Making Wild Greens Yuca Gnocchi

In April, I bought yuca root for the first time. It's rather expensive round these parts, about $3.90 a pound, but I wanted to give it a try and attempt to cook with it, as I heard it was a very versatile cooking ingredient, that it allows you to make a large variety of paleo foods, without any grains, without any potatoes, and even without any eggs.

I was great fun to try out this new ingredient, and of my first three experiments with yuca, one was an amazing success, yuca dough garlic knots, one was mainly a flop- strawberry swirls, and the third was ok, but could have been better- yuca crust pizza.

Then I bought yuca again, because I wanted to try to make gnocchi with them. But I was feeling really lazy and it just sat and sat and sat in my fridge until it was nearly going off. Today I said that I needed to use them up before I had to throw them out and waste all that money, so I put it to use. Not one way, but many!

You see, I really wanted to include a gnocchi recipe in my foraging cookbook, but I wanted to make it accessible for people on all sorts of different diets, and I thought including a foraged greens gnocchi made with yuca so it is both paleo and vegan would just hit the spot... but since I was already making the gnocchi as is, I decided to try it out a few different ways.

Actual recipe will have to come another day, maybe tomorrow, but for now, pics and descriptions:

Fried paleo vegan yucca gnocchi made with amaranth and lambsquarters greens.

More of the aforementioned gnocchi, though this time not plain- sauted with onions and mushrooms and more amaranth and lambsquarters.

The same gnocchi recipe, only boiled, not baked, and then topped with a sauce made by blending olive oil with white top (a type of mustard) flowers and wild allium (onion/garlic family) flowers and salt, plus cherry tomatoes.

Then lastly, much simpler gnocchi, made with the olive oil/white top/allium flower mixture, fried, and topped with a white sauce made from homemade almond butter and water and parsley.

They all tasted delicious! But if I had to pick a favorite, it probably would be the second and the fourth.

Recipes coming soon!

Ever cooked with yuca before? What did you make with it? How much does yuca cost where you live?