Ciao Ameci!

Welcome back to Sunday Gravy. Hope everyone is having a kick ass summer so far and not sweating your everloving asses off. I can’t complain and I won’t torture you with tales of living by the beach (it hasn’t gotten above 76 degrees in a month) but I have been fortunate enough to resume some “in the kitchen” cooking.

Normally this time of year I will be outside with an ice chest filled with beers and a charcoal fire going with a pair of tongs in my hand and absolutely no intentions of cooking any motherfucking thing inside. It’s been shall we say “temperate” so far this year.

/just cursed Southern California to 90 straight days of over 90 degree heat in August and September

No folks, I’ve actually been able to throw the fuck down inside the kitchen recently and it’s been just fine.

The inspiration for today’s menu actually comes from my oldest daughter, Eldest right. A couple of years ago I discovered an absolutely phenomenal Italian place in a kind of shady warehouse area in Gardena/Compton. It’s got the lamest damn name but it is incredible. It’s called Eatalian Cafe and this fucking place makes their own cheese, their own pasta from scratch, their own gelato, they have a wood fired pizza oven and they put out an amazing array of super thin crust pizzas with some of the freshest ingredients. They make fresh pasta from scratch, like when you fucking order it! The tortelli, lasagne, tagliatelle and today’s dish, made from scratch gnocchi are cooked to order.

The first time I took my daughter and the granddaughters here, my oldest ordered the gnocchi with pesto and I was fucking blown away. Such simple ingredients and the combination was life altering. The gnocchi are little pillows of love and the pesto cream sauce was herbal, garlicky, simple yet very complex. Top this with some freshly grated REAL parmesan? This is “Are you fucking shitting me over here?” delicious. It was my first time having gnocchi that was freshly made and I vowed to never have frozen gnocchi ever again.

This place is so fucking incredible that I suggested it as a destination for one of our So-Cal DFO gatherings and Rikki and Balls of Steel will be able to attest to the awesomeness of this place. So fucking good.

For those poor unfortunate and really-need-to-be-enlightened folks who haven’t had gnocchi before, they are little dumplings made from a dough that combines cooked potatoes, flour, egg and salt. Cook them in some water until they float and then finish them IN a sauce. This is important shit over here folks! Don’t put your cooked pasta on a plate and cover with sauce. Finish it IN the sauce.

As I’ve mentioned before, we are getting into brand new recipes to me and this one qualifies. I’ve never made gnocchi or pesto before and today we will be doing both. The good news is the ingredient list is fairly short and it’s just a little prep and won’t require a 2 day prep or call for anything to be made ahead. You could make the pesto a day ahead but if you have a food processor you can make it really fast.

Since there are a couple of steps involved to making this I’m going to make today’s post more of a pictorial so you can follow along with the process instead of me droning on and on.

Pictures! Yay!

Alright lets do this shit!

Pesto

If you have an herb garden that includes basil then you know it is a pretty hearty plant and can produce a bunch of basil. I have a basil plant with a ton or leaves but I still needed to buy some at the store because this bastard needs a LOT of basil.

2 cups – packed – basil leaves

1/4 cup of raw pine nuts

1/3 cup of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Romano would work too

2 to 3 cloves of fresh garlic rough chopped

2/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt

some grinds of black pepper.

Before you get started toast up them raw pine nuts. I like to toast them myself so I can control their toasted-ness. Just get a pan over a medium flame, add in the pine nuts and stir them around for about 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool.

Get out your food processor. You could probably do this with a blender but it would be a bit of a pain in the ass to create the right emulsion.

Put the basil and the toasted pine nuts into the food processor and give it a few pulses until the two incorporate. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Next add in the cheese, the salt and the garlic and pulse a few more times then scraping the sides of the bowl some more. Get the food processor running and add a slow but steady pour of the olive oil through the feed tube until the pesto gets a nice emulsion.

It should look like this.

Get that out of the food processor and give it a few grinds of black pepper and put it into an airtight container. Let’s go ahead and put it in the fridge right now so we can focus on our gnocchi. It should last in the fridge for about a week or it can be frozen for up to 3 months. If freezing follow the recipe above but don’t use the cheese – it freezes for shit. Just defrost when ready and mix in the cheese then.

Some of the uses for pesto include; add some to your scrambled eggs, use pesto instead of a red sauce when making a pizza, add some to your salads, brush some on some crusty bread or use it as a sandwich condiment. There will be no leftovers today though. We’re using up all of this shit right here.

Another quick note: this will be made into a basil cream sauce instead of adding it “as is” to the gnocchi. Shit’s a little hard core right out of the food processor. We will make the pesto cream sauce at the same time we are cooking our gnocchi so they can be finished together.

I told you a few weeks back that we would be making some more green shit and this is THAT green shit.

Gnocchi

2 pounds of russet potatoes. You could use something a little waxier here but I like the consistency of the russet.

1 to 1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Special tool – a potato ricer. This links to Amazon. If you are unsure where to get the above mentioned pine nuts? Yep, Amazon has them too. Do what I did and order them at the same time.

Another yeah right diatribe! When researching a new recipe I research the fuck out of it. You know how you are supposed to read a recipe through entirely before making something the first time? I read it through about 8 times. Not just one recipe either, I’ll read multiple recipes to see which ingredients are consistent between recipes and also get a better idea for cooking times etc. Yes, I even read the reviews. Then to totally saturate my goddamn brain, I’ll watch youtube videos of the preparation.

