Mushroom ragu with potato gnocchi

Here's a deep, dark, roasty ragu with no meat or weird meat replacements at all in it. That's all mushrooms all the time. And you could have it with any kind of pasta or just scoop it up with bread, but we're gonna make these gnocchi and cook them right in the sauce, which is more convenient and it gives the sauce a silky finish that's tough to get without the gelatin from meat. The secret to most mushroom dishes, in my opinion, is to use at least some dried mushrooms. This is a full ounce, about 30 grams. Cheap varieties. Here's a jug of boiling water from the microwave. Here's the oyster mushrooms, which are really cheap because they're easy to farm. Porcini have to grow on living trees, so they're gonna be wild, and they might have some sand on them. We'll deal with that. Give that a stir so everything soaks and sinks. Dried mushrooms have far more flavor, and particularly more umami than fresh mushrooms do. These are the flavor engine. Let them soften while we peel this one large russet potato, or any mealy potato. This will make enough gnocchi for two or three people. If you want more food, start with two potatoes. I'll just chop this up into little pieces so they'll cook faster and will simply boil until soft. Fresh mushrooms. Use any you like, but these are some lion's mane mushrooms that they had at the store. Also easy to farm, so you might be seeing them more. And the special thing about lion's mane is that it shreds, like meat. All mushrooms do this to some extent because they're all made of tiny mycelial threads, but the threads in lion's mane grow together kinda like muscle fibrils in meat, and that can give it a particularly meat-like texture and look. So I'm just pulling the lion's mane the same way that I would pull a barbecued pork butt. The pieces will shrink a fair bit, so start big. And here's something very special. This is what's left of a gorgeous chicken-of-the-woods mushroom that I foraged the other day. You'll be seeing some more of that. Chicken-of-the-woods also kinda pulls, though not in the same way as the lion's mane. It does have an incredibly firm and meaty taste and texture, but you don't have to have it. You don't have to have any of this. Just get like half a pound, 200 grams of any fresh mushrooms that you like and chop them up. I think I will do the water trick today. I've got a lot of mushrooms that I want to brown thoroughly, and if you cook them with a little water instead of oil, the water serves as a thermal interface and gets heat up into the crevices, which starts to break down the their own water, which is ample. When the pan gets dry again, I can throw in some olive oil and fry these without any danger that they'll start spilling out water and then I won't be able to brown them thoroughly, like I want to. Might as well season these a little bit. They're big enough chunks that you might be able to perceive seasoning on or in them, as opposed to just around them in the sauce. I dunno. While they go, I can just chop up my aromatics. A big carrot. I'd chop it reasonably fine, because this is not gonna cook as long as a meat ragout. Same deal with this stick of celery I have. Small pieces that will soften in the 30 or so minutes that we have left. Couple little shallots or maybe half a big onion. The mushrooms smell great, and they're starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, so I think it's time to move on. All the vegetables go in. Probably gonna need some more oil to cook all of those, and pretty quickly they should release enough water to help you deglaze that delicious mushroom fond off of the bottom of the pan. Oh, are you admiring the pan? It's from Made In, sponsor of this video. You know, if I was gonna have one pan and only one pan in the kitchen, it might be this particular one. The Made In stainless clad saute pan. If I could have only one material, it'd probably be stainless. Nothing is easier to care for and nothing is more versatile. Made In stainless clad is all made in Italy. It's used by Michelin star chefs the world over, and I just love this particular shape. It's got steep sides that maximize surface area. It's only like a 10-inch pan, super compact, but we got all this real estate for searing. And the sides are tall, and there's a metal lid so you can stew and braise in it and throw it in the oven. Like all Made In pans, it has an incredibly sturdy and comfortable handle, and this has a helper handle on the other side for when this is full of stew and heavy. Check out the stainless collection and Made In's other cookware by using the link in the description to save on your order. Use my link in the description and let Made In know that I want to give these vegetables some time. Again, this is not gonna stew for hours, so I need to soften these now. That looks good enough. In with a big squeeze of tomato paste. Stir it in and let it fry for a minute. Tomato paste does some pretty special things when it goes to like a rust color like that. It's full of sugar, so before it burns, in with some wine or whatever liquid you've got. Deglaze and reduce. One reason you generally reduce wine by itself is that, for science reasons, you can boil away proportionally more of the alcohol when it's not in the presence of a ton of water. But I'm not sure how big a