Tetragone a l'ail/Sauteed New Zealand Spinach with Garlic

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2009

I was planning to take a break from Lydie this week, as I had a few other recipes I wanted to try. For one, this month’s Eating Well magazine has a recipe for gnocchi. I thought I would try again to make gnocchi that didn’t fall apart in boiling water. I’ve been a little emboldened by watching a young friend and great cook make gnocchi a few weeks ago while we were on a hiking trip. She was so non-chalant and made it look so easy. Well, this recipe from Eating Well worked! Little intact puffs of potato dough popped up in the boiling water! I then sauteed them and mixed them with chicken sausage and pesto. Very tasty. I realized I needed a side dish to compliment the gnocchi. Something green, perhaps. The farmer’s market is still going, though it is a shadow of its former self, especially since it was raining on Saturday. I did find some nice fresh Autumn spinach. I decided to use Lydie’s recipe for sauteed New Zealand spinach. On the internet I learned that New Zealand has a fuzzier, smaller leaf than ordinary spinach. What I used was ordinary, but it worked just fine. This is an extremely simple recipe and pretty much the way I’ve cooked spinach before: just fresh spinach sauteed in olive oil with slivers of garlic. Couldn’t be easier and couldn’t be tastier. I will definitely add this to my repertoire.