One thing I noticed throughout the research is that the flour amounts varied from recipe to recipe. This came from the preparation of the potatoes. Most of the recipes said to boil the potatoes either whole or in chunks with the skins on then peel the potatoes when they are cooked but still hot. Why in the name of FUCK would you do that? I get it that you don’t want water to water down the potatoes but I ain’t burning the fuck out of my hands when I can come up with an alternative. Additionally, all of these recipes said to make sure the boiled potatoes are drained really well or else too much water fucks with the consistency of the gnocchi dough. This could make the gnocchi either too tough or not dense enough.

Yo! Steven fucking Hawking! I’ve got a fucking idea. How about we don’t boil the fucking potatoes.

Jesus Christ!

End of diatribe.

Wash and peel your potatoes and bake in a 350 degree oven for about an hour.

Let the potatoes cool slightly and then press the potatoes in the potato ricer. Don’t make a big ass pile of riced potato, spread it out evenly over a baking sheet thusly.

Take the riced potatoes to a lightly floured work surface and add the flour and salt on top of the potatoes. Make a “well” in the middle of the mixture and crack an egg into it. I used 1 cup of the flour to start and since the potatoes were baked instead of boiled this was all I needed. Bunch of dumbasses.

The rest of the flour is for dusting the rolling surface and the freshly cut gnocchi.

Use a fork and give the egg a quick slight scramble. If you’ve ever made pasta you will know what to do at this point. Mix the ingredients GENTLY to form a dough. Please don’t over mix the dough or it will make the gnocchi too heavy. Roll the dough into a ball.

It can rest for a minute or two but don’t rest for too long. Now grab a handful of the dough, maybe a 1/4 of the dough and roll it with just your hands until you make a “dowel” like shape.

Now use a knife or a bench cutter to cut the gnocchi into 3/4″ to 1″ pieces. Give the gnocchi a little dusting of flour if they feel sticky. You also don’t want these to be too thick, maybe the thickness of the tip of your thumb.

Now at this point many of the recipes suggest using a fork to lightly press each gnocchi to give it a little groove in which to hold the sauce better. Some recipes said fuck that shit it’s too much work and they skipped this step. I did the fork trick. Just use a fork and with the tines facing up give each gnocchi a little press and roll. This will put a fork mark that covers about half of each gnocchi.

Repeat these steps until all of the dough has been used and the gnocchi have all been made. Put them on a baking sheet and let rest for just another minute or two. Don’t rest too long or they will get sticky. Give them a light dusting of some more flour.

Now get a couple of pots out. The first one fill with some water, add a little salt and get it on the stove to bring to a boil. Use as much water as you would use to boil pasta.

The second pot will be used to make the basil cream sauce.

Basil cream sauce.

3/4 cups of heavy cream. Don’t fuck this up by using milk or half and half, use that heavy shit

Pesto that we made before

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1 tablespoon of butter

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/4 teaspoon NUTMEG!

Black pepper to taste.

Combine all ingredients into a pot and simmer over a medium-low heat. This won’t take very long to cook and you can easily do it in the time it takes to boil the pasta water. Bring to a simmer.

Turn off the heat for now and let’s cook some goddamn gnocchi.

When the pasta water is boiling, drop in some gnocchi. Don’t overcrowd the pan. It took me three batches to cook the gnocchi from the earlier picture.

These little fuckers cook pretty quickly. Watch carefully and when the gnocchi float to the top of the boiling water give them about 90 seconds. That’s it.

Using a slotted spoon remove the gnocchi and transfer them into the sauce. Remember, the heat is off on the sauce at this point.

Repeat these steps until all of the gnocchi are cooked.

After adding all of the gnocchi to the sauce if the sauce is a little too thick you can add a ladle or so of the pasta water until it gets to the desired consistency. Turn the heat back on the sauce and cook just until it comes back to a simmer. Turn off the heat. Scoop out some gnocchi and sauce and put in a bowl if you like it saucy. Garnish the gnocchi with some more freshly grated hard Italian cheese. That’s gonna give you this!

I’ll give you a minute to finish drooling.

I served this with a spinach salad and some toasted bread. Here’s that banner image one more time.

A nice light Pinot Grigio would be a great accompaniment here.

When I served this I was having dinner with 2 of my brothers. DJ Taj prides himself on being a hard ass but I swear I heard him say “This sauce is yummy, uh it’s delicious!” It was fucking magnificent. It may have been one of the best things I have EVER made. It’s herbal, cheesy, the gnocchi were perfect, little, delicious fluffy pillows of goddamn goodness. I nailed the density on the first try! I’ll bet it’s the baking the potato trick. I’m a motherfucking genius I tell ya!

I think what really made this stand out is I had a specific taste in mind, remembered from that Eatalian Cafe place I mentioned. This didn’t duplicate it, oh no. This shit EXCEEDED it. So very fucking amazing.

There was not a single shred of anything left over.

As my brothers and I were digesting and ruminating back on this meal it suddenly dawned on me…

Holy fucking shit this is vegetarian!

WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!

Where’s the goddamn meat?

I made an entire Sunday dinner with no goddamn meat!

Actually gnocchi is served as a first course just after the appetizers instead of pasta if you’re doing the whole Italian spread. So I would recommend a great big slab of meat for main course. Maybe some veal or a big slab of medium rare filet mignon.

Yeah that’s the ticket.

Vegetarian!

Motherfucker!

In all seriousness, please give this bad boy a go. It’s truly a work of art and not that hard to make. See I gave you pictures and everything.

Let’s all cook some new things, explore some new cuisines and let’s be nice to each other for fuck’s sake.

Love you all and as the Italians say, “Io sono fuori di qui!” or “I am out of here!”

Peace!