I love my home routine. My day starts with my mom bringing the boys (our adorable dogs Max and Bower) into my room so we can snuggle while my mom leaves for work. We (the dogs and me) then spend the day around the house. Walks through the woods, roaming in our backyard, cuddling on the couch, and surfing the internet.
This morning when my mom opened the door to my bedroom, the second thing she said after "good morning" was, "what do you want for dinner?" Oh, how I love being home.
After a short back-and-forth--seitan stir-fry encrusted with sesame seeds, mango and shrimp quesadillas, homemade cornbread--we decided on lemon ricotta gnocchi. WOW. Good call.
Throughout the day we went through a lot of recipes online and found a bunch on epicurious that looked delicious. Like usual, we combined the ones that we liked the best! We enjoyed tonight's dinner with grilled salmon, salad and homemade popovers (recipe for popovers to follow!).
Serves 4-6 as an entree, 6-8 as a side
Cooking time: Approximately 45 minutes (including cooking the sauce and separate batches of gnocchi)
Ingredients
3 cups ricotta (we used fresh that we found at Whole Foods; 1.5 containers or 1 1/2 lbs)
3 eggs, beaten
2 cups flour
1.5 cups parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
zest of 1 lemon
pinch of salt
(sauce recipe below)
1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and stir using a rubber spatula or spoon until all the flour is absorbed. It will be wet and sticky and hard to work with--that's ok! The final dough should be wet so don't worry about adding more flour.
2. Roll out the dough into two logs on a lightly floured surface. As you can see from the picture, the dough is really sticky still.
3. Cut the dough into roughly 1 inch by a 1/2 inch pieces. We did this by cutting the log into 1 inch sections, and then cutting the section in half. Place the gnocchi on lightly-floured parchment paper. As you can tell from our gnocchi--we were going for the rustic look! We also used flour on the knife to help cut the gnocchi without destroying the shape.
4. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Place 10-12 gnocchi in to the water at a time. Remove the gnocchi using a slotted spoon after 3-4 minutes. Once the gnocchi have risen to the top of the water you know they are almost done!
The next step is optional but absolutely delicious!
5. After all of the gnocchi are done cooking, place about 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and melt. Then place the gnocchi in the butter. They become all brown and warm and even more delicious! We cooked them for about 4 minutes on each side, or until brown.
Tonight, we decided to serve the gnocchi with broccolini, peppers and tomato.
To make the "sauce"
1 red pepper, diced
2 cups broccolini, heads and stems, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup fresh basil, cut or torn into small pieces
lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
1. Add olive oil to a saucepan. Once you can smell the olive oil you know its hot enough to add in the peppers. Saute the peppers for about 4 minutes.
2. Add in broccolini and tomatoes, as well as the salt and pepper, cook for another 3 minutes, covered (or until broccolini is almost soft).
3. Add in the juice of half a lemon, as well as the basil. Cook uncovered for another minute.
Serve with plenty of parmesan cheese and eat while still hot!
BB notes: Many of the recipes that we read suggested that we drain the ricotta before combining it with the rest of the ingredients. However, because we used fresh ricotta we decided not to strain it first. Well, that and we didn't think far enough ahead and didn't have time to let the ricotta drain overnight in a cheesecloth. If you are using packaged ricotta, then it is probably a good idea to drain out some of the water. You can do this using a cheesecloth, but in the past I have found using a paper towel over a regular strainer works well! If you are doing this, plan on letting the ricotta drain for at least 4 hours, and even overnight in the refrigerator.
