The Great Gnocchi & Pesto Project

Last Sunday was mine and Alan's first anniversary. We went out to dinner and did our celebrating on Saturday night, and decided to have friends over for dinner on Sunday. We decided to try making gnocchi, since we'd never made it before and had wanted to try it. But do you do regular or sweet potato? Well, if you're us making it for the first time with people coming over, you decide to try both. Then you discuss sauces, and decide you can't have the same sauce for both - no, you have to make two different sauces from scratch as well. It was mayhem, especially with our little kitchen and lack of dishwasher.

I will say this - gnocchi making is an art. You wouldn't think it would be, since they're just little dumplings, you don't have to sculpt anything and there are only 3 ingredients. The art form comes in getting the right amount of flour. A recipe will tell you to add as little as possible in order to keep them light and fluffy. I'll tell you you need to make sure to add enough flour, or your gnocchi will fall apart when you cook it. It just turns into potato water. So, let as much water drain from the potatoes as possible after you cook them, and then add enough flour - but not too much - to make your dumplings.

So, the menu: regular gnocchi and sweet potato gnocchi (with and without nutmeg), and basil walnut pesto and roasted red pepper cream sauce.

Gnocchi:

2 large russet potatoes (or sweet potatoes)

1 egg

1-ish cup of unbleached flour and/or wheat flour

1 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

1. cut the potatoes in half and place them in a large pot of salted water. Bring the water to a boil, and let them cook through (this will take awhile)

2. after the potatoes are cooked, take them out and peel them quickly. Put them on some paper towels and let some water drain out of them. Then, either put them through a potato ricer if you have one, otherwise you can use a fork to scrape them into tiny pieces. Just make sure there aren't any big chunks of potato.

3. Beat the egg a little and pour it over the potato mixture, then use a spatula to mix it all together. Add the flour 1/4 cup at a time, kneading it together until it forms a dough. You want it to be moist, but not too sticky. A light dough, not a wet paste. I know - there's a lot of room in between. (If you're making sweet potato gnocchi, add the nutmeg now.)

4. Next, take a chunk of the dough (a big handful's worth) and place it on a floured surface, then roll it into a long snake about the thickness of your thumb. Cut 3/4-inch pieces, or however thick you want your gnocchi to be.

5. Boil water (you can reheat the water you cooked the potatoes in) and drop the gnocchi in in batches. They'll float to the top when they're about done; let them cook for about a minute longer after they rise to the top, then take them out with a slotted spoon and put in the next batch.

Basil Walnut Pesto

Okay, this is the easiest part of the meal, and probably the best. Honestly I'm not usually a big pesto fan, but this stuff is un-be-lievable. I may have licked the spatula a few times.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup walnuts

2 cups basil

1/3 cup olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 tablespoon butter (optional)

salt

Place the walnuts, basil, olive oil, and garlic in a food processor or blender (Vitamix whaaat!) and blend until it's thoroughly combined, but not liquified - you want it to have some texture (see picture). Add the parmesan and butter (if you want to, Alan is just telling me now that he added it) and blend again. Add salt to taste. Add a little more olive oil if it's too thick.

And that's it. Mix with pasta, put it on a baguette, do whatever with it, just know it will steal the show. It's worth the carnage it inflicted on my poor basil plant.

Roasted Red Pepper Cream Sauce

This is a cream sauce, but it's not too rich or too bad for you. I used half & half instead of cream, and it was really thick. This sauce was really good with the nutmeg sweet potato gnocchi because it's not overpowering.

Ingredients:

3 red bell peppers

1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

1/4 cup olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1 cup half & half

salt & pepper

1. put the red peppers over a burner if you have a gas stove, or under a broiler if not, and turn them so they're black on all sides. Place them in a paper bag and close it for about 15 minutes, then take them out and peel them. The black parts should all come off easily. Slice up the peppers into chunks.

2. heat the olive oil in a pan, then add the peppers, garlic, and pine nuts and saute them all together for a few minutes just to bring out the flavors.

3. pour everything in a blender or food processor and blend it until everything is completely mixed (unless you like some pepper chunks in your sauce).

4. Return it to the saute pan, and add the half & half and parmesan, and simmer until everything is uniform. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Blackberry Goodness

This is the first of my blackberry baking attempts. I wasn't sure if I should post it because I would call it only a minor success - I took it to a dessert potluck and the whole thing got eaten, but when there is warm homemade cobbler at a potluck, it gets eaten regardless. It definitely needed more butter (sometimes you just have to go for it) and my multiplying the recipe didn't allow for even egg multiplication. I made it with whole wheat pastry flour and white flour, but strangely enough the end product tasted a lot like corn meal. So, this was yummy, but not good enough for me to post the recipe and tell others to make it.

Instead... who out there has a good cobbler recipe?

Spice Up Your Salads - literally

Just a simple little something from the kitchen of a couch surfer. Every night for the past week I've had this salad along with whatever else I've thrown together, and I'm not sick of it. Not even a little. It comes down to this principle: herbs in salads. I don't know why people don't do it more. It adds a lot of flavor and texture and you don't have to do much else to it. I throw in some tomatoes and balsamic, and that's it.

