Cold Herbed Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Poblano Chiles and Mushrooms

Ingredients:

Gnocchi-

2 medium sweet potatoes, baked and peeled, still warm

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 tablespoon fresh sage

1 teaspoon each fresh thyme and oregano

1 teaspoon butter

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon of either canola or olive oil

Sauce-

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup sherry

1/2 poblano, julienned

1/2 lb shittake mushrooms, julienned

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon canola oil

Mise en Place:

cutting board and knife

saucepan

pastry bag and tip

scissors

large pot of boiling, salted water

slotted spoon

colander over an empty bowl or pot

Method:

Finely chop herbs. Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat and add herbs to pot. Cook until herbs are just fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Remove from pot to stop cooking and set aside in a small bowl.

Mash potatoes completely or pass through a food mill. Add herbs and salt to the potatoes and taste. You may want to add more salt or herbs, be creative! Add the flour 1/3 at a time and incorporate. My batter ended up being much wetter than normal gnocchi batter. It was sticky but not loose. One surefire way to check is to drop a little bit of the batter into the boiling water. If the noodle disintegrates, it does not have enough flour in it. Add more flour in slowly since if you add too much flour it will make the gnocchi tough and unpalatable.

Once your batter is at the right consistency place it into your pastry bag. Make sure your stove is set up with the boiling water and the colander and slated spoon near by. Squeeze and snip off with scissors bite sized pieces of the dough. I did about 1/5 of the bag at a time. When the gnocchi start to float, pull them out with the spoon and let them rest in the colander. Repeat this until all of the gnocchi are cooked.

Toss the gnocchi with the oil. If you are doing this ahead of time, they can be covered with plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator and reheated for dinner in a non-stick pan or a buttered pan.

Melt butter in a non-reactive saucepan. Sweat onions until opaque. Add sherry and reduce to 1/2 the amount.

Over medium high heat, cook poblanos until they are limp and have a little bit of a burn on them. Reduce heat and add the shittakes. Cook until they are limp and browned.

Toss all the components together, refrigerate and serve cold.

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When I made these it was 85 degrees and 80% humidity. It was the hottest I've been since northern Colombia. Instead of serving them in a red sauce that I had made, I ended up making this other sauce which would translate better if served cold. Walt really liked this dish a lot but he thought that the gnocchi looked a little weird. I'm sure they would taste nice with the salty puttenesca-esque tomato sauce I had made but I'm glad I got to see the versatility of these gnocchis.

I forgot to take a picture but will have some in the future. Let me know if you have any suggestions/ideas?