difference that usually makes in practice, and some alcohol is really good for flavor. Just put stuff in and boil it. Things are starting to look a little too dry already, and as luck would have it, I have some more liquid over here. My potatoes are mashably soft, so they're done. And I will simply pour the boil water into my ragu. I need a lot of water anyway, and this water has a little potato flavor and starch, which will help make the sauce thick and velvety. Set the potato chunks aside to cool. The dried mushrooms I'll just lift out with my fingers and then chop up as fine as I reasonably can. They will play the part of ground meat in my ragu. They might still be a little chewy at this stage, but they'll soften some more as they stew. That steeping liquid is where most of the dried mushroom flavor lives now, so absolutely it goes in too. It's more flavorful than the solids themselves at this point. One trick is to hold back on the last little bit. If there was any sand on those porcini, it's gonna sink to the bottom and we can leave it behind. Might seem like too much water, but it's all gonna evaporate out as we stew. We'll probably need more water. Let's see, this tomato has a big rotten spot, so it'll be perfect for sauce. Just cut away the bad part. Oh, I guess I'm definitely using that for sauce now. All told, I've got a tomato and a half here. You could use canned tomatoes, you could use no tomatoes. It's fine. And they're gonna fall apart in the sauce. The only reason I'm chopping them kinda fine is to reduce the size of the pieces of the skin that will be left. Skin the tomato if you want, but I see little point as long as you get the pieces small. In you go with all your precious juice. Clean the cutting board. Now we can make the gnocchi. Smash up the boiled potato chunks with a fork or something. Doing it over a wide area like this helps the potato cool down really fast so you can handle it. We'll probably need roughly an equal volume of flour, but I can always add more. These will need to be seasoned on the inside, because I'm not gonna boil them in heavily salted water. And honestly, if you hide some garlic powder inside any dumpling-like mass, people are gonna think you're a genius. Time to knead. Knead it enough and knead in enough flour until it's smooth and solid and stretchy enough that you could roll it into a rough snake. Too brittle, needs a little more flour. These would come out a little more toothsome if we used some egg, but this is so close to being vegan. Let's just sprint to the finish line. You'll be surprised how good these come out with just potato and flour. Don't forget to stir the sauce. It's starting to stick to the bottom, and that is the prelude to burning. Might need more water in there. Alrighty, cut this in half and then roll out the first one. It doesn't have to be uniform, it doesn't have to be smooth. This is just the most convenient way to cut this dough into little nuggets. Remember, they're gonna swell up a lot when they cook, so cut them smaller than you want Keep them separate at this stage, or else they'll stick together. No, I'm not gonna bother putting those largely decorative ridges on my gnocchi today, but you can do it with a fork. Let's have a taste of the ragu. Needs salt. And I might take some of my salt in the form of soy sauce, just a little to reinforce the umami of the mushrooms. Grind in a ton of pepper, do a splash of vinegar if you're me, and we wanna get this basically done before we proceed. Tastes great right now, so it's time to drop in the gnocchi. We can boil them right in here. We don't need another pot. I think it's worth dropping them in just a few at a time, to make sure they don't stick to each other on the way in, and to keep too much loose flour from our board falling in and making things too starchy. These will absorb water out of the sauce, which will thicken it, and they will shed starch into the sauce, which will thicken it, so a little more water. Be conservative so you don't have to overcook your gnocchi to reduce the sauce all over again. You can always add. Once each dumpling is surrounded by sauce, you are safe to stir. They won't stick to each other now. Simmer them for a few minutes until they visibly plump and they feel and taste firm, yet pillowy. There's a lot of wiggle room here. While I wait, I'm gonna make a quick gremolata for garnish. A clove of garlic, some lemon zest, and traditionally used parsley, but I've got sage here, and then you just chop the ingredients into each other. This creates a complex-tasting, last-second garnish that really freshens up a dark stew dish, and gives it some heterogeneity, too. We seem to be done over here. Usually I brown gnocchi after boiling them. Obviously we cannot do that now, but I love what we gain in economy of dirty dishes, and I love cooking the gnocchi and the sauce together. They really do merge, thanks to all that loose starch. It might look over-sauced, but a ragu to me is more a stew than a sauce, and I really don't need a ton more carbs in my diet, but you do you. In the bowl and sprinkle that gremolata on top, ideally when the food is still really hot so it cooks the garlic ever so slightly. Well, that's a darn good looking bowl of plants. Plants and funguses, of course. Now you go eat plants and funguses. They're good.