Tag: gnocchi

More butternut squash!!!

This autumn I am all about butternut squash and A. loves it too, so I cook some many times a week as you can have seen already. The parisian sister is coming to Tokyo tomorrow for a week and so we had to prepare space for her at home, move a lot of furniture here and there, arrange lighting and make a cosy tiny space for her. It kept us busy for a long part of the evening before I started thinking about dinner, and so I needed a very easy and quick meal. In these situations, packed gnocchi (of course I prefer my homemade gnocchi but it is not always compatible with my schedule) are very handy, they cook very quickly and it is easy to accommodate them with any type of veggies. And of course butternut squash is no exception!!! So I prepared some gnocchi with a butternut squash and spices sauce: in a hot pan I put a bit of olive oil, add a large piece of butternut squash peeled and cut in big chunks, a ripe large tomato, black pepper, cardamon, nutmeg and cinnamon (for those who like some bacon). Cook until the juice is almost all gone. Boil the gnocchi in the mean time and serve, add just a few drops of olive oil. How do you like your gnocchi?

Gnocchi & romanesco

When comes the end of the week (Thursday or Friday) our resources shopped the previous weekend in the country are almost all gone and only a few things remain. This week it was the case gor the romanesco. So beautiful but we had other things to eat first. So easy to prepare that it’s always perfect for late dinners. I tried the combination gnocchi-romanesco-Parmegianno and it was just sublime. As you may guess these are not homemade gnocchi unfortunately, but it work as well if you have some. Boil the gnocchi and 1min before they are ready add the romanesco in little bouquets. Serve altogether when the gnocchi are ready (they float in the water) add so freshly gratted Parmegianno (mine is a souvenir from our holidays in Italy), olive oil, salt and pepper. Enjoy right away. 

Gnocchi

Here we are in Sicily and the first dinner I cooked for the family wath plain gnocchi. We’ve found these beautiful potatoes in Menfi and some greens (something they said was between spinach and rucolla) so it was just simply boil and mixed with some olive oil. Of course served with some delicious Parmegiano. It was fun actually preparing gnocchi for 8 persons, usually my sizing is 2, eventually 4, so it took quite an other dimension! 

Midnight dinner

There are days like that… When from morning to evening I have not even a minute break (literally), I swallow my lunch in one bite between two meetings and I finish the day my head spinning with things I still have to do and I may forget… So when finally home we take off to the country I’m still completely hyper!

There’s nothing better then once arrived to ho for a midnight stroll in the garden, pick some fresh basil and prepare for a peaceful (at last) yet late dinner with energizing gnocchi and fresh veggies (tomato, broccoli), basil and a delicious olive oil. Simple but really efficient!

Have a nice week end! 

Gnocchi di zucca

I love Italy and Italian food and I’m very excited that we will spend xmas in Sicily and my birthday in Roma!!! So to get ready I working on my classics and some different variations, one I love particularly is gnocchi! So I made pumpkin gnocchi, or rather kabocha gnocchi! And because the skin of kabocha is very soft I kept it, adding a nice greenish color. I also added a potato to make the orange less vivid and more subtle and it gave something really nice, perfect with just a little of olive oil and pepper.

For 2 portions of gnocchi as main dish I used 1/2 kabocha, 2 small potatoes, as little flour as possible, 1 egg (so you’d rather make a huge amount of gnocchi so that the egg don’t moisten to much the preparation). I steamed both potatoes and kabocha, but I recommend to grill the kabocha to avoid also large quantities of moist. Then you just mix sll the ingredients and shape the gnocchi. Finally boil them in salted water, or fry them in a bit of olive oil! 

Boiled version of the gnocchi di zucca
Boiled version of the gnocchi di zucca

Easter lunch

We don’t celebrate Easter much since we live in Japan, but we always receive treats from France to remind us that Easter has come.  Besides the chocolates that are not available in Japan because Easter is not a traditional event, Easter means also “spring”, often sakura blossom, colorful plates and colorful table decorations. But this year it is a very cold and rainy Easter, a lot of the new vegetables are not yet available and I only found a limited choice of greens at the local farmers cooperative. Basically snap peas and asparagus. And of course the delicious ashitaba. So my Easter lunch menu was rather simple. Some sauteed new vegetables and ashitaba gnocchi. I told you I make gnocchi of everything and I will show you some more recipes with ashitaba. Truly ashitaba suits very well dishes with potatoes, so I assumed that it would work well for gnocchi, and it did. It is supper simple, just adding blended ashitaba leaf to the potatoes, and prepare the gnocchi as usual. I served them with a fruity olive oil and a little of ashitaba-tomato sauce. For the legumes sauteed I roughly cut one new onion, added some snap peas and finally some asparagus in a bit of olive oil in a wok. For the chocolate eggs, we received more than enough from France, I decided to do nothing special! What did you cook for your Easter lunch?

La vie en rose

As I was telling you, I’m completely in love with these purple sweet potatoes. They are so nice with other colorful vegetables such as carrots, cabbage, bricoli etc… And they have a powerful coloring effect: remember my u no hana that I stirred a little too well?

Using this powerful coloring effect I decided to make “pink gnocchi”. It is often that gnocchi are colored: spinach fir green, tomato for red, pumpkin for orange… Now pink with purple sweet potato. It was really intuitively easy. I boiled two potatoes with their peal and a 1/3 of a purple sweet potato. Then I pealed them and mixed them together in a bowl. The mixture was a perfect pink!!
Then it’s just like making regular gnocchi. Adding flour little by little until you can shape the dough. Honestly I don’t like gnocchi that taste flour so my dough is always on the sticky side rather than the firm one, which make it a little more complicated to shape.

Then just before eating I boiled them. And I served them with a piece of thyme-grilled breadt chicken and some olive oil. I believe cream could make a more beautiful effect, but we don’t eat cream.., I leave it to you to show me yours!

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