So yes, I'm cheating - this is just a Trader Joe's salad mix, so this is the simplest thing ever. Even if you don't have access to TJ's, it's easy to throw together:
-red & green lettuce
-arugula
-frisee
-parsley
-dill
-cilantro
-cherry tomatoes
-balsamic vinaigrette

Obviously you can throw in whatever you want - I'm not a huge fan of parsley. You might want to include some feta or something if you have it - keep it simple and try some new herbs. Rosemary? Sage? I don't know, it's pretty bold.

Pita Chips

We did a salad bar night again for supper today. At the store, picking up a few items, I saw a bag of delicious but rather pricey pita chips that would go splendidly with the roasted pine nut hummus I had in my grocery cart. Hmm...next to the pita chips were bags of pita bread for a mere $1.50.  So, I decided to make pita chips at home.

Google churned out a number of options. I looked at the top two, and picked one that had more ratings than the first in the list of choices.

I skipped the chervil (didn't have it) and used garlic powder and salt.  For the first batch I peeled the layers of the pita pockets apart, so they were thinner and crunchier. The second batch I left the layers intact, so they were both crunchy and a bit chewy. Both were tasty.

Pita Chips from www.allrecipes.com

Pita Chips

Rated: Submitted By: Dawn Photo By: hmstarr Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cook Time: 7 Minutes Ready In: 17 Minutes Servings: 24

"These fresh-from-the-oven triangles--pre-brushed with olive oil and herbs--have a warm and crunchy warm snap that you just can't get from a store bought bag."

INGREDIENTS:

12 pita bread pockets 1/2 cup olive oil 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon garlic salt 1/2 teaspoon dried basil 1 teaspoon dried chervil

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2.	Cut each pita bread into 8 triangles. Place triangles on lined cookie sheet.
3.	In a small bowl, combine the oil, pepper, salt, basil and chervil. Brush each triangle with oil mixture.
4.	Bake in the preheated oven for about 7 minutes, or until lightly browned and crispy. Watch carefully, as they tend to burn easily!

Returning

I've had an interesting summer, most of which was spent at my in-laws' house in Nevada City, which for you Utah-ites is basically the Park City of the Sierras. It was a great summer, but as much of it was spent in someone else's kitchen, I didn't do that much experimenting with food. I did, however, use some classics on the family - the southwest quinoa went off like a rocket (that's not a saying, but I think it could be), and my coconut curry was devoured quickly (though, to be fair, the DeMartini eating habits are pretty piranha-like in general).

I also did a bit of traveling at the end of August/beginning of September: Turkey, Portugal, Croatia, and Italy. Many people find that their travels inspire their cooking - Heidi on 101cookbooks looooooves to talk about Japan, and can't seem to make anything without adding tempeh or soba. Here is how my travels influenced my cooking: if I never see another piece of pizza, I'll still live a contented life. I was on a beggar's budget, not a culinary tour, which in the Adriatic means lots and lots of slices of mediocre pizza. In Turkey, it means kebabs and turkish bagels. In Portugal, pastries. None of it was very inspiring.

I do, however, see the summer influencing my upcoming culinary efforts because of one sumptuous, beautiful, plentiful item: the blackberry. They grow wild all around northern California, and Alan has become borderline obsessive about picking them - it's like an ongoing treasure hunt. He currently has 11 ziplock gallon freezer bags full of them which he is preparing to transport to San Diego in the coming weeks, and I will have to find yummy things to do with them. My grandma told me about jam she buys that is nothing but blackberry and pectin. I love that idea - a lot of fruit jam is mostly sugar, and it seems such a waste to ruin good fruit that way. I am, however, up for any suggestions. Anything you love doing with blackberries, or have wanted to try? The main thing I miss from Europe, not surprisingly, is gelato, so maybe I'll give blackberry gelato a go. Has anyone made their own gelato before?

Salad Bar At Home

 I did a little meal planning this week (it's been a while!) with my sister-in-law who is visiting from Iowa. We have actually already made some of our planned meals! A success, no?  One of the meals was a salad bar at home. I love salad bars, and wanted to try it out. We all loved it. (Our 2.5 y/o was already in bed.  Peter was late getting home from work so we ate late with him).

Our salad bar fixings wouldn't all qualify as natural cooking, but since our blog is inclusive, I won't black out the items which seem less "natural." :)

Romaine

Diced beets (just sliced canned, chopped up)

Canned chickpeas (rinsed)

Boiled eggs

Green olives w/pimentos

Red peppers

Cottage cheese

Dill pickles

Cucumbers

Balsamic vinaigrette

We purchased some of this for the salad bar meal, but some of it was just what we had hanging about the kitchen.  And, we each used our own preferred combo of toppings for our meal.

What would you add to the salad bar? 

Introducing...

....my brother!

A couple weeks ago my wonderful brother Jon visited us in Washington Heights, NYC, from Waterbury, VT. He's "Uncle Guy" to the boys (who adore him), Guy to me and other family members, and Jon Conti to the rest of the world.

One of his many fabulous traits is that he cooks, meal plans, etc, and has great ideas on how to streamline lunch prep, and more. He is also a cyclist, skier, and more, and has fun ideas for packing good food to go.

Since I've only posted on the blog once so far, before I try to arm-wrestle him into posting a ton, I better step up. :)

Happy posting, cooking, and eating to all!