Chicken Gnocchi Soup

My husband made this based on a CopyKat recipe for Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi. I love this soup. The homemade version is better than the restaurant one, by the way.

Ingredients - recipe adapted from http://www.copykat.com/2010/02/28/olive-garden-chicken-and-gnocchi-soup/?print=1

• 1 tablespoons extra virgin oil
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 quart half and half
• 1/2 cup celery, finely diced
• 1 cup onion, finely diced
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 2 14 ounce cans of chicken broth if you enjoy thick soup, use one can
• 1 cup carrots, finely shredded
• 1 cup chicken breasts, cooked and diced (we used a rotisserie chicken)
• 1 package gnocchi, small sized, cooked  (World Market always has it, if you have trouble finding it)
• 1 cup of fresh spinach coarsely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon parsley

Instructions

Saute the onion, celery, and garlic in the butter and olive oil over medium heat until the onion becomes translucent. Add the flour and make a roux - which is a gravy-like consistency. Let the butter and flour mixture cook for about a minute before adding 1 quart of half and half.

Cook gnocchi according to package directions in a separate pot.

Into the roux, add in the carrots and chicken. Once the mixture becomes thick, add the chicken broth. Once the mixture thickens again, add the cooked gnocchi, spinach, and seasoning; simmer until soup is heated through.  Before serving season to taste by adding additional salt. I like a big splash of pepper on this one after it's ladled into the bowls.

Finally! The First Batch is All Mine

Directions: Lightly rinse seeds and pick out extra large pieces of pumpkin. Leave some strings and meat. Boil in salted water for 5-7 minutes. Drain. Toss with melted butter and roast at 400 degrees, turning and shaking seeds a couple of times to prevent burning. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

Poblano Experimentation

It was really fun to hold these over the open gas flame of my stove and hear the skins "pop." I peeled the plastic-like covering off after they cooled, covered with plastic wrap to help sweat the skins away. What's next? Not sure yet. The standard is to stuff with cheese and fry in an egg batter, but I'm exploring a baked option.

Sauce Simmering: Color Doesn't Matter

Before the killing frost, I clipped as many tomatoes as I could from the vines. My idea was that some would ripen in time, and I would experiment with green tomato recipes. But, I had to go out of town, so my window for green tomato projects became small. I decided to just dump all the tomatoes not-quite-ready-eat in a pot and simmer them into sauce.

Saute three cloves of garlic in two tablespoons of olive oil. Add tomatoes. Notice that I don't peel them and only roughly chop the larger ones. Simmer until they become a sauce. I added a little sugar because some of the fruit wasn't quite ripe. The sauce was excellent and I couldn't taste a difference between the batches I did when the fruit was all ripe. It went into the freezer - to be used in future recipes.

Saving Garden Tomatoes

I'm not into canning, so I simmer my garden tomatoes into a sauce to freeze. Saute a little garlic in olive oil, add chopped onion (I don't always do this, but I had some from the garden), add roughly chopped tomatoes and summer until reduced. I don't even take the skins off the tomatoes. Sometimes, I add chopped fresh basil - but I'm saving my limited supply of garden basil for Caprese salads. I pour this into freezer containers and we use this sauce to make spaghetti meat sauce later.

I Believe in Peanut Oil

An unintentional hash brown cooking experiment Sunday morning. Potatoes on the left fried in vegetable oil. On the right, peanut oil. Peanut oil wins.

Caprese Salad

All ready to assemble. Tomatoes and basil from the garden, along with fresh mozzarella. Layer the ingredients, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegar - or Italian salad dressing. I know the salad dressing isn't traditional, but it's what we had and it was awesome.