Craving for Gnocchi with Sage and Butter

Gnocchi is a very simple home made dish that brings a lot of joy to cook it for our loved ones. This Italian dish joins the family of the so called ''cucina povera'' cuisine of the poor due to it's simple and low cost ingredients. Nowadays Grocery stores and middle mens earn gigantic margins on it by simply selling Gnocchi to end consumers. 

During preparation, the Gnocchi's will resemble like dead bodies lying on a plate but don't worry because it taste simple, marvelous and I am very sure that you will be preparing willing to prepare Gnocchi again and again once tasted.

Again, there are plenty Gnocchi varieties and preparation styles existing, I have chosen to follow the style of my ancestors purely out of habit. You can either add more Butter, more Sage.. base it on Salmon, Tuna or add some meat stuff to it. It's really up to your imagination.. but here is how I do it. 

What is actually Gnocchi all about ?  Little dumplings made from potatoes, flour and egg. Not very exciting, you might think, but like real pasta made in the old-fashioned way, Gnocchi have a texture and flavour of their own which can absorb and complement other flavours. This recipe is very simple, served with just butter, sage and Parmesan. Always make the amazing Gnocchi the day you are going to serve them, because they will change in colour if left overnight.

Ingredients

275 gr Potatoes - just about two

95 gr plain flour, sifted, plus a little extra rolling

1 large egg, lightly beaten

salt and milled black pepper

For the sauce

8 fresh sage leaves

50gr of butter

garlic peeled and crushed

How to do it….

First place the potatoes, with their skins on, in a suitably sized saucepan, almost cover with boiling water, add some salt, then put a lid on and simmer for 20-25 minutes, until tender. Then drain well and, holding them in your hand with a tea cloth, quickly pare off the skins using a potato peeler. Then place the potatoes in a large bowl and, using an electric hand whisk on a slow speed, start to break the potatoes up, then increase the speed and gradually whisk until smooth and fluffy. Now let them cool.

Next, add the sifted flour to the potatoes, along with half the beaten egg, season lightly and, using a fork, bring the mixture together. Then, using your hands, knead the mixture lightly to a soft dough – you may need to add a teaspoonful or so more of the egg if it is a little dry. Now transfer the mixture to a lightly floured surface, flour your hands and divide it into quarters. Now roll each quarter into a sausage shape approximately ½ inch (1 cm) in diameter, then cut it, on the diagonal, into 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces, placing them on a tray or plate as they are cut. Cover with Clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes, but longer won't matter.

After that, using a fork with the prongs facing upwards, press the fork down on to one side of each Gnocchi so that it leaves a row of ridges on each one; at the same time, ease them into crescent shapes. The ridges are there to absorb the sauce effectively. Now cover and chill the Gnocchi again until you are ready to cook them. To cook the Gnocchi, firstly bring a large, shallow pan of approximately 6 pints (3.5 litres) of water to a simmer and put the serving dish in a low oven to warm through. Then drop the Gnocchi into the water and cook for about 3 minutes; they will start to float to the surface after about 2 minutes, but they need 3 altogether.

When they are ready, remove the Gnocchi with a draining spoon and transfer them to the warm serving dish. For the sauce, melt the butter with the garlic over a gentle heat until the garlic turns nut brown in colour – about 1 minute. Next add the sage leaves and allow the butter to froth while the sage leaves turn crisp – about 30 seconds – then spoon the butter mixture over the warm Gnocchi. Sprinkle half the Parmesan over and serve the rest separately.

Storing Vegetables to Save Food From The Refrigerator

Our generation is getting stupid ! An interesting alternative to store vegetables in refrigerators can be possible following ancient traditional methods. It is that lost knowledge about fresh food – what it should look like, how long it should last, how we should treat it. Korean designer Jihyun Ryou wanted to reintroduce in her thesis project at Design Academy Eindhoven, Save Food from the Refrigirator. Her solution is a set of ingenious, wall-mounted storage units that draw on traditional, pre-refrigeration food preservation techniques originated in Korea.

                     

Leaving aside the potential food preservation benefits and possible energy savings, perhaps the most important aspect of Ryou’s food shelves is their visibility. By putting fresh fruit and vegetables on the wall, Ryou’s design would force us to actually look at our food.

The result of this daily confrontation, she hopes, is that we would eat more healthy, wate less, and – intangibly but importantly – rebuild our relationship with these equally biological and perishable, if slightly less animate, fellow organisms.

In the current food preservation situation, we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology. We don’t observe the food anymore and don’t understand how to treat it. My design looks at re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food. Furthermore, it aims to bring back the connection between us as human beings and food ingredients as other living beings. I believe that once people are given a tool that triggers their minds and requires a mental effort to use it, new traditions and new rituals can be introduced in our culture.

Ryou doesn’t call for the complete elimination of the refrigerator, but her idea of redesigning domestic space to suit food (as opposed to redesigning food to our appliances) is pretty exciting. Unfortunately, her elegant designs are not commercially available, although they don’t look impossible to recreate with quite a basic set of carpentry skills.

I guess that everybody can understand that Food is put in refrigerator to prevent it from spoilage by the action of microbes. But this does not mean that all food must be handled equally and stored in refrigerators. It's a fact that out of our ignorance and lack of knowledge in food preservation is the main cause to blame that brought us to this point....

Pasta with Garbanzo Beans

Pasta e Ceci is an ancient Roman classic dish traditionally served on Fridays or Weekends. If you step into any Roman Trattoria on Fridays, you will probably notice its distinctive scent coming out from the generally rowdy kitchen. I have always been a fan of soups, especially soups that can be prepared in no time with minimal effort.

In actual fact, every corner of Italy has a version of pasta, and Ceci, I will introduce my own version of pasta and Ceci the way my grandma used to prepare it for 12 hungry but enthusiastic folks.

In essence, this family of full-bodied soups, pasta e ceci, pasta e fagioli, or white bean soup, are purees of beans with just enough oil and the trinity of onion, carrot, and celery to help the beans express themselves fortified with pasta or bread, dribbled with raw oil and maybe topped with some Parmesan. To prepare tasty pasta and ceci you do not need necessarily add celery or carrot, it’s fully up to you what flavors you wish to choose as long you don’t forget the main factors which are pasta and Chickpeas (Garbanzo beans)

You prepare your soffrito of finely chopped onion, garlic, and shallots, sautéing them gently and slowly in olive oil until soft floppy, and translucent. Then you add a dice of chicken stock (remember no MSG! Don’t mess with this dish), stir, and then 2/3 of your cooked chickpeas for 5 minutes (The peas are usually already salted, so no additional salt is needed). You stir again pour in two glasses of water and wait till boiling point. Lastly, throw in elbows (A kind of pasta, you can use any other type of pasta). Bring the pan to a happy boil, and then leave the pan to bubble away gently for about 7 minutes. Bon appetit!

 

Ingredients for 2 persons:

450g tinned chickpeas (Damage $3.00)
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (Damage $0.50)
mild onion peeled and finely diced (Damage $1.50)
diced garlic (Damage $ 2.00)
chicken stock (Damage $1.50)
225g small dried tubular pasta (Damage $ 4.00, it can be used countless times)

Optional

medium carrot peeled and finely diced
stick of celery finely diced
2 tbsp tomato concentrate
small sprig of rosemary
500ml vegetable or chicken stock or water the chickpeas were cooked in with more plain water added to make up the 500ml if necessary.
Parmesan rind
salt and freshly ground black pepper
your nicest oil for on top

Enjoy the freshness and richness of this meal; it’s tasty, healthy, and economical…