Jerusalem artichoke gnocchi in a creamy rocket sauce – vegan and gluten free

Hey there!

 

For today’s recipe I’ve got a little story for you.

So have you ever heard of Jerusalem artichoke? Well I haven’t at least until two weeks ago when we were having dinner at Terasse, a restaurant in Zurich, which is worth a visit just because of its impressive architecture. Well anyways, they had a Jerusalem artichoke soup on the menu and one of the friends my mum and I were accompanied by actually ordered this soup and started raving about this unknown but apparently divine tasting root vegetable.

Well I had already forgotten about it when on Christmas Eve I received an e-mail of this one friend who couldn’t stop talking about this obscure root vegetable. So in the e-mail she wrote that her brother who’s living on the Uetliberg had actually just harvested around 6kg of Jerusalem artichoke and that he would kindly make some available for me if I so I happened to be interested. Since I am a lover of any extraordinary food and I am always nosy to try new ingredients I obviously accepted the offer straight away. So this week I finally received the long awaited Jerusalem artichoke and I was super eager to finally have a go at preparing them.

 

Since my godmother was visiting us I thought it would be the perfect time to finally make use this special root vegetable. I decided to prepare some gnocchi, which were served in a creamy rocket walnut sauce. I also added some thinly sliced tomato for a pop of colour and that was really it.

 

I actually kept this dish completely vegan, so I didn’t add any eggs to the gnocchi, the only other ingredient I used was some buckwheat flour and well some salt and red pepper flakes, but that was already all the ingredients added to the batter.

 

Ordinary gnocchi tend to be rather heavy and doughy, yet these were incredibly light and on top of that tasted absolutely amazing.

So my first Jerusalem artichoke experience ended up being a true success and I am already looking forward to work with the other 1.2 kg I’ve still got waiting in my pantry.

 

Well I guess now it is on you to try something new, there you go, here’s the recipe to this special pleasure.

 

 

 

 

• 600g peeled Jerusalem artichoke (800g unpeeled)
• 250g buckwheat flour
• 30g walnuts
• 75g rocket
• 2tbs nutritional yeast
• 1 thinly sliced tomato (you could also use halved cherry tomatoes, I just didn’t have any around)
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper flakes
• water
• 1dl Prosecco/ white wine (optional)

 

1. Peel your Jerusalem artichokes and boil them in salted water until they’re soft and tender.
2. Put your boiled Jerusalem artichokes aside and let them cool. Meanwhile you can prepare the base of your creamy rocket sauce.
3. Add 1tbs of olive oil as well as your nutritional yeast, the walnuts and 50gramms of your rocket into a food processor, process until you end up with a smooth paste, then put aside for later
4. By now your Jerusalem artichoke should have cooled down quite a bit and it is time to mash them into a smooth puree, I used a food processor to achieve the desired texture you could however also do it with a potato masher, it will just take a bit longer
5. When you’ve got your Jerusalem artichoke puree ready add 250g of buckwheat flour, a dash of red pepper flakes and some salt then combine the mixture until you end up with a fairly sticky batter.
6. Now shape your batter into individual gnocchi, I just dusted some baking paper with flour and then shaped my gnocchi with two teaspoons
7. When you shaped all your gnocchi, boil some water, salt it and add your gnocchi. You can probably add around ten at once, then you just have to wait until they’re floating on the surface which means you can remove them with the help of a skimmer
8. When all the gnocchi are boiled heat up some olive oil in a pan and add the gnocchi and fry until slightly browned, then lower the temperature add your previously made rocket paste, 2-3dl of water and your prosecco/white wine, mix it all through and add more water if your sauce isn’t creamy enough
9. Right before you serve it add your thinly sliced tomato as well as the rest of your rocket and now plate it up and enjoy!

 

 

Voila, you just made a truly delicious, slightly different and a hundred per cent vegan dinner. I think this is a perfect meal to serve when you’ve got guests over. Although you aren’t serving any fancy cuts of meat or a whole fish you still made the effort to reach out for some rather unusual ingredients. Not only do the ingredients impress the taste does as well, this tasted absolutely amazing, which was approved by my godmother as well as my mum who had the pleasure of enjoying this delight.

Bisous

Fanny, the foodie