Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Fried Basil and Chestnut

I am the first to admit that my strength’s in the kitchen are centered around the sweet stuff. Last time I cooked fish it was a disaster! But I do try and sometimes I actually succeed and this was definitely one of those times. In the penultimate edition of Gourmet quite a few things caught my eye and have been added to my “to cook” list but this was the first I decided to tackle. I had been wanting to try gnocchi for quite a while both because i’ve never eaten it and wanted to try making it. It also seemed like a perfect autumn dish what with the main ingredients being gnocchi sage and chestnut – cant really get much more on season than that in my mind.

Quince Quince Everywhere

Up until this past week I had never had Quince, but this time every year I always get intrigued by the many posts extolling the virtues of this elusive fruit. I headed off to Leeds Kirkgate Market, which is normally pretty good, hoping to track down myself some fruit but none of the greengrocers had it, one hadn’t even heard of it, he just gave me an odd quizzical look making me feel stupid like I had asked in a foreign language. I reluctantly gave up hope, maybe its just not possible to get the fruit in the north, maybe we don’t have the weather to grow them, dejected I gave up. A couple of weeks later I was in London visiting my brother and at a bit of a loose end I ended up wandering around Borough Market and unplanned, and not exactly conveniently, left with a rather large (and quite expensive) bag of quince.

Omelette with Chorizo and Parsley

Since I stated in the last post I would cook at least one recipe from any food magazine I buy I’ve started off as I mean to go on and this is the second recipe from the October edition of “Olive” (yes I made this and the apple cake a little while ago). I wanted something simple but very tasty and fast and this jumped off the page and I cooked it as soon as I got back from the supermarket. This is one of those recipes that food magazines include but its not an article, or with detailed directions, its more of a sidebar throw in, but often these recipes are the simple tasty things I feel like cooking for diner. I really enjoyed this, it was perfect for a quick diner and im definite i’ll cook this in the future.