Three dishes, one post

1. Yesterday's dinner and today's lunch was curried sweet potato salad. I used yogurt instead of mayo to make it more healthful. It would have been nice to have a mango to throw in, but it was extremely tasty, especially the next day, and quick to make. Because the sweet potatoes were cut into small cubes, it only took them about 10 minutes to cook; total time from start to finish was about 20 minutes.



2. Dinner tonight was beet gnocchi sauteed with broccoli in a shallot/butter/garlic/white wine sauce and topped with some goat cheese. It took... much longer than 20 minutes. This may have been complicated by the fact that I ended up having to double the amount of flour in order to make the dough actually be dough. The gnocchi turned out light and fluffy (and a very pretty color) despite the extra flour.



3. I discovered that Andy had never had rhubarb, so a rhubarb pie was in order. I know rhubarb-strawberry pie is more common, but, in my humble opinion, it tends to get cloying and camouflage the tangy flavor of the rhubarb. One segment of the pie filling did not coagulate like the rest, oddly enough, but it was tasty nonetheless. Andy gave his highest compliments (well, to Mark Bittman's crust recipe, at least), which consisted of, "The crust has succeeded in being incredibly flaky." We're eating it with a $3 bottle of Trader Joe's wine, which doesn't taste like it cost $3 but which I would still rather be cooking with than drinking. From now on, I only drink wine that costs more than 2/3 the cost of an equal volume of Diet Coke.