A FOOD ADVENTURE

The kitchen was the heart of our home when I was growing up. Our life, it is easy to say, centered around food...good homegrown, homemade, slow food. There were lots of cooks in my home, from my grandmother, my aunt, my mother, to the top chef, my father.

My father made all things Italian, rather Sicilian, but one of the things he never made was gnocchi...pronounced neo-key and not ga-no-key, as I have heard it referred to. So growing up I never had gnocchi, although I had seen it on restaurant menus. And all of my adult life, I have never tried it.

Of late, I seem to see gnocchi everywhere...in my cooking magazines...on menus...in cookbooks. So the other day, out of the blue, I decided to make it and make my grandmother's sauce to go with it.

Since I have started roasting my tomatoes straight from the garden and making a wonderful, fresh tasting roasted tomato sauce, I have not made this family style spaghetti sauce. I thought it fitting to do so for this endeavor, although I did cheat a bit omitting the pork butt and the beef roast. This sauce had home canned tomatoes, meatballs, and Italian sausage, and it simmered on the back of the stove for hours. The aroma transported me to the kitchen on Liberty Street in Fredonia, NY.

Sauteing the meatballs and the sausage before dropping into the sauce.

The gnocchi recipe:

3 cups mashed (unadorned) potatoes (I used my own Yukon Golds)
1 egg
2 egg whites
2 cups flour
pinch of salt
fresh ground black pepper

*Cook, cool, and finely mash the potatoes
*add all other ingredients
*knead until a soft dough is achieved
*if necessary add more flour so it is not too sticky
*place in the refrigerator for at least an hour

Divide the dough into six to eight pieces...

Roll out into ropes about the size of your little finger...

run the tines of a fork along the 'rope' and then snip into small pieces, placing them on a cookie sheet with either waxed paper or parchment paper.

(At this point you could place the tray into the freezer and when frozen put the individual pieces into a container and freeze for later use...or you could use immediately.)

...topped with sauce, meatballs and sausage...

...a loaf of bread straight out of the oven...

...a fresh salad, and a good glass of red wine...

It proved to be a wonderful meal!
Still, as much as I liked the gnocchi, personally I still prefer a good pasta, such as rigatoni.