Passover Spinach Ricotta Gnudi

Spinach ricotta gnudi, made with no wheat flour, are my latest recipe, just in time for Passover. This week marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites liberation from Egypt and also Spring, rebirth, renewal, freedom, belonging, ...you get the picture. Since the Israelites had to flee their oppressors quickly they didn't have time to allow bread to rise, so the story goes. To commemorate that time, during Passover Jews eat foods made with matzo meal or matzo cake meal, but not with regular flour. Most other non-wheat flours are also not allowed. Gnudi are a little larger and plumper than gnocchi but somewhat similar. Some people think of them as "ravioli without the pasta."  This recipe is very easy because you use one of those "blocks" of frozen spinach. The secret is getting as much water as possible out of the spinach. You want the dough to be very stiff. Rolling the dumplings in potato starch also helps keep them from falling ......

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Double Stuffed Baked Potato Recipe

David Lebovitz and I should never go out to dinner together. Why? Because I have a wandering fork. I love sharing food for several reasons. First of all, I can rarely decide what I want, so sharing generally means I get to try more than one thing. Also I fear I have bad ordering karma and will choose the worst thing on the menu and be stuck with it if I don't share. Finally, I don't like massive portions so sharing also helps me keep from eating way more than I want. A few years ago there was a diner that was known for serving gigantic portions and my mother and I used to share a double stuffed baked potato and salad. It was one of those potatoes that was way over a pound to begin with and then it had loads of vegetables in it. It probably wasn't as healthy as I like to believe it was. The restaurant and the potato are long gone now but for years I have tried to recreate it. This latest version is my best effort to date. My double stuffed potato is really just a formu......

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Spinach Fig Salad Recipe

Summer is the season for salads. Some days it just gets too hot to turn on the stove. And you never get quite as hungry on those days anyway. A salad for dinner makes perfect sense. Still I am always challenged to figure out how to make salad feel like a meal. Especially without adding fish or grilled meats. Friday night was one of those salad nights. I had planned on making a chickpea and spinach dish but cooking was out of the question. A spinach salad was devised instead. Fortunately there were several delicious things on hand to make the salad something special. In this case Stilton cheese, red onions that were "bloomed" in vinegar, glazed pecans, and Mission figs. I think the secret to a salad that feels like a meal is a formula of three elements. First off it needs some protein. It can come in the form of grilled chicken or fish or even steak. Or it can come in the form of cheese or nuts or beans. The second element is layers of flavors. Just as a good vinaigrette ......

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Spinach & Yogurt Soup Recipe

When I was growing up there was a good, inexpensive restaurant my family ate at frequently. They had a very simple menu, mostly fresh fish and burgers, nothing fancy. But every meal started with a salad or their famous Leek and Spinach soup. It was so popular that the proprietor put the recipe up on the window for all to see. As I recall it was a package of Knorr brand Leek and Potato soup mix made according to the recipe box and a package of chopped frozen spinach mixed in at the end. He served it with a thin slice of lemon on top. To this day I keep a package of Knorr Leek and Potato soup mix on hand, just in case. What I learned from that recipe is that recipes don't have to be complicated to be good. Sometimes the best recipes are the simple ones. Certainly when ingredients are at their peak of freshness and are high quality, less is more. As an example, Italians rarely cook fresh tomatoes. They are so good raw they eat them that way. Canned tomatoes are for cooking but fres......

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