I enjoyed teaching an Online Cooking Class to make these yummy little Italian potato dumplings! The class had participants from Connecticut and three different locations in California: North, Central and South! All participants were successful in creating their own Gnocchi alla Sorrentino! I really enjoyed cooking with these beautiful ladies and a gentleman!
Gnocchi are a favorite pasta choice both in America and in Italy, who can resist those soft potato pillows of dough? Basically Gnocchi are potato dumplings that originated in Northern Italy where the conditions are better for growing potatoes than wheat. That explains why I love them so much, they are from my Region!
Homemade pasta is like anything else in the cooking world, terrifying until you make again and again. It seemed surreal and strange that you would mix the flour and eggs in a volcanic pile of flour on your bread board, crack the eggs inside the indentation of the “volcano” and whisk with a fork from the center, slowly adding more flour to the eggs with your fork as you work in the center of the volcano.
Ahhhhh, Pasta Pomodoro….So simple yet so delicious! I will always remember when I was new to Italy and trying so hard to cook the complicated dishes and sauces and struggling to do things the Italian way.
One day in mid May we had a bush fire very near our house, here in the hills of Itri, Italy. We were coming home from Rome and as we neared our town of Itri we got a call from a friend that lives nearby, he said “Are you guys ok? There is a lot of smoke coming from your hill.”
This is Classic Italian Ragu, the “Saturday Sauce”, the slow cooked traditional meal for lunch with family on the weekend. It’s served with Tagliatelle, not spaghetti and it doesn’t have garlic, basil or oregano.
The other day I saw a post from a friend, she was eating an Éclair, and I thought, “Wow! It’s been a long time since I have made Cream Puffs….” of course Éclairs and Cream Puffs are made of the same Choux Pastry but did you know that Mexican Churros and British Yorkshire Pudding are also creations made from Choux pastry? All of these pastries sound quite exotic, foreign and difficult but actually they are not hard to make at all.
I am a fourth generation Italian living in America but we have done a pretty good job of holding on to our Italian traditions after so many years in America. Bagna Cauda, Raviolis and Biscotti seem to be the recipes we have clung to. You can read my past posts on Bagna Cauda (a hot Fondue made of butter, garlic and anchovies, typical of the North of Italy) and our family tradition of making homemade Beef and Spinach Raviolis by clicking the links.
It’s mid August and my vegetable garden is rewarding my earlier summer efforts with copious amounts of cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, green beans, eggplant, basil and parsley. I asked my neighbor down the hill how her garden was doing and she told me the Cinghiale got her garden! Cinghiale (pronounced: Chen-gall-aye) are wild boars that roam the forests using their snouts to forage for grubs in the soft soil, “The Cinghiale destroyed your garden?!” I gasp while asking increduolously. “The Cinghiale are around here?” “Si”, she responds with eyes wide open “A BIG one with nine babies!” “What?!?” I start thinking about my garden just up the hill from her, I imagine a enormous wild boar with big tusks rummaging through my garden followed by her nine babies. I ask her if the wild boar can be hunted because I also started to imagine a big bowl of steaming pasta in a rich Cinghiale Ragu. “No” she replies, the season for boar is closed but in the fall it will reopen.
So far our summer has been a worldwind of activity, every week we have had new guests arriving even as we say good-bye to others that now depart as lifelong friends.
