GNOCCHI

by Rita Mascaro

Sammysgrammy

What is gnocchi? A little dumpling made with either baked potato, flour and egg or made with ricotta, salt and flour. We are going to make the latter. The gnocchi is served under a blanket of sauce (suggestions to follow). It is a main course, served with a salad of fresh greens. Or, in a much smaller portion, it can be the first course of a large holiday meal.

For 4 servings, you’ll need:

• 1 pound of ricotta
  
• 1 pound of flour (2 cups)
  
• tsp. or so of salt.

If the ricotta is soupy/watery, drain the water off.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the ricotta, salt and the flour together, forming it into a dough. Knead the dough on a flour dusted counter until it’s nice and smooth. Let it rest for about 10 minutes with the mixing bowl inverted and covering the dough.

Divide the dough into fourths. Leave the quarters you’re NOT working on under the inverted bowl. Pinch off a piece of dough about the size of an egg and on the floured counter, roll it out with your fingers to form a little less than an inch thick snake. With a knife, slice the snake up into approx. 1 ½” pieces. Run your finger or a fork, very lightly down the center from end to end of this little piece (creating an indent and causing the little gnocchi to curl slightly – this indent will catch the sauce you dress it with). Do this with your whole mound of dough. As your little gnocchi are made, remove them to a towel covered cookie sheet. At this point, they can be frozen or stored in the fridge for boiling later. It won’t hurt them to sit on the counter awaiting the others to join them. It’s actually good for them to dry out a bit before they get boiled.

Note: I never said this wasn’t labor intensive, but it’s worth it!!!

Note #2 VERY IMPORTANT: The snake rolling part of this recipe is the part you get the kids to do. They love it. It’s just like playdoh. Plus, because they made it, they’ll eat it!!

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Carefully drop the gnocchi into the boiling water. Boil until they come to the top (just a couple minutes). Remove carefully with a slotted spoon (or spider) into a serving bowl and dress with a little sauce.

Sauces: Almost any style of sauce is wonderful on gnocchi. The simpler the better because the gnocchi is the star of this show. Therefore, just a little melted butter with a tad of olive oil added into which a clove or two of garlic is warmed (and removed) poured over the gnocchi is my favorite. Herbs can be added to this. i.e. chopped fresh basil, and/or parsley, and/or rosemary, and/or sage.

A thin, light, vodka sauce, or marinara sauce, even store bought Alfredo is excellent over the gnocchi. But, remember, very little sauce. The gnocchi wants to shine.

The scripture I chose for this post is

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have been invited to that meal, by the seashore, of fish grilled over an open fire, prepared by Jesus Himself?

The whole Word of God is the rich, satisfying meal He’s prepared for you and I. See John 6:33 where He said

Vs. 35 Jesus said, “I AM the bread of life”

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Some of our fellow CAST-ers have wonderful items in their shops that greatly facilitate meal making. I’m sure they’d love it if you paid them a visit.

by Rita of sammysgrammy


Italian Biscotti

5 room temperture eggs
3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 chopped walnuts, chopped dried cherries, and mini chocolate chips
zest of one orange

Method: Put all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl (RESERVING 1/2 CUP OF THE FLOUR TO USE AS BENCH FLOUR). Use a whisk to thoroughly incorporate. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients, pushing dry ingredients towards the side of the bowl. Into the hole, break the eggs, add the oil and vanilla. With a fork, begin to break yolks, stir wet ingredients together while gradually pulling the dry ingredients into the mix and incorporating with the fork. Eventually, you'll have a ball of crumbly dough. Add the cherries and the nuts.

With hands floured with some of the bench flour, knead this dough while its still in the bowl. When it all comes together and is not crumbley any longer, knead it on the counter which you have covered with a couple tbs. of the bench flour. (At this point is when I add the chocolate chips by flattening out the dough a bit, dumping the chips onto it and carefully kneading/incorporating them into the dough). As you're kneading, the dough will absorb this bench flour. Keep kneading and adding bench flour to the counter until you have a nice round lump of un-sticky dough (just a couple minutes).


Cut this lump into four quarters. Set three aside and roll the forth one on your floured counter into a loaf about 12" long and 1 1/2" wide. Pick up both ends of the loaf and carefully remove it to a parchment or silpat lined cookie sheet. Repeat with remaing quarters. Put two loaves on each sheet. Bake in 375 degree pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until very lightly browned. Because there are two baking sheets, I switch the them halfway through the baking time so that they both cook evenly.

Let loaves cool for about ten minutes. Then very carefully remove from cookie sheet with a spatuala onto a cutting board. Slice into diagonal slices with a sharp knife. Put these slices back onto the same cookie sheet and toast them on both sides until they again are very light brown (about 10 minutes for side 1 and 5 minutes for side 2).


Final step: melt about 6 oz. of both white and regular chocolate in separate small bowls in the microwave, according to package directions. With the cookies still on the cookie sheets, drizzle (with a fork) first the regular chocolate, then the white, over the cookies. I leave the whole thing alone, at this point, for the cookies to totally cool and the chocolate to set up. I store them in a large plastic container. Yeild is about 50 cookies.

Notes:

Chocolate set up can be hastened by cooling (either in fridge or cool garage or porch)

The hole in the middle of the dry ingredients is the Italian method of incorporating eggs and flour. Also used to make fresh homemade pasta. The hole is called the "fontana".
"Fountain" in English. It looks very much like the tops of volcanic mountains in Italy with the "fontana" being where the mountain erupted.

The word "biscotti" means cooked twice in Italian. The same root word for "two" is used for the English words bicycle, bi polar, bi-ped, etc.

About adding the chips last to the dough: I do this because I don't like the chololate to melt and stain the dough.