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!
