Category: Pasta

I had an Italian grandmother, but she never made gnocchi. I’ve managed to live most of my life without ever tasting gnocchi, and having tasted it, I’m not sure it’s one of life’s necessities. Still, our kids love the stuff, so I decided to make gnocchi today and post the recipe.

I made a double batch, which I will NEVER do again. Half way through, I lost my will to live. The last third of my efforts looked less like gnocchi and more like mutant slugs that crawl up your nose into your brain and take over your body. Don’t worry kids, I won’t give you that last tray.

Still, there really isn’t much to making gnocchi. And if you don’t want to bother rolling each one on the tines of a fork, to make little sauce-holding ridges, it would be really fast.

I’ve never tried cooking them fresh. I always just make them and stick them in the freezer for a rainy day. So I guess it’s possible they may not come out the same. I guess if somebody tries making and cooking them without freezing, they can let me know. So here’s what a non-slug looking gnocchi is supposed to look like.

Cousin Gayle has been craving the potato figasa our Noni used to make. When she had some leftover mashed potatoes and needed an afternoon snack, Noni would make a little figasa. I often dropped in about the time it was done, since I lived spitting distance away, and poor Noni had to share her figasa and beer with me. Oh yeah, that’s the way us Italian kids rolled.

Full disclosure, we always got booze, coffee too, at Noni’s. Breakfast was a mug of coffee with a lot of cream and sugar. We’d dump in Cheerios, eat them, then drink the coffee. Meals came with wine, but it was a glass full of water with just enough rot gut red wine to give it a little color. Figasa came with beer. Anybody remember ABC beer? Silver can, red and blue letters. Noni probably bought it because it was the cheapest. 7up got jazzed up with a splash of Creme de Menthe. Coffee got zippy with a dash of brandy (Coffee Royale). And today, I don’t like beer or wine, but still do LOVE coffee! And I’ve digressed down memory lane.

Anyway, back to potato figasa. If you fry the gnocchi dough in olive oil, you get something pretty much like the potato figasa Noni used to make. We’ll let cousin Gayle give it a try and see how it measures up.

Making raviolis for the holidays is a family tradition. I’m especially not going to deny my daughter-in-law her Christmas ravilolis because frankly, she’s a little scary and I have strong self preservation instincts. I’m only half Italian, but we are not a brave people.

This year I taught a neighbor and fellow pizano how to make this Italian food of the Gods. I started a day ahead with a little boring prep work for the filling, then Susan joined me the next morning to make magic happen.

I tried my best to take pictures along the way. I didn’t take one of the browning of the onions, parsley & garlic because I was typing this while the were cooking and they got a little, shall we say, extra well done. Nobody wants to see that & I didn’t want to leave any evidence. Hopefully nobody will notice because I’m too lazy to go buy more parsley and start over. Now that’s home cookin’!

I’m hoping people will say, “My, the raviolis are deliciously different this year. They have a subtle, smoky flavor, that really pops!” Well, that’s my fantasy and I’m sticking with it.

Anyhow check out my recipe for Noni’s Ravioli, and hopefully you can make the magic happen for yourself. Just don’t try multi-tasking while you’re supposed to be cooking.

I think I posted a photo of my Noni already, but she was so cute, it bears repeating. Here’s Noni, with me and my Mom at my wedding. Noni was wearing low heels. I was wearing flats. Yes, she was little but she was a MIGHTY fine cook!

 

If you’re eating gluten free just because you think it’s healthier, I say forget about it. None of us are getting out of here alive so we might as eat, drink and be merry.

However, we do have a family member with celiac disease, which is a cruel fate for an Italian. Barilla makes a pretty good gluten free pasta, but that doesn’t help when it’s holiday time and nothing will do but homemade ravioli. So I found this gluten free pasta recipe and used it to make some darn good ravioli, and I didn’t even have to say so myself.

One of these days I’ll get around to publishing our family’s ravioli recipe. They’re really not that hard to make. But in the meantime I’ll share my recipe for gluten free pasta.

The dough has a different texture, rather slippery when wet. Without gluten, it lacks elasticity, which makes it really impossible to make ravoilis the way we usually do. You really need to make raviolis one at a time when using gluten free pasta. Just wet the edges of both pieces of pasta and crimp well.

OR you can roll out your dough, spread on the filling, then roll up jelly roll style. Wrap the roll in cheesecloth, tie the ends so it looks like a big firecracker, and drop it boiling water to cook. When done, cut in slices and top with your sauce and cheese. Looks different, but is easier and tastes just the same. In this case it would be called “Rotolo Italiano”. (Italian Roll)

How’s that for selling it? Can you tell I once worked in advertising? Admittedly, maybe not my most successful career.

Seriously, every cuisine has some version of slop in a pot. Throw a bunch of ingredients together in one pot & somehow magic happens. This is a favorite go-to dish when I want pasta, but don’t have any spaghetti sauce in the freezer, and don’t want to spend any more time in the kitchen than I have to. OK, that’s pretty much a constant.

I really had nothing for dinner the other night and needed to throw something together in a hurry, and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand to make this. It’s sort of Tex-Mex meets Italy. I don’t know how that works, but it does. Why choose Hamburger Helper when you can make Tagliarini?

My mom’s parents came from Italy, so half of the blood running through my veins is probably spaghetti sauce. My Nonno (grandpa) came to the U.S. when he was 5, but Nonni (grandma) didn’t come until she was 21. So she was always REALLY Italian, old school, F.O.B. Actually, “Nonna” is grandma in Italian, but since ours was less than 5 feet tall, we thought she looked more like a “Nonni”.

Here she is at my wedding. She’s wearing heels, & I’m not!

Noni never learned to drive, so she was always home gardening, cooking, and keeping the cookie jar full. This was handy for me, because she lived just a quick walk across the vineyard from our house. If I timed it right, I could catch the early farmer’s dinner at Noni’s, then head home for the later dinner service at Mom’s.

Both were terrific cooks, which is why Nonni was always telling me with her usual tact and thick Italian accent, “Oh, your butta comma so big!”. Those old Italian women had no filters. My generation has filters, we just choose not to use them because we think we’re funny. Our children are not amused.

Anyway…Nonni sadly died and left us with no written recipes except for persimmon cookies & Italian cake. I decided it was my sacred duty to write down an actual recipe so our family’s version of spaghetti sauce will live on.

All Italians make sauce differently, and all swear their is the best. But of course they’re all wrong, ours is! I give you my detailed instruction for Spaghetti Sauce ala Rosetta Magnone.