I don’t eat pasta very much (though I eat Asian noodles more often), but it was actually Asian dramas that inspired me to make this dish. How’s that possible, Rice? you might be asking yourself.
Made with fresh herbs from my rooftop garden.
Well, let me tell you.
I love morels! I got morels at the farmers’ market this spring, but haven’t gotten a chance to post it until now. They taste woodsy and rich, and they absorb flavors beautifully. They need a sauce that compliments their flavor, yet allows them to stand alone. If you can’t find fresh morels, don’t worry. You can substitute dried with liquid or even sub other mushrooms (not quite as tasty, but still pretty yum).
This is a combo of a couple of recipes to make it my own. I did borrow mostly from the Chicken Breasts and Morels recipe from the Mycological Society of San Francisco‘s cookbook. Many people suggest to soak fresh morels to get off all of the grit. Don’t do it! This mutes their flavor. Just give them a good shake and lightly dab them with a moist cloth. MSSF offers other great morel tips, too.
I paired this dish with my homemade pasta, but that's a recipe for another post.
I think I loved gnocchi the moment I tasted my first little potato pillow. I’d been craving potato dumplings. Back in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, there was this little restaurant downtown on State Street that sold pelmeni, or Russian dumplings. Some were filled with ground sirloin, and others were filled with potato. Covered with dusting of curry powder and squirts of spicy-sweet Srichara, it was perfect for lunch, dinner, or after a night out at the bars.
But then I moved away to Tucson, Arizona (and sadly, the restaurant eventually closed so when I go home it is no more) and I wasn’t sure where I’d get my fix. Of course I attempted to make pelmeni myself, but I was still growing as a cook then and it turned out pretty disastrous. Before I boiled them the dumplings were about the size of a Superball. Neat little balls of dough filled with mashed potato season and salted. But a few minutes in a boiling water caused them to go supernova. The potato burst out of the dough. The dough quadrupled in size and suddenly I was faced with a pot full of potato bits and doughballs the size of baseballs. I still ate it of course, but needless to say, it wasn’t the same.
This gnocchi is seriously easy to make, especially if you use potato flakes...yes, potato flakes.
Enter Trader Joe’s. Enter gnocchi.
I spotted them in the freezer section (they’ve recently been vacuum-sealed and moved to the past section) and seeing “potato” and “dumpling,” I went in for it. They were pelmeni, but that day another food love affair began. I served them with curry powder and Sriacha. I combined them with kielbasa and vegetables. Just last night, I cooked them up and served them with a Boursin garlic cheese sauce with grilled portobella mushrooms.
But last night’s dish didn’t involve Trader Joe’s. I’ve gone rogue, you see. I make my own gnocchi now.
In June of 2009 my boyfriend and I went to Rome. On our last night there, my boyfriend’s brother and his girlfriend (who were living in Trastevere at the time) took us for one last great roman meal. We went to the a restaurant in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, a wonderful, dreamy place called Il Giardino Romano where I watched a man peeling crate after crateful of fresh artichokes (we ordered fried artichoke hearts for an appetizer) while we waited for our meal.
I ordered the gnocchi in a fontina sauce, and the first bite I won’t ever forget. Soft. Pillowy. Delicious. Sorry, TJ’s, I love you, but you just don’t compare. Homemade gnocchi, friends, that what I bit into.
I purchased some ground chicken recently with every intention of cooking it up into a dish of Thai Drunken Noodles. But lacking basil and motivation one evening, I did a Y-turn and though that spaghetti and meatballs would taste good, and why not make said meatballs out of chicken? Fried meat can be healthy, can’t it?
Spaghetti and Chicken Meatballs
matzo&rice
Matzo
Lynda
matzo&rice 