I’ve mentioned it here before, I couldn’t do without carbs. First off for health reasons; my body (and any body, really) needs carbs. But the true reason I can’t give them up, is because they taste so dang good.

Pasta, potatoes, bread. I love my carbs. They make me happy. I could give up sugar and chocolate (but I won’t since I’m no quitter!) but I could never give up pasta, bread or potatoes.

Gnocchi (please, humor me, and don’t say gno-tchee) are little italian noodles made from steamed potatoes and flour. You add a lightly beaten egg to bind everything and – as always with home made pasta – you add a pinch of salt.

The trick in making good gnocchi is in the flour to potato ratio. Use too much potato, and your gnocchi will fall apart during boiling. Use too much flour and your gnocchi will be too hard or chewy. There is still some wiggle room though. When I made my batch I boiled and tried the first bit and found them a little too fluffy, they needed a slight bit more ‘chew’, so I added a bit of extra flour, which made the dough more manageable and made the final gnocchi even tastier.

To make the best gnocchi, you need to steam your potatoes. Steamed potatoes generate a fluffier gnocchi, and more importantly, less watery. Also, if you have a potato ricer, use that! Mashed up potatoes can stay a little lumpy, which in turn will turn our lumps of potato in your gnocchi – not the optimal results if you ask me. Riced potatoes are the easiest to blend.

You need to make your dough while the potatoes are still warm. Don’t ask me why, you just have to. I guess it has something to do with the binding properties of potato, flour and egg that is better with some heat. I just know that it works better. Just make sure you are careful when kneading. Don’t burn your hands. If it’s still too hot to touch, mix with a spoon before you knead, burnt hands will not make your gnocchi taste better, but they will hurt. So be careful!

I worked through my dough, made little dough-snakes, cut the dough into the correct size and pushed a fork into the gnocchi to make a little bit of a ribbed side on them. Apparently you can buy special gnocchi boards for that, but since Laurens’ mother and grandmother – women who’ve been born and raised in Italy – both use forks, I don’t see why I would need a special board.

The end results weren’t the prettiest gnocchi you’ve ever seen. But that’s what you get with home made products. They’re rustic and bold and have enormous taste, but they’re not all exactly the same. They don’t need to be.

I served our gnocchi with pesto, but any sauce will do. Just make sure the sauce isn’t too heavy and you don’t use too much sauce. The gnocchi – despite being fluffy – will fill you up quick enough. And if you’re not a dork with time-management issues (which I totally am) you’ll still eat veggies and a protein dish as well, so you don’t need to overstuff yourself.

Enjoy!

Gnocchi di patate – basic recipe (I halved the recipe)

• 1000 grams of potatoes, peeled, steamed
• 300 grams of plain flour (preferably AA or semolina)
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• a good pinch of salt

Peel and steam your potatoes until tender. Rice the potatoes while hot, into a bowl. Add the flour, mix, then add the beaten egg and salt and knead until you have a pliable, uniform dough. It might be a little sticky, but if there’s more on your hands than in the bowl, ass a little more flour, a teaspoon at a time, until you have a consistency from which you can make ‘dough snakes’.

Roll the tough into long logs, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch in diameter. Cut into little pieces, about as long as the outer digit of your thumb (so the gnocchi are about the size of the upper part of your thumb now). Push a fork into the side of the gnocchi while making somewhat of a rolling movement. Lay the gnocchi to rest on a clean tea towel and continue with the rest of your dough, until all your dough has become gnocchi.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a rapid boil and drop some gnocchi into the pot. Make sure the gnocchi don’t completely crowd each other, as that’ll make them stick to each other. Gnocchi are done when they float on the water. Use a slotted spoon to remove the floating gnocchi and add more uncooked gnocchi to the pan. Once all gnocchi have been mix with some sauce and serve warm. Buon’ apetito!

It seems like all I’m doing is quickly whipping stuff together and serving it without taking the time to have it photographed, or take a picture myself. Partially because the dishes just haven’t been the most interesting to look at (in a picture) and partially because we’d just be really ready to eat when it was done.

Also, I had planned a couple of decent dinners last week, but for some very strange reason the produce I got last week was just all really bad quality. I wonder if it’s because it’s vacation time and the stores sell less so they have more ‘older’ produce laying there, but this week I’ve started cleaning 3 different vegetables that I ended up tossing because there hardly was anything left if I’d removed the nasty bits. Too bad, as I was really looking forward to eating fennel again. I guess I should go to the farmers’market a little more often, instead of just using grocery store produce.

But I digress. As I said, I have cooked. I’ve come up with a couple of quick and easy dishes that actually tasted great and were a result of looking what was there and still good to use. This lead to a chicken, cauliflower, mozzarella-bechamel casserole and another casserole containing thin sliced zucchini and new potatoes, with pieces of camambert and pork chop mixed in between. It didn’t look spectacular (as you can see) but it did end up tasting decent enough.

Then finally, yesterday, I’d had it with casseroles and went for pasta. Not feeling like making my own pasta (L had gotten home from work real late that day so I wanted something really quickly) I opted for spaghetti alla carbonara. I never use fresh pasta for that, as it’s got such a strong flavor.

This time around, I was smart and had L take pictures – not at all like last time where I just went and ate it all and forgot about wanting to blog with pictures.

Carbonara is amazingly simple, as soon as you know the trick. The strange thing about this dish is that a lot of people think it contains cream. It doesn’t. A true carbonara won’t have even the tiniest drop of cream in there. The creamy texture comes from butter, melted cheese and quick stirred egg. The quick stirring is the key, having it coat everything, mix in with the butter and the cheese, instead of cooking in the pan and leaving you with ‘pasta alla breakfast’ (as in cheesy scrabled eggs and bacon). Not that there’s anything wrong with breakfast for dinner, but I really doubt you’ll want that with pasta.

If you’ve never made carbonara before, I urge you to try it. It might sound (and taste) like a complex dish, but it really is the most basic cooking. Enjoy!

[print_this]Spaghetti alla Carbonara (recipe for 2)

• Enough dry spaghetti for 2 (I use a ‘dosaspaghetti to measure)
• a notch of butter
• about 50 grams of bacon
• 20  - 25 grams of Pecorino cheese
• 20 – 25 grams of Parmigiano cheese
• Fresh ground pepper
• 1 egg
• 1 clove of garlic

Start off by boiling your pasta. In a skillet melt your butter and add your bacon (pancetta is preferred, but I didn’t have that), cook the bacon so the fat loosens up. Use very low heat so you won’t burn your butter. Add 1 whole peeled clove of garlic to the pan (you may smash it a little to release more flavor)
While the bacon and the pasta are cooking, grate your cheeses.
Once the pasta is cooked al dente, drain it, remove the clove of garlic from your skillet and then place the pasta in the skillet. Turn the heat all the way down, to the very very minimum you can get. Add half the cheese to the pan, crack the egg in there, stir feverishly to coat everything with cheese and egg, then add the rest of the cheese, stir once or twice more and serve immediately!

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The thing is, most aprons I find in the stores, are just plain boring. Boring or ugly. Which makes me not want to wear them. So I won’t buy them.

Yes I do realize that not so cute aprons keep my clothes clean too, but for some reason I just prefer cute ones. Can’t help it. Really I can’t. It kinda feels like buying useable but non-cute shoes. I dread doing that, it just feels soooo wrong, even though it’s necessary.

So I found this post, clicked, and saw some pictures of really really really cute aprons. Really cute. Awesome really. Okay, yeah, they cost a little more than the ugly ones I find at the grocery or department store, but who cares??? Ugly shoes generally are cheaper than cute shoes too, right? And you won’t catch yourself only buying butt-ugly shoes, right?

The post doesn’t only show you the awesome awesome pictures of Annie G’s aprons, Sweet Kat is also hosting a giveaway of these aprons. And the only thing better than really cute aprons, is a really cute apron you got for free.

So go check out Annie G’s aprons (my 5 favorites are shown here, but there are many more styles), and if you want one, check out Sweet Kat’s giveaway.

You won’t be sorry!!!!