The January issue of Bon Appetit featured ricotta cheese as the “ingredient of the year” in the “Cooking Class” section of the magazine. The article included this recipe, entitled Ricotta Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Marjoram. I’d had this recipe in the back of my mind for a while, but was not inspired to make it until I invited vegetarians over for dinner last week. I felt a little sheepish cooking a cheesy pasta dish, since that, at least in my opinion, is always the easiest solution to vegetarian cooking. I think I get a pass for making my own pasta, though.
This was an excellent recipe to make for company since the gnocchi can be made up to a day ahead of time (and must be made at least an hour ahead of time to chill) and the mushroom sauce cooks up very quickly – seriously, less than ten minutes. I knew from past experiences making gnocchi that the dough can be very sticky, but I did not have a problem with this recipe. I attribute this success to using nice, firm ricotta - from Whole Foods, I didn’t go as far as to make it myself; the maximum amount of flour the recipe recommended (3/4 cup); and a generous amount of extra flour when shaping the dough. I give this recipe an 8 for D and a 3 for E, giving it an EDR of 2.66.
I had some ripe pears and homemade ice cream seems to be back in the dessert rotation at our house, so I decided to make pear sorbet for dessert. I also made ginger cookies, ‘cos pear and ginger are nice together and I just never know when to stop! I used the pear sorbet recipe from David Lebovitz’s fabulous ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop. David generously puts a lot of his awesome dessert recipes on his website; I checked to see if this particular one was there so I could link it. The pear sorbet recipe was not on his site, but he had just posted this recipe for ginger cookies, which was inspired by Ina Garten’s Ultimate Ginger Cookies, which was the recipe I used! The ginger cookie recipe I used was from Barefoot Contessa at Home, and I found it a little disappointing. It is possible that I may have been trying to do too many things at once and not concentrating enough on the cookies, but they weren’t nice and soft like I was expecting. I think next time I will make them smaller and call them gingersnaps, or try the recipe on David’s site.
This was an excellent recipe to make for company since the gnocchi can be made up to a day ahead of time (and must be made at least an hour ahead of time to chill) and the mushroom sauce cooks up very quickly – seriously, less than ten minutes. I knew from past experiences making gnocchi that the dough can be very sticky, but I did not have a problem with this recipe. I attribute this success to using nice, firm ricotta - from Whole Foods, I didn’t go as far as to make it myself; the maximum amount of flour the recipe recommended (3/4 cup); and a generous amount of extra flour when shaping the dough. I give this recipe an 8 for D and a 3 for E, giving it an EDR of 2.66.
I had some ripe pears and homemade ice cream seems to be back in the dessert rotation at our house, so I decided to make pear sorbet for dessert. I also made ginger cookies, ‘cos pear and ginger are nice together and I just never know when to stop! I used the pear sorbet recipe from David Lebovitz’s fabulous ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop. David generously puts a lot of his awesome dessert recipes on his website; I checked to see if this particular one was there so I could link it. The pear sorbet recipe was not on his site, but he had just posted this recipe for ginger cookies, which was inspired by Ina Garten’s Ultimate Ginger Cookies, which was the recipe I used! The ginger cookie recipe I used was from Barefoot Contessa at Home, and I found it a little disappointing. It is possible that I may have been trying to do too many things at once and not concentrating enough on the cookies, but they weren’t nice and soft like I was expecting. I think next time I will make them smaller and call them gingersnaps, or try the recipe on David’s site.
Gnocchi is my favorite kind of pasta - sounds great! Thanks for posting.
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