Nudies

These are essentially gnocchi made from swiss chard, ricotta, and egg.





























The recipe is from the cookbook Red White & Greens: The Italian Way with Vegetables, which I picked up in the discout bin of a bookstore.

According to the book "In the Florentine dialect they're called gnudi, nudies, poking fun at a dish from the Casentino, a neighboring area that makes their greens and ricotta gnocchi with the same filling Florentines use for ravioli. Nudies because they're not wearing pasta."

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chiles rellenos

They look rather gross, but they taste fanstastic.

Time, including prep: about 45 minutes if you work quickly

Ingredients:
8 poblano peppers
1/2 cup cheese (jack or cheddar are good)
3 eggs
canola oil

1) Roast the poblano peppers
2) While the peppers are roasting, separate the eggs and cut the cheese into matchsticks.
3) Peel the peppers
4) For each chile: slit the side open and remove the seeds. Fill the pepper with cheese. Close the pepper with a toothpick

• Note: This is the hardest step because the roasted peppers are weak and flabby. When you remove the seeds, they try to break. When you put the cheese in, they try to split open. The toothpicks slide through their tender flesh. It might be easier if you only partially roast the peppers, but then the skin would not peel off as easily.

5) Begin heating about 1 inch of canola oil in a frying pan (cast iron if possible)
6) Beat the whites of 3 eggs until stiff.
7) Beat the yolks into the beaten whites.
8) Take a pepper and coat it in flower. Then cover it in beaten egg.
9) Fry the pepper in about 1 inch of canola oil, turning once.
10) Drain the pepper on papper towels. If you have peppers left, go back to step 6.

You are supposed to make a true chile relleno sauce, but bottled hot sauce works fairly well.

A an added bonus of making this recipe is that your cast iron pan will end up beautifully seasoned.
















A roasted pepper, ready to be peeled
















Why so much batter? The recipe we used called for 5 eggs. That resulted in a mountain of batter. We still only used about half of it.

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