Recipes in four sentences
Happy New Year everyone!
I've thought long and hard about my goals for 2016.
There'll be no resolutions from me. Yes I'll treat myself more kindly if anything, but New Years Resolutions aren't for me these days. I find they lead to a sense of failure, rather than one of accomplishment.
Instead I want to have a Homespun Year and I'd love you to join me.
Just the word Homespun conjures visions of clouds of pastel wool knitted into fluffy rugs to nestle under in chilly Winters, rows of jars of sunny lemon butter and ruby red jam in Summer, heirloom lawn nightgowns trimmed with baby blue ribbon and soft pink rosebuds, iced tea on the porch, creamy hot chocolates and hand crocheted beanies. This is what memories are made of over a lifetime, not possessions bought in a moment of guilt, weakness, excitement or for the thrill.
How can fresh home grown herbs, snipped into buttery eggs, scrambled into mouthwatering pleats, not be better than any cafe Big Breakfast.
No restaurant can compete with the ambiance of a happy home and a partner or family replete from a meal cooked with love?
A dozen designer nightgowns don't hold a candle to one stitched by a Mothers careful hand and embellished with roses and vines that are echoes of a garden nurtured and coaxed into life from nothing.
A generation from now, what will be your legacy?
A pile of consumer stuff? Or items of lasting beauty and functionality fashioned with careworn
fingers?
My first homespun item is my gnocchi. Just three ingredients, a little time and these morsels hit our plates, a joy in every bite.
My Perfect Gnocchi
For three serves (multiply ingredients accordingly for more), bake 8 medium washed potatoes in a moderate oven till soft. Allow to cool but don't refrigerate.
When cool enough to handle, peel carefully and mash. Do not add any liquid or butter. Add 2 eggs and mix with a fork until barely combined. Add plain flour a quarter of a cup at a time, until you have a sticky dough. It should look like cookie dough.
Dust your bench lightly with more flour, and take one quarter of the dough, rolling it into a long cigar, about thumb thick. Take a knife and cut the cigar into thumbnail sized chunks. Press the back of a fork into the gnocchi to form indentations which will hold the sauce. Repeat with remaining dough, setting the gnocchi aside on a large platter or two.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer (not a rolling boil as you don't want the delicate gnocchi to disintegrate), and drop in enough gnocchi to barely cover the bottom of the saucepan. Any more and they'll stick together. Simmer gently for two minutes. Once they float to the top, they're pretty much ready but I usually give another 30 seconds at that point.
Set out your bowls, and add a knob of butter to each. Use a slotted spoon to remove the gnocchi to each bowl, adding more uncooked gnocchi to the pan as you go. Toss the gnocchi in the butter, and top with freshly grated Parmesan, salt and pepper.
Enjoy every delicious mouthful. Add fresh herbs if you wish but we like them plain.
Peasant cuisine, the absolute epitome of Homespun.
Welcome to a gentle, homespun year here at A Tray of Bliss. I hope that together we can make Home the place we all want to be....
...Mimi...
