Tejal here, filling in for Melissa.
What did I cook last week? I will tell you the truth: so many strange and delicious quesadillas for me and my toddler, built from a mix of restaurant and home cooked leftovers, held together by optimism and melted cheese.
There were quesadillas with beans, roast chicken, pickled turnips and herbs. Quesadillas with sesame snap pea chicken salad. Quesadillas with white sweet potatoes (and a smear of peanut-sesame salsa for me). Quesadillas with mashed bananas, honey and quesillo.
Now my stash of flour tortillas from Homestate is gone, and so are the beautiful blue, red and yellow corn tortillas I like to get from Komal. Quesadilla Week is officially over. New week, new scheme.
Shelf-stable gnocchi is one of those ingredients I’d never tried before I was a parent. If I was going to have potato gnocchi at home, then I was going to roast potatoes, wait for them to cool a bit, push them through a ricer, and mix the flesh with egg yolks and flour. I was going to shape the dough into little dumplings, boil them, then drain and glaze them in some kind of buttery sauce.
But I found my way to the pleasures of ready gnocchi through Ali Slagle’s fast and irresistible recipes. She gets them nice and crisp in sheet pans with sausage and broccoli, and bakes them in cream to make luxurious cheesy gratins. Tonight I’ve got my eye on her new skillet gnocchi with miso butter and asparagus.
Featured Recipe
Skillet Gnocchi with Miso Butter and Asparagus
You let the gnocchi get golden brown in a hot pan for a couple of minutes, then add whole asparagus and a mix of butter, white miso and sherry vinegar. It’s such a fun and almost salad-y way to eat the first asparagus of the season, keeping it really sweet and crisp. Mix some arugula leaves in just at the end and the dish is ready in 15 minutes — just the thing if you’re coming off a quesadilla week.
Tejal Rao is a critic at large for the Food section and contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine.
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