Thursday, June 9, 2016

Making Wild Greens Yuca Gnocchi

In April, I bought yuca root for the first time. It's rather expensive round these parts, about $3.90 a pound, but I wanted to give it a try and attempt to cook with it, as I heard it was a very versatile cooking ingredient, that it allows you to make a large variety of paleo foods, without any grains, without any potatoes, and even without any eggs.

I was great fun to try out this new ingredient, and of my first three experiments with yuca, one was an amazing success, yuca dough garlic knots, one was mainly a flop- strawberry swirls, and the third was ok, but could have been better- yuca crust pizza.

Then I bought yuca again, because I wanted to try to make gnocchi with them. But I was feeling really lazy and it just sat and sat and sat in my fridge until it was nearly going off. Today I said that I needed to use them up before I had to throw them out and waste all that money, so I put it to use. Not one way, but many!

You see, I really wanted to include a gnocchi recipe in my foraging cookbook, but I wanted to make it accessible for people on all sorts of different diets, and I thought including a foraged greens gnocchi made with yuca so it is both paleo and vegan would just hit the spot... but since I was already making the gnocchi as is, I decided to try it out a few different ways.

Actual recipe will have to come another day, maybe tomorrow, but for now, pics and descriptions:



Fried paleo vegan yucca gnocchi made with amaranth and lambsquarters greens.



More of the aforementioned gnocchi, though this time not plain- sauted with onions and mushrooms and more amaranth and lambsquarters.


The same gnocchi recipe, only boiled, not baked, and then topped with a sauce made by blending olive oil with white top (a type of mustard) flowers and wild allium (onion/garlic family) flowers and salt, plus cherry tomatoes.


Then lastly, much simpler gnocchi, made with the olive oil/white top/allium flower mixture, fried, and topped with a white sauce made from homemade almond butter and water and parsley.

They all tasted delicious! But if I had to pick a favorite, it probably would be the second and the fourth.

Recipes coming soon!

Ever cooked with yuca before? What did you make with it? How much does yuca cost where you live?

2 comments:

  1. I know cassava is sometimes referred to as yuca. Is it cassava you're referring to?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes! Same diff! Its what they use to make tapioca starch as well.

      Delete

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