Gnocchi adventures

Gnocchi, I believe is the ultimate in Italian pasta's. Flavourful and light, requiring patience to make and simplicity in presentation are its hallmarks.
I make it a point to ask the waiter at an Italian restaurant whether they serve it and if yes, I close the menu and ask for it. I've had some great gnocchi at the F&B restaurant, spoken to the chef and tried to replicate it many a time.

My attempts thus far have resulted in tough, rubbery bits of potato and flour. This time, I decided to go easy on the flour to test the other side of the recipe. Heidi Swanson in her blog talks about her method of making gnocchi. Thats what I based my recipe on this time, minus the egg and russel potato's - I dont believe the chefs in Bangalore bother much about the type of tuber they use.

With the wife busy with glasswork, cooking for lunch on Saturday fell on me.

Step1. Boiling the potatos. Thanks to that ubiquitous kitchen gadget - the pressure cooker, this got done in under 10mts. Added some sweet potato as well to the mix.
Once done, skinned and mashed the potato's with a fork to get it all together. The recipe calls for seasoning with salt at this stage, once the mash has cooled. In hindsight, I believe this most probably resulted in the mass getting gooey with all the water being expelled from the tuber.

Started off bringing the dough together by sprinkling dough over the lump of potato and gently kneading the mix with a fork. I must have used about half a cup of flour for 2 standard sized potato's

Once done, I cooked these in boiling water. Was pleasantly surprised to see them bob up to the surface in a few minutes. Of course, its not magic - they were cooked and done at the time and so the rising.

The accompaniments to this were a simple zucchini and cherry tomato combination with a cream and blue cheese sauce, which eventually turned out to be over the top. Notes to self - cut down on creamy sauces and use pesto or tomato based sauces instead, there's more you can innovate with those.

Verdict - ok for a genuine first attempt. As is evident from the photographs, the gnocchi came out gooey. I'm ok with that since I've now straddled the boundaries of flour addition quite well. The next attempt should be better.

If its Friday it must be Chinese!!

The remaining pasta dough from the previous ravioli adventure and some great bok choy and fresh looking oyster mushrooms were good enough to think 'Chinese'!!
No expert at cooking it, but had a general idea on what I wanted to make. Quickly thawed out the dough from the refrigerator. While that happened, added the ubiquitous ginger-garlic to hot oil. I'd bought some poblano chillies from the US a while ago and decided it was a good idea to experiment. I dunked one gigantic chilly in hot water for 10mts, drained, de-seeded and cut it into ribbons to add to the bok choy and oyster mushrooms. Mixed in a bit of soy sauce and was good to go with my topping.
Cut out tagliatelle-shaped noodles, cooked these in hot water and ladled them onto serving plates directly. Topped these with the veggie mix and toasted pecans and pine nuts.

Verdict - quite good. could have made do with a little oil for the noodles coz they dried out pretty quick when left on the plate.

From Sale of Stock you get......Homemade Ravioli!

The title is as cryptic as you want it to be, the food turned out to be simple.

Cooking in the work week is a stress buster for me. Fresh pasta ensures I spend at least an hour in the kitchen making up my mind on what to cook with what I have. Ever since tasting the tortellini in Toscano's, I've wanted to test whether I could do better. The gnarled pasta that was served may have been a rustic take on the pure version, but I remember more flour than filling in the dish.

Last weeks motz making yielded about a cup of ricotta - enough for about 20 medium ravioli pieces. The filling I made was with roasted onion and finely chopped spinach, mixed in with freshly made sun-dried tomato (yup, sunny days are back) and basil. As an afterthought, I crumbled some blue cheese over the entire lot.

Taste - yum!

Like Hair, only with Cheese - Braided Motz

Mozzarella, in my opinion, is the most gratifying of Italian cheese. The simplicity in texture, taste and appearance makes it an 'any time, any place' cheese.
My experiments with mozzarella have been mixed, probably one of my most successful cheeses that I have attempted.
Today being a holiday and me not having attempted a cheese in over a month, I found myself at the cowshed with the brat in tow at 7.30am
I was lucky to have enough curd at home for my starter and the whole process took about 8hrs.
This time, I was surprised at the elasticity of the finished product and quickly tried a braid - something I've only seen on TV. It was one of those wow moments, perfect braid.
Not sure how I'm going to use the braid apart from on fresh pizza, but mighty thrilled with the outcome.