Elvira Lindqvist's Upcycled Gnocchi and Smoked Red Snapper

Award-winning chef Elvira Lindqvist shares her recipe for gnocchi made from leftover bread with 'circular' red snapper and a simple but flavourful potato broth.

Words by Sophie Miskiw. Photography by Johan Ståhlberg.

“Bread flour has become one of my favourites - it’s an easy and fun way to work with upcycling food, and a great way to give one of our most basic foods a little more cred! Bread often ends up in the trash, partly because it has a throwaway status and because we tend to prefer bread when it has been freshly baked. But even if the bread is not perfectly fresh, it still tastes great - and it’s a real shame to throw away something that still tastes good! Potato water makes a good broth that binds the dish together well, and is a lesser-used base broth for soups or sauces.”

Elvira Lindqvist

Bread gnocchi

What you need

600g Potatoes 1 Shallot 3 Sprigs of thyme 1 Egg 2.5dl Bread flour (dried and ground sourdough bread) 2.5dl Wheat flour of good quality Zest of one lemon 2ml Salt 10ml Roasted fennel seeds (seasoning can be changed depending on which vegetable is being used) 200g Small shiitake mushrooms 100g Butter Rapeseed oil 2 Sprig of thyme Pickling solution from ramson seeds

Baked fennel

2 Fennels, both stem, stalk, and dill 1 Lemon (juice of) 100ml Cold-pressed rapeseed oil 100ml Water 4 Sprigs of thyme 4 Sprigs of oregano 5ml Fennel seeds 1 Garlic clove Salt

How to make it

Bread gnocchi

  1. Pass the potatoes with the skin left on, and allow to cool.

  2. Mix together flour, bread flour, and salt.

  3. Mix the potatoes with the egg and lemon zest, and then mix into the flour mixture. Work together into a gnocchi dough, and let rest for one hour in the fridge.

  4. Shape into small balls and slightly flatten them with your thumb.

  5. Boil lightly salted water and cook the gnocchi until they begin to float.

  6. Cool quickly in ice water.

Before serving

Baked fennel

  1. Preheat the oven to 90 degrees.

  2. Boil lemon juice, rapeseed oil, water, herbs, and fennel seeds. Season with salt.

  3. Pour the solution into a vacuum bag or into a small saucepan with a lid. Add the fennel and seal the bag or put on the lid.

Smoked red snapper

  1. Lightly salt the fish and leave it for a couple of hours.

  2. Cold smoke the fish in the oven using a sheet pan, or hot smoke in a smoke box on the stove. Make sure that the fish doesn’t get too much heat which will cause it to dry out.

  3. If you cold smoke, bake the fish at 90 degrees until it reaches an internal temperature of 50 degrees.

Cut the baked fennel into pieces and heat in a pan. NOTE: Save the leftover solution in the fridge, it makes a fantastic base broth for just about any soup!

To serve

  1. Lay the gnocchi in the bottom of a bowl.

  2. Place the fennel and the fried mushrooms around the gnocchi.

  3. Break the fish into slightly smaller pieces and place between the fennel slices.

  4. Sprinkle some pickled ramson capers (it’s also fine with regular capers but the ramson gives it a little something extra!), shaved fennel stalk and fennel dill.

  5. Mix the boiling hot broth with a hand mixer and pour on the dish for the finishing touch.

Enjoy!

  1. Divide the potatoes into two parts and place in a saucepan together with a peeled shallot, thyme sprigs, and water. Boil the potatoes until they are completely soft and remove them from the boiling water (which has become a potato broth). Boil the potato broth until it develops a slightly stronger taste, and then strain.

“I am often confronted with the idea that we are destroying life in the ocean. The constant fishing, destruction of the seabed and the declining numbers of fish and extinction of species, means that I hardly eat fish anymore. Fish thrive best in water - of course, we can still fish, but not to the extent we do now. Gårdsfisk is one of the companies that is trying to give our fishy friends a little longer in the lake.

They are initially growing classic Asian herbivorous shoal fish in a circular way, using water tanks on land. They use fish manure in the water to fertilise the fields around the farm and feed the fish with what they are growing from the ground. The result is a fantastically tasty dish that is climate friendly and that saves the fish in our lakes and sea.”

  1. Cut off the stem of the fennel and set aside.
  1. Bake the fennel until it becomes soft but still has a little firmness left. This should take about 1.5 hours. Let cool in the pan.

  2. Finely shave the fennel stalk and add to ice water. Pick the fennel dill separately for garnish.

Words by Sophie Miskiw. Photography by Johan Ståhlberg.

Shiitake Mushrooms

  1. Slice the mushrooms into smaller pieces
  2. Fry on a medium heat, along with the butter and thyme, until golden.
  3. Season with salt and black pepper.