper kitchen towel and dump the ricotta out onto it. Cover with two more pieces of paper kitchen towel and press down to flatten the ricotta out (this is to remove lots of the moisture from the ricotta). Peel off the paper towels and tip the ricotta into the bowl. Crack in the eggs and mix together until well combined.

Add the flour and a generous pinch of salt and ground black pepper to the bowl. Gently stir together until just combined. 

Use a mechanical ice cream scoop or a tablespoon to scoop up some of the mixture - you want about 2 tablespoons of dough per gnudi. Blob that onto the tray lined with semolina and repeat until all the mixture is used up. Sprinkle the remaining semolina over the top of the blobs (and you can even spoon the semolina off the tray onto the gnudi). Set in the fridge for 2 to 48 hours so they soak up the semolina. 

Make the walnut sauce:

Tear the bread into small pieces and soak in the water for 5 minutes. Tip the bread and water into the jug of a blender (like a Vitamix) along with the walnuts, parmesan, olive oil and garlic. Blitz until silky smooth then season with salt and pepper, to taste. 

To serve:

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Lower in some of the gnudi (I think 4-5 per person is a good amount) and let simmer for 5 minutes. 

Meanwhile heat the olive oil, butter and sage leaves in a large frying pan over a medium-low heat. Lift the gnudi out of the pot with a slotted spoon and gently place into the frying pan. Let cook until golden underneath (about 2-3 minutes) then flip and let the other side get golden before removing them from the frying pan along with the sage leaves. 

Spread a heaped tablespoon of the walnut sauce in the bottom of the bowl. Top with the gnudi, crispy sage and the roasted carrots. You can also grate some extra parmesan on top, if desired! Eat immediately. 

Recipe Notes

once the gnudi have been soaking up the semolina for at least 2 hours, you can freeze them for later: Just freeze on the baking tray for 1 hour until firm before sliding them into a sandwich bag and placing back into the freezer. You can cook them straight from frozen in 6 minutes as per usual!

Related

Source: https://topwithcinnamon.com/2018/05/carrot-gnudi-creamy-walnut-sauce.html