fresh pasta Archives - Mamma's Cooking

Gnocchi

Potato gnocchi is one of my favorite foods! It is so versatile. It can be the star of the meal or the great accompaniment to your favorite roast. You can toss it in any sauce you like. Tomato, pesto, my Mascarpone Pasta sauce or my pink sauce.

Most recently I served it up with a roasted chicken (recipe coming soon!) and made a gravy from the pan drippings. A great comforting meal, especially on a snowy day. Gnocchi is something that you can get the kids involved with if you don’t mind making a mess of your kitchen 🙂 It is fun and delicious. I have adapted this recipe from Tyler Florence to make it gluten free.

Potato Gnocchi

Amazing gluten-free potato gnocchi recipe your family will love!

Ingredients

4 to 5 white potatoes
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of black pepper
½ cup of grated parmesan
1 ¾ cup of ricotta
¾ cup of Cup4Cup Gluten-Free flour plus more for dusting

Instructions

Make holes with fork in potatoes. Bake (about an hour in the oven at 375 degrees) or microwave (on a plate about 8 to 10 minutes). When cool enough to touch, scoop the potato out from the skins and mash with a fork. Add salt, nutmeg, pepper, parmesan and ricotta, then combine. Mix flour in ¼ cup at a time.
Dust a large work space with flour. Take a handful of dough, press together and roll into a long strand, about ½ inch in diameter. Cut with pastry cutter or knife into ½ inch pieces. Lay the prongs of the fork on top of the gnocchi and gently press down and pull fork toward you rolling the gnocchi. Place the gnocchi on a sheet pan topped with parchment paper or waxed paper. Repeat until you have used all the dough.
Bring about 8 cups of water to a boil in a large soup pot. Add some salt to the water (about 1 tablespoon). Drop in a handful of gnocchi at a time. When they float (about 2 minutes) place in your serving bowl. Repeat until all the gnocchi are cooked. Toss the gnocchi with your favorite sauce.

This is a time intensive meal to prepare, but well worth it, especially if you have help with the rolling and cutting.

If you have time, this is perfect for a Valentine’s meal. If you don’t have time this week, here are some other ideas for food to make for your Valentines 🙂

Swedish Meatballs

French Onion Soup

Chocolate Pudding Pie

Burrata Appetizer

Cooking Bucket List 2017

Happy New Year! Thank you for coming on this journey with me. Looking forward to a great year ahead full of cooking, family and friends!

I mostly finished my 2015 bucket list, after taking a break in 2016. Poached salmon was one of the last items and it was delicious! I don’t have an official recipe for the poached salmon. I know I used a lot of butter. 4 sticks to be exact. I added some lemon juice, fresh thyme, salt and pepper to the butter and poached the salmon for about 15 minutes. It was AMAZING! Served it with a broccoli risotto.

Coming up with my own proprietary bread and pizza dough mixes was next, but I’ve found others that I love to use and well, honestly, those are easier in my day to day life for now 🙂 My kids love the Goodbye Gluten Gluten-free bread that I found at Wegman’s. My favorite is still the King Arthur’s Gluten-free bread mix, right out of the oven. For pizza, which we usually have on Fridays when we are all tired from the week, it’s Freshcetta frozen gluten-free pizza or I use Against the Grain’s Pizza Shells to make our own.

For 2017, I am back in the swing of things and ready for some new challenges! I am making some family favorites gluten-free and trying some new cooking techniques. Hopefully this will inspire you to make your own cooking bucket list or just