photo/Des Szwiec
Gnocci with Sunflower Seed Pesto and a Side of Home-Buying Malaise
The meat thermometer I left on the counter reads 92.3 degrees. I don’t care — I’m doing something. My husband, our baby and I need dinner, ordering out is expensive, and we have both leftovers and ingredients in the fridge that are ticking time bombs in my mind. Failure to disarm will cause a devastating explosion of wasted food and money. The aftermath will be thrown into the compost bucket. Forty percent of the food we grow gets thrown away, I sternly remind myself.
As I transform Monday night’s uneaten baked potato into light, pillowy dumplings for my family, I remember having to do this in an arguably nicer kitchen thousands of miles away to feed rich people who never knew me, nor cared to. For a dozen years, this work was my passion, my dream. I sought to soar through the ranks as I honed my culinary skills and eventually become a head chef somewhere, cruising the world to stage in those beautiful kitchens I saw on TV and in books about celebrity chefs.
Let’s be honest: even eating at any of those fancy restaurants was never in the cards for me. But that didn’t matter. Working beneath passionate, creative souls who could teach me to make things in the kitchen I never dreamed about as a kid from a rustbelt town was everything to me.
Now my task was to transform the food in my fridge into something even my picky husband would enjoy. I pulled out garlic scapes, basil and cherry tomatoes, an egg from a farmers’ market visit a couple Saturdays prior, shaky parm, regular parm, and the leftover baked potato that instigated this whole thing. Some people plan their meals and shop accordingly. I can never be bothered to do that, but I’d bought some garlic sausage earlier that day so there’d some sort of protein.
As I tossed the slit-open potato in the steamer basket over a pot of boiling water, I turned to the dishes we’d been ignoring for the last day or two because we dared not enter the sweltering kitchen. That’s when my mind turned to the other source of the background anxiety I’ve been trying to ignore: How the hell are we going to find a house by the time our lease ends in March? The one-bedroom we occupy is smothering us two adults, our year-old baby and two cats. Even the Bikini Kill blaring from my phone wasn’t loud enough to drown out that nagging question.
We just managed to scrape together a meager sum for a down payment, thrown into a CD in the hope it will generate a few hundred more dollars while we find a permanent place to live. In this shitty economy, at least high interest rates mean high interest rates for savings portfolios. My Polish-American distain of gambling makes the stock market an utterly unattractive option.
We’ve also been dragging our feet on the house-hunt because we’re reluctant to leave the wonderful Ferry Village neighborhood of South Portland. Nearly everything we need is within walking distance down the Green Belt. Houses anywhere in South Portland are dismally high-priced and in short supply. Some people have the gall to charge over $400,000 for a place that isn’t even livable without significant work. We agreed to re-sign a shorter lease for our beloved shoebox while we continued to look for something acceptable within our price range. We’re approved for a home loan of up to $325,000. You can’t even buy a meth house for that.
And may the gods forbid you ask for a home inspection these days, according to a handful of other would-be homeowners, including my sister-in-law: all you’ll get is your offer rejected. Even offering more than the asking price will get you rejected if you request an inspection.
At least good credit, a concept invented in the Reagan Era, is on our side. But a full-time cook and a dispatcher who works part-time don’t make enough to plant a flag here. With childcare as expensive as it is, we try to balance working enough hours to generate income with time off work that enables us to lessen that expense. If worse comes to worst, we’ll search for a larger apartment or look to buy in the cheaper areas like every other Gen-Y or Gen-Z person priced out of Greater Portland.
Optimistically, I’ve also recently launched a plastic-free, candle-jar refill business, but due to my acute lack of flair or cash to advertise, it has yet to bear fruit.
The gnocchi is now floating happily in the simmering water, so I have that going for me. While I leave them in there — about two minutes — I zip up the pesto in the food processor. I’m ready to brown the garlic sausage and finish things off. For kicks and giggles, I toss in a couple cherry tomatoes that gush open as they hit the sizzling pan. The gnocchi go in next, to get a little color on them, then the pesto, as I cut the heat off and chop the browned sausages into bite-sized chunks.
We don’t have a home to call our own yet, but at least dinner is ready.
Potato Gnocchi
Yield: about 4 half-cup servings
Ingredients
1 Russet potato, baked or steamed
1 Large egg
½ Cup all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
¼ Cup granulated “shaky” parmesan cheese
Kosher salt to taste (Maybe you add Italian seasoning too. Whatever, I’m not your mom. Get as funky as you please, dude. Just don’t use table salt)
Olive oil as needed (“extra virgin” olive oil is a lie, but that’s another story)
Warm your tater to a temperature approximate to that of your lover’s cheek. With a spoon, peel the potato skin and compost it, or feed it to wildlife.
Grate the potato, or use a food mill to break it down. Beat the egg and throw it in, followed by the shaky parm, salt and flour. Less flour means a lighter gnocchi, but the dough is gonna be sticky. Add more if your gnocchi doesn’t stick together in the water.
Clean and dry your counter. Get a pot of water boiling and salty as the sea. Have a foil-lined sheet tray next to your pot, drizzled with olive oil. Gather a knife or bench scraper, a fork, a slotted spoon, and a small bowl with about ¼ cup of flour to use as needed. Sprinkle some flour on your counter and hands.
Turn out the dough (keep that bowl for a sec, though) and roll it with your hands into a cylinder, then cut that cylinder in half and put one half back in the bowl until the first it cut to its final size, to save space. Roll the cylinders until they’re a couple feet long and about ¼ inch thick and cut them into ¼ to ½ inch pieces.
Work quickly to roll the gnocchi onto the back of your fork, using two fingers to make them dumpling-shaped. It’s OK if you have small, awkward pieces here and there — just mash a couple together to make a better gnocchi. Bonus points for trying.
Turn down the water so it’s simmering — you want gentle, small bubbles; boiling will destroy gnocchi. Drop a couple in to make sure they have enough flour to maintain their shape (and just to get the hang of it). After about 30 seconds, gently swirl the slotted spoon around the pot to keep them from sticking. When the gnocchi floats, let it simmer for another minute, then remove from the water and drop onto the sheet tray. Roll the tray slightly to lightly coat the gnocchi in olive oil.
Sunflower Seed Pesto
Yield: 1 cup
Ingredients
½ Cup sunflower seeds
1 Bunch fresh basil, torn
½ Bunch parsley
3 Garlic scapes, trimmed at the ends and chopped into inch-long pieces (substitute 3 cloves of fresh garlic if scapes aren’t available)
¼ Cup fresh parm, grated or peeled (in a pinch, shaky parm is fine)
½ Cup fresh lemon juice and zest
½ Cup olive oil
¼ Cup ice water
Kosher salt to taste (don’t come at me with table salt for any of this)
Add all the dry ingredients and lemon to your food processor or blender. Grab a silicone spatula before you start and scrape down the edges as you go. Also add a drizzle of ice water as you go, just enough to help everything blend.
With the blender on low, drizzle in olive oil until the pesto is smooth and emulsified, or leave it chunky — your call. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Des Szwiec also has a Substack page for her musings and recipes called Some People Paint.
