Chef Tony Liu gave a cooking demo last week during distribution at The Queensboro focusing on winter root vegetables. If you missed it, take a peek at the photos and recipes below.

Golden Earthworm Organic Farm sent us an extra box of winter vegetables, which chef used to make two dishes – both delicious and simple.

The first was Sweet Potato Gnocchi. A very simple dough of baked sweet potato, flour, and eggs was rolled out and cut off into small pieces. These were scored with a fork to create ridges (which catch the sauce), boiled, then pan-fried with butter.

The second dish chef made was Root Vegetable Pakora. For this, a variety of root vegetables (including carrots, golden beets, and leeks) were julienned using a mandolin (though a food processor or a knife can be used instead).

The julienned vegetables were then mixed into a chickpea flour batter before being fried.

A batch of golden pakora after being fried!

A tasting plate with a vegetable pakora (left), and sweet potato gnocchi (right).

Here are the recipes. Enjoy!!

Notes:

• besan, or chickpea flour, is available at Indian grocery shops.
• in the gnocchi recipe the # sign is shorthand for “pound”, i.e. 3 pounds of sweet potatoes