Sweet Potato Gnocchi Fail - But a nice creamy sauce

I realized that I had never shared the pictures of my failed sweet potato gnocchi attempt (mentioned in the previous post.)

A couple of the dumplings held their shape, but I had to rescue them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon. Whoops! I am not sure what was off about my recipe, but I will add more egg and flour next time. I think the sweet potatoes soaked up more liquid than the russet potatoes normally do.

I cannot find my notes on the sauce, but I started with some thickened flour and butter, added heavy cream and some powdered sage. I may have added a tiny bit of brown sugar. The sauce was fantastic, too bad it was like soup with my gnocchi!

Pasta Time

What do you do when you have extra heavy cream in the fridge that you want to use up? Why turn it into a creamy tomato sauce! I use pasta dishes as an excuse to use up ingredients in the fridge.

This time, I used 4 Trader Joe's Pesto Sausages, half of a sweet onion and 1 green bell pepper. I sauteed them with some olive oil and then added 6 ounces of tomato paste and some heavy cream until I get the consistency I want.

It is funny that the pasta of this dish is the least important part!

Gnocchi for Six

Handmade gnocchi is a lot of fun to make, but I am always afraid of it clumping during boiling. (I had one disastrous experiment when I tried a variation of my recipe and I ended up with a mashed mush.) I wanted to make gnocchi with my Pals so I doubled the normal standard recipe, keeping my fingers crossed that I would be able to fit them all in one pot.

To set the stage for dinner, I steamed broccoli and placed it in the bowls. Cream and broccoli go so well together, don't they?

Before dropping the gnocchi in the water, I set up the creamy pesto sauce (discussed in the previous post) to simmer. I put the dumplings directly in the sauce after they floated so that way they would not stick together.

I was so lucky that there was no clumping! It was a bit stressful dropping so many gnocchi into the pot at once (trying not to compress them as I put them into the water) but it ended up even better than I could have hoped.

With any yummy sauce, you need to have some bread to wipe up what is left! I whipped up some bread machine pizza dough and twisted them into breadsticks. The dough was brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic salt before baking.

I am very lucky to have great friends to share wonderful food with. Especially when those friends decide to come out to Evanston to visit. Anyone else want to come to dinner? :)

Pesto

Growing up, I was not a huge fan of pesto. Keith has always loved it, and after meeting him my appreciation grew. We frequently have gnocchi in a creamy pesto sauce, but the best I had ever had was from our cooking class where everything was made fresh. Since we were going to have friends come to town, I thought it would be fun to make gnocchi from scratch with creamy pesto sauce, but I wanted to pre-make the pesto.

This a nut free pesto since one of our friends has an allergy. It contained:

• 4 cups fresh basil leaves
• 1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 6 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1.5 cup olive oil

Of course we had to test the sauce out to make sure it would be suitable for company. I heated the pesto up in a 1:1 ratio with heavy cream and served on pasta with fresh grated parmesan cheese.

Kielbasa Spaghetti

Uhoh... I chopped up the ingredients to make a stir fried turkey kielbasa tomato sauce spaghetti... only to find that I was almost out of sauce. Thankfully, I found a tiny, neglected can of tomato paste on the bottom shelf of the pantry.

I mixed a 6 oz can of tomato paste with half a cup of water and then bottled sauce to it. I add garlic and other spices while I'm cooking the meat, so I didn't add any additional spices to the sauce. Frequently I add frozen peas but for some reason that night I decided against it.

This was such a fast meal to cook, eat and clean up! Is it hard to wonder why I love stir frying?

Gnocci in a Creamy Pesto Sauce

Today I'm going to talk about one of Keith's favorite meals: Gnocci in a creamy pesto sauce. Normally I use Trader Joe's brand, but this time I am using whole wheat that I picked up at Whole Foods. When Keith and I took a pasta workshop cooking class, we made fresh gnocci which doesn't compare to this dish... but for pre-made gnocci this is actually pretty good. (Don't worry, I plan to start making fresh gnocci at home soon!)

Everything I need for a yummy dinner!

Normally I serve this dish with steamed asparagus and broccoli. Today, I decided to do something a little different (mainly because I had no broccoli.) I had some shallots, so I decided to saute some shallots in a small portion of the olive oil before adding the milk and remaining oil to the sauce. I also decided to add some spinach.

I think the more I keep track of what I do in the kitchen, the more new things I try and therefore the more new things I discover.

I added an extra 1/8th cup of milk to help add volume for the spinach. The sauce is another thing that I would like to make from scratch, but the mix is a pretty good "cheat". I added the spinach after I turned off the heat from the sauce.

The sauce before (left) and after (right) adding the spinach

I steam the veggies in in the same water that I use to cook the gnocci. Since gnocci only need a few minutes to cook, I take care of the vegetables first.

Setting up to add the gnocci.

I had been making this meal for a while when I suddenly discovered that it was completely vegetarian. We frequently have dinners with some friends of ours, and one couple is vegetarian so I was always looking for complete meatless meals.

I have no idea why I started arranging the asparagus spears like this, but it seemed like the best way to get them to fit into the bowl.

Tempura Chicken

Another Trader Joe's masterpiece. The tempura chicken kit is $4-6 (I cannot remember at the moment) and is so delicious and fast to prepare.

The sauce is good (amazing actually), but there's not enough to cover a lot of rice with. Therefore I've started supplementing the mix with a sauce made out of pineapple, green pepper and onion. It's simple, but yummy and adds some veggies to the meal.

The ingredients for my supplemental sauce.

This time I only had a small onion, so I added half a shallot to the mix. I'm not sure the shallot added anything to the sauce, but it certainly didn't hurt anything! I don't always use crushed pineapple, when I use chunk I usually cut each of the pieces in half to make them into smaller bites. The extra juice helps make the sauce go farther.

I add a dash of low sodium soy sauce to finish off the sauce.

The sauce simmers while the chicken is in the oven.

If the sauce is too thin when we're ready to eat, I add a little corn starch to thicken it.

The frozen chicken

I layer the pepper/onion/pineapple sauce on top of rice, followed by the baked chicken and then topped with the (DELICIOUS) sweet and sour sauce that comes in the kit. There is definitely enough food for 3-4 meals.

Yum! Better than delivery, and much cheaper, too!

A Tale of Two Moles - Part 3 (The Final Comparison)

Mole Poblano version 1 (left) and version 2 (right)

So was it worth the effort to collect the ingredients and make the more complected mole? Absolutely! I love that you store it at a smaller volume and add chicken broth when you are ready to serve. I still have some in my freezer that I cannot wait to use!

The simple sauce (version 1) is a good sauce on it's own, but if you want Mole Poblano, it is worth the extra effort to make version 2.

My in-laws create enchiladas every Christmas Dinner, and this year they used the authentic mole sauce that I created and had stored in my freezer. They proclaimed that it was as good as the neighborhood Mexican Restaurant's sauce!

Christmas Enchiladas

A Tale of Two Moles, Part 2

I found two different mole recipes, a quick version (shown in Part 1) and a more authentic version (shown in Part 2; this post). I wanted to know it was worth collecting the multiple ingredients and steps for the authentic version.

The hardest part of making the more authentic Mole sauce was tracking down all of the the ingredients. (Which can also add up to be quite expensive.)


The Ingredients for Authentic Mole Sauce

The peppers are the most important part of a mole sauce. I am not super tolerant of spicy things, so I decided to not use whole chipotle peppers, and instead add some of the spice (1/8 tsp) to the final product. This recipe had you save the seeds from the peppers to include in the final mixture.

This whole experiment started because I had some poblano peppers, which it turns out aren't even in the sauce! I dried them in my oven to create more Ancho peppers.


I couldn't find tomatillos in my supermarket, so I used an additional tomato. Fresh (left) and after roasting (right)


I couldn't find Mexican chocolate, so I substituted bittersweet chocolate. To counteract the bitterness, I added a few tablespoons of brown sugar to the sauce before serving.

Other ingredients include pumpkin seeds, peanuts, raisins, bread (!), tortillas (!) and a number of spices.

Cooking the Sauce

The recipe has fantastic step by step photographs of the process. I also took step by step pictures, so you can see how the mole sauce is created (although slowly). I don't think I can do justice to the steps, so I am going to let the photos speak for themselves.

I pureed the sauce in batches. The recipe crated 6 cups of mole sauce, before diluting it with the broth! I'm really glad I had a deep pan with a lid for the sauteing. In the end, it took an afternoon to make the sauce, so it was really not too much effort for the amount of sauce that you have to use later!

I had to add a couple T of brown sugar to help counteract the bitterness from the chocolate. This can be done to taste.

Authentic mole poblano sauce

Next time I make this, I will not include the pepper seeds. These didn't get soft enough or blend easily in the food processor.

A Tale of Two Moles - Part 1

My in-laws introduced me to Mole Poblano sauce, and I fell in love. Keith makes excellent enchiladas, so I wanted to find a mole sauce recipe that would complement it (since you cannot find it in supermarkets easily.)

I found two different mole recipes, a quick version (shown in Part 1) and a more authentic version (shown in Part 2). I wanted to compare the two sauces, because if the easier mole sauce tasted almost as good, then it would save a lot of preparation time.

The simple mole recipe only has a few ingredients, pictured above.

The onions, peppers and tomato sauce simmering, the longest step in a non-labor intensive process.

After adding the cocoa powder the sauce turned the nice brown that I expected.

This mole sauce took almost no time to create. The simmering was the longest step. It can be easily created without much effort, especially if you decide not to puree it as I did. The sauce had a good flavor, but it didn't quite match the expectation of Mole Poblano that I had in my head.

Mole sauce version 1, after pureeing.

Stay tuned for a description of the more authentic Mole Poblano recipe in my next post.