Potato Gnocci

Potato gnocchi is one of those things that I've heard is really challenging for the home cook to make. However, due to my love of potatoes, I've always been tempted to try cooking it myself. I've tried the store-bought gnocchi from the pasta aisle at the grocery store, but I really wasn't that impressed with them, but nonetheless, hearing people talk about how lovely and light these potato dumplings can be, I had to give it a try.

The website Italian Food Forever has been of constant inspiration to me over the last few months, and I've found a number of fantastic recipes there, so I decided to go with the potato gnocchi recipe on that website. If you do plan on trying to make gnocchi, have a look at the step-by-step guide to making gnocchi too.

I've heard that one of the most challenging things about making potato gnocchi at home is that people tend to overwork the dough, so the gnocchi end up being really tough and dense, but this recipe seems to work because you bake the potatoes rather than boil them. This means that you don't have to add as much flour to the dough, and it also means you don't have to overwork the dough as a result. I combined the baked potato, egg, salt, and only one cup of the required flour until it was just mixed. Then I kneaded it as the recipe calls for until it was a smooth ball of dough. At this stage, I found rolling the dough out into ropes was incredibly simple. Then I cut the dough into 1-inch pieces and used a fork to make a few indentations. Then I set them aside in the fridge until I was ready to cook them.

Like pasta, you boil a pot of salted water to cook the gnocchi. Then you drop the gnocchi into the water and wait for them to float. Once they're floating at the top, they're cooked. 

I really wanted the gnocchi to shine, so I made a very basic tomato sauce using a can of crushed tomatoes, an onion, three or so cloves of garlic, some fresh oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, and pepper. I began by cooking the diced onion and chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil. Once those seemed soft, I added the can of tomatoes, a pinch of red pepper flakes, pepper, and the fresh oregano. I saved the fresh basil to garnish the gnocchi along with a bit of parmesan cheese.

I was surprised at my success making the gnocchi for the first time, as they were light, didn't fall apart on me, and weren't dense at all. I love Italian Food Forever's recipe and highly recommend it for first-time gnocchi makers.

Spring Mushroom Ravioli with Asparagus

I love ravioli and have only ever made homemade ravioli at home once, but it's just so much time and effort to just get 10 raviolis per person. However, my sister and I were at the grocery store one day deciding what to have for dinner, and I noticed some wonton wrappers and suggested to her that we buy those to make some kind of ravioli. I had heard of using wonton wrappers instead of making your own pasta dough to make making ravioli from scratch a lot easier on time and effort.

Making your own pasta dough from scratch is really fun and rewarding, but the mixing of the dough combined with allowing it time to rest, and also rolling the dough out makes it a really big effort. Not to mention, you still have to make a filling, fill the dough and cut the raviolis out of it, make a sauce, and cook the ravioli. Using wonton wrappers meant that I only had to make a filling, assemble and cut the ravioli, cook them, and make a sauce. It's still a lot of work, but it's a lot less than if you make your own pasta dough.

Here's the recipe I came up with.

Pasta Dough

1 package of wonton wrappers

Mushroom Filling

1 package of roughly three portobello mushrooms
1 package of white mushrooms
1 small onion
4-6 garlic cloves
butter
fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce 
parmesan cheese
olive oil
garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch of asparagus
salt and pepper to taste

For the filling, cut the onion into chunks. Peel the garlic. Process the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cloves in a food processor.

Heat a pan with a bit of butter and once heated, toss the mushroom, onion, and garlic mixture into the pan to cook. At the stage that you start to cook the mushroom mixture, add the fresh thyme, and salt and pepper (I don't recall exactly how much thyme I used, but keep in mind that it's a strong flavour, so you probably only need 3 teaspoons or so; I just eye-balled it.)

Once the mixture looks cooked, take it off the stove and set aside to cool slightly.

Once the mixture is cooled enough, you can began filling the wontons with the filling. Take a wonton sheet and spoon roughly a teaspoon of mushroom filling in the middle. Cover the filling with another wonton sheet and carefully press the dough around the filling to get rid of air. Use a ravioli cutter to cut the ravioli; a ravioli cutter will not only cut but seal the ravioli. When the ravioli are assembled, place them on a floured baking sheet and cover so that they don't dry out.

When you're ready to cook the ravioli, bring a pot of salted water to a gentle boil and when it's at a gentle boil, drop the ravioli in. When they float, they should be done.

Cook the asparagus in a pot of water until just cooked; the asparagus should be a bright green still and you should be able to stick a fork our knife into it easily.

For the sauce, heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and, once heated, add the chopped garlic. Once the garlic looks soft and cooked, add the cooked asparagus to the mix and some salt and pepper. Toss the cooked ravioli in and some parmesan cheese to taste.

For serving, you can top the pasta with more cheese. This recipe makes approximately 10 raviolis for 3 people.

Recent Cooking Projects

I haven't been cooking many things lately that are out of the ordinary and worthy of posting on this blog, but I did recently make Thomas Keller's soup cracker recipe from the Ad Hoc cookbook, and also some simple apple tarts.

The crackers are incredibly easy to make and I'd highly recommend giving it a try. In an odd way, they reminded me a lot of shortbread for their buttery flavour that you don't get in a store-bought soup cracker, but that butter flavour complements soup perfectly.

I had some frozen tart shells in the freezer, so to make 8 apple tarts all I had to do was peel two royal gala apples, slice them in thin half moons, saute them until just tender in a frying pan with butter or margarine, mix them up with a bit of cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg, lay the apple pieces in the tarts, and then bake the tarts for about 10 minutes. It's a really nice and simple dessert if you're looking for a quick apple pie fix.