Ricotta Gnocchi

I don't fancy myself a great chef. My focus is always on taste, simplicity and quickness. I love decadent, involved meals, but I rarely create them. My goal is start to finsh, out of the fridge and onto the plate in under an hour. Ideally faster, but I'm no Rachel Ray, so 30 minutes is generally unachievable...

My friend Kaitlin found this recipe for Ricotta Gnocchi and I was amazed. It looked amazing, but wayyyy too difficult for me. I do NOT make my own pasta. I do always make my own sauce, but making things from scratch has really never been my bag. Maybe I'm more like Rachel Ray than I thought. Kaitlin made the gnocchi and claimed that she did it start to finish, including sauce in 45 minutes, so my interest piqued. I had some leftover ricotta in my fridge, so I decided to give it a go. I'm sold. It was easy, fun, rewarding and oh so deliciously satisfying! I altered the recipe to fit the amt of ricotta I had, and I didn't have a lemon, so I just squirted in some lemon juice. All in all it was a success. I mixed 1/2 a cup of ricotta, with 1/4 cup of parmesean (both low/no-fat varieties) w/ a squirt of lemon juice, chili flakes, dried parsley and an egg yolk and added the flour. Then I broke up the dough into the 4 sections and rolled out snakes. I found the dough wanted to separate some, so I'm not sure if I used too much or too little flour, but it worked nonetheless and I cut them in to knuckle sized pieces w/ my fork.

To fry, I put some olive oil in a pan and heated it w/ some cracked garlic. When the garlic started to brown, I took it out of the pan and threw the gnocchi in. I shook the pan to make sure the oil was underneath the gnocchi. I also squirted some lemon juice over them to infuse a bit more flavor in them. I turned them once and pulled them out and put them in a paper towel lined bowl to soak up any excess grease. My condensed recipe made 2 batches of gnocchi, and 2 meals.

Instead of the brown butter sauce in the original recipe, I made a simple tomato sauce. I sliced up the already cooked garlic, some leek and added a can of tomatoes flavored w/ burgundy wine and olive oil. To that I added a splash of the red wine I'd be drinking w/ dinner and herbs and spices (basil, oregano, parsley, s&p). Quick, flavorful and easy. My MO.

Start to finish, this meal honestly took abt 45 minutes. Sure, there was a bit more clean up cuz I had to clean my counter more thoroughly before and after cuz of rolling out the gnocchi dough, but the gnocchi and sauce were made in the same pan, so that was nice. I didn't add cheese on top cuz I figured the gnocchi had enough cheese in them anyway. This meal was delicious. I can honestly say I was PROUD of what I had done. I often think abt what I can make for dinner parties that is easy, but impressive. This recipe certainly covers both. I can't wait to make them again!

BTW, check out Kaitlin's food blog too.