Chicken Leek Gnocchi Soup @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ve told you about my bean club, and maybe I’ve mentioned ordering poultry and beef from Butcher Box (since the pandemic.) But now I’m testing a new to me vegetable mail order company called Farmer Jones Farm. For some reason, good produce doesn’t seem to make its way down to Key West, even though it’s warm (or hot!) here most of the year. So far, I’ve gotten two shipments of vegetables and they’ve been so much better than what I see at the grocery store, not to mention regeneratively grown. 

This soup was the result of bits and pieces I had left to use—leeks, carrots, and kale. Apparently, Olive Garden has a popular chicken gnocchi soup though I’ve not tasted it. But I started with that recipe and tweaked it to add more vegetables. It’s a good recipe to use up leftover cooked chicken that you have in the freezer.

Ingredients

3-4 tablespoons butter

4 or so small leeks or two large

3 sticks of celery, sliced

1 cup carrots, diced

2 small garlic cloves or one large, minced

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 to 2 cups half-and-half or whole milk

4 cups chicken broth

½ teaspoon mustard powder

2 cups diced cooked chicken

12 oz. frozen potato gnocchi

1 cup fresh spinach or kale, roughly chopped

Fresh parsley

½ tsp red pepper flakes, optional but really good

Salt and pepper, to taste

Slice the leeks, the celery, and the carrots. Melt the butter in a large pan and sauté those vegetables for a few minutes until soft. Add the chopped garlic and sauté for a minute or more. Add the 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour and the mustard powder and stir that until beginning to thicken. Slowly add the chicken broth, stirring frequently like a gravy. Sprinkle in black pepper and red pepper. 

Simmer for 10 minutes or so, then add the chicken and the gnocchi. Simmer another few minutes until the pasta is cooked through. 

Add the milk and the kale and simmer until the kale is soft. (I also added some chopped fresh parsley because I had it in the fridge.) 

We found this delicious—I added no salt, but more black pepper. And served with corn bread. Yummy!

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including USA Today bestselling A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. You can order that wherever books are sold. If you’re all caught up, try Lucy’s first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS.

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Pasta Fagioli, #Copycat Olive Garden-style #crockpot #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I know what you are saying: When is this poor woman going to get her oven back so she can get off the crockpot kick? For almost two months, I desperately wanted the answer to that question, too. (As of last week, I have one, yay!)
Meanwhile, the crockpot recipes continued…this time with a delicious knock-off of Olive Garden-style* pasta fagioli.


My version was lower sodium (you can read more about that below,) but quite spicy and delicious (she said modestly.)
Ingredients

1 1/2 pound ground beef
One large onion, chopped
Three large carrots, chopped
Four stalks of celery, sliced
One heaping teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
6 to 8 leaves of fresh basil
2 teaspoons oregano
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes and sauce
20 oz spaghetti sauce (I used Gia Russo's Hot Sicilian)
2 and ½ cups low sodium beef broth (or 3/5 box of regular broth and add some water)
1 cup Ditalini pasta
One can white or red kidney beans, low-sodium, rinsed
Fresh spinach, about 4 oz
Parmesan for grating on top

Brown the beef and drain grease.

Add the remaining ingredients to the crockpot, up to the point of the pasta.
Cook on low 7-8 hours or high 4-5 hours.

During last 30 min on high or 1 hour on low, add pasta, beans and spinach.
Serve with crusty bread and grated Parmesan if you wish.

*Soup in restaurants is generally very salty. So naturally I made some adjustments to the recipes I saw on Pinterest.


This entire pot of soup contains roughly 3500 mg of sodium. There are probably 10 servings in the pot, so 350 mg per serving. (This is calculated from the tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and beef broth. Read your labels carefully, as these ingredients vary greatly in sodium content. The celery, carrots, and spinach also contain naturally occurring sodium. Tabasco sauce, 35 mg per teaspoon. Ground beef, 450 mg per 1.5 lbs.)


Lucy writes the Key West food critic mysteries. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!