Potato Gnocchi with Tomato and Pancetta Sauce

First a little background. I have this cat. Kramer, aka the world's best cat. He has been for over 3 weeks now, waking me up at around 3:45 to 4am. He taps at my nose and meows. He does this at 5 minute intervals. Granted I love waking up to see his cute little face but not at that hour. He has a few health issues so needless to say he is spoiled rotten... but he is so cute.

Okay so today I am tired. Luckily I am working from home. I have no idea what I am making for dinner but all I know is that I do not want to run to the store for anything. I look and see that I have potatoes which means I can make gnocchi! I have pancetta and tomatoes and basil which could be the sauce. At lunch I popped the potatoes in the oven to bake. I was finished work by 5:30 and by 7pm we were enjoying a wonderful meal. Chris helped with the sauce, he is better at seasoning things than I am.

So I was looking through La Cucina and all the gnocchi recipes have you boil the potatoes. The recipe I use says to bake them. So that is what I did, it also required less hands on time. The recipe I used is from "From Biba's Italian Kitchen." Biba use to be on the local PBS station and my mom and I use to watch her. My mom gave me her cookbook and actually I think it was the last cookbook she gave me... hmmm. Anyway it is a great cookbook to have in your collection. The recipe is so easy.

Basic Potato Gnocchi

4 large boiling potatoes
1 tbsp salt
1 large egg, beaten in a small bowl
1 1/2 to 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wash and dry the potatoes. With a knife, make a long, deep incision in the potatoes. Put the potatoes in the oven and bake until they are tender, about 1 hour.

When cool enough to handle, peel potatoes and put them through a potato ricer or mash them with a fork. Put potatoes into a large bowl and season with salt. Add the egg and 1 1/2 cups of flour. Mix the potatoes, egg and the flour together with your hands until the dough begins to stick together.
Transfer the mixture to a wooden board and knead lightly, gradually adding the remaining flour if the dough sticks heavily to the board and to your hands. Knead the dough for 3 to 4 minutes until it is smooth and pliable and just a bit sticky. Divide the dough into several equal pieces. Flour your hands lightly, using both hands, roll out each piece of dough with a light back and forth motion into a roll about the thickness of your index finger. Cut each roll into 1-inch pieces.
Hold fork with its tines against a work board, the curved part of the fork facing away from you. Starting from the curved outside bottom of the fork, press each piece of dough with your index finger firmly upward along the length of the tines. Let the gnocchi fall back onto the work surface. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough until all the gnocchi have been formed. Place the gnocchi on a lightly floured platter or cookie sheet. they can be cooked immediately or stored in the refrigerator, uncovered, for several hours.


The sauce was made by heating up some olive oil and adding diced onions and pancetta. Those were browned and then we added a knob of butter, black pepper, tomatoes and basil. The cooked Gnocchi were added to the pan and dinner was served!

Taco Pacifico

Kind of a big game tonight, Saints vs Viking... Go Saints!
Anyway I wanted something that would involve as few dishes as possible. There is food truck in Madison that was recently written about in the New York Times, Taco Pacifico. I picked up a Tacos and a Beef Burrito. Excellent choice. The burrito was pretty big. Everything is made fresh and salsa was a good as Mike Casey's! Unfortunately they ran out of guacamole. I picked up some Mexican beer to go with dinner. The beer was good but next time I'll get Corona.

Eggplant Stacks with Proscuitto and Cheeses

This was a fun dish to make. I prepared the eggplant by baking it in the oven on an oiled tray. I first tried this after seeing it on a New York Times blog. This time I breaded the slices and it made a huge difference. The filling was simply Ricotta, Mozzarella, parsley, salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese. Added some prosciutto because... I like prosciutto. This dish was very good.

I picked up some tomatoes from my Dad's garden. I decided to freeze them. I used the procedure I had found on PickYourOwn.org. I think the outcome was good. Almost 2 pounds of tomatoes for the freezer!

And I had these bananas that were super ripe... so I googled "easy banana bread recipes." The one I found was amazing. Banana Bread from SimpleRecipes.com. So easy and fast and the smell... I can't wait for breakfast.

Polpette Di Pane (Bread Balls in Tomato Sauce)

Yesterday I had was flipping through La Cucina and came upon the recipe for Polpette Di Pane (Bread Balls in Tomato Sauce). I had a half loaf of Italian bread just sitting on the counter. I had some tomatoes that I wanted to use up so I made the recipe. The recipe is from the Puglia region of Italy.

The bottle of wine behind the jar of tomatoes is my dad's wine!

Later in the afternoon I was going through some Bon Appetit magazines and came upon the article, Less is More, Italian Style, in the May 2010 issue (the story is not available online). It was about Puglia region and the creativity of Italian peasant food. The style of cooking is, according to the article, cucina prover, "cuisine of the poor." And the most important commandment is: Waste nothing and stretch everything. Gee it reminds me of the stories both my parents told of growing up in the Depression. My dad grew up on a farm and I am sure that was the commandment in his mother's kitchen.

This is a meatless meal but I added some Sausage with made with Provolone and spinach the the dish. It was such a wonderful dinner.

Polpette Di Pane
(Bread Balls in Tomato Sauce)

1 1/2 large onion, thinly sliced
3 1/4 San Marzano Plum tomatoes, seeded and crushed
1 tbsp. chopped basil
1 1/4 cups extra virgin olive oil
5 large eggs, beaten
1 tbsp. grated pecorino
About 6 oz. stale bread (not too soft, not too hard: about 2 days old, grated
Salt

Prepare a sauce by cooking the onions and tomatoes in a pan over low heat without seasoning; when they have released their liquid but not colored pass them through a food mill. Return them to the pan and cook again for about 10 minutes with 1 teaspoon basil (or parsley), 1/4 cup olive oil, and salt. (I do not own a food mill so I used an immersion blender to puree the sauce.)
Mix the eggs in a bowl with salt, cheese and the rest of the basil. Add the bread and work together to form a soft dough. Make the dough into balls, then flatten them. Heat the remaining olive in a pan and saute the bread balls until golden. Drain on paper towels then add them to the tomato sauce. Cook for 10 minutes at low heat.

Burgers, Bulgur Salad, Grilled Cob & a Plum Tart

What a relaxing day. We kept dinner very easy. The Bulgar salad was just Bulgar, parsley, tomatoes, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. The corn was grilled, as were the burgers!

Now about that Plum Tart. I had picked up some Prune Plums at the market and could not eat them all. So I went to my iTouch and used the Mark Bittman How To Cook Everything App and typed in a search for Plum recipes. I found Free-Form Fruit Tart. I had a sweet crust in the freezer so once again very little work was required. The crust is actually the crust that I used for the Pop Tarts. I did make a change to the original recipe. I added a layer of Orange Marmalade to the bottom of the tart before I put the plums on top. Nice touch.

Another Amazing Meal at My Sister's House

I am not sure why but the food always tastes better at my sister's house. Possible a blend of her cooking and the influences of my mom and her husband's mom, who is my 2nd favorite cook ever. Everything tastes so fresh.


Okay we started with homemade hummus and chips, Caprese Salad and Stuffed Figs. The figs were from her yard, the plant came from my dad's yard. They were stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto. Need I say anymore?

Next we had homemade pasta with homemade pesto. Amazing because it was not overly garlicky!

Then we had pork loin and green bean salad from my dad's garden and I think she called them black eyed peas but oh wow they were good. Honestly the peas would have been enough for me.

For dessert she made Cherry Confetti Cake. It was my mom's recipe which I will be getting from her very soon.



We tasted a lot of different wines. And I can't decide which I liked best. It was a delicious meal with good friends and family.

Chicken Caprese

This morning I was catching up on my favorite food blogs. I was looking for an idea for what to make for dinner and I came upon Chicken Caprese from Cara'a Cravings. I had picked up beautiful tomatoes at Jake's Farm Stand yesterday so all I needed was the chicken and the Mozzarella cheese. It was very fast to prepare. My balsamic reduction needed a little work. Cara's presentation is much nicer looking than mine... but the taste was quite good. I think anything made with those tomatoes would taste incredible.

Homemade Fettuccini with Pancetta and Zucchini

Why don't I make homemade pasta more often. In an hour and 10 minutes I had made the pasta and the sauce. It is so easy and the results were delicious. There is nothing better than homemade pasta. It is so light that when you go back for seconds it really does not seem like a bad thing.

My favorite pasta recipe is from the Giada De Laurentiis Everyday Pasta cookbook. For the sauce I sauteed some pancetta, onions and zucchini. I added the leftover Vodka Sauce from the other night. I then finished it with some salt, pepper, crushed red pepper and chopped parsley.

The pasta recipe-
This makes a pound and a half (I only made half the recipe)

3 cups all purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Place the flour in the bowl of a food processor. In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add the salt and olive oil to the eggs and stir to combine. Add the egg mixture to the food processor with the flour and pulse to combine the ingredients, scraping down the sides once or twice. Continue, with the machine running, until the liquid is evenly distributed, about 1 minute. The dough should stick together if pinched between your fingers and be cornmeal yellow in color. Some of the dough will be clumping together, but it will not form a ball.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Gather the dough into a ball and knead gently until the dough is smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes before rolling and shaping as desired.

I hope everyone out there has a relaxing Labor Day weekend. Some of us have already begun relaxing.

Chicken Sausage, Zucchini, Onions and Polenta!

Delicious grilled meal! I love instant polenta. xxoxx

Sliders with Cannellini Bean and Spinach Salad

Thank goodness for Whole Foods. I picked up some sliders and salad on the way home. Too long of a day to go on about it. It was an easy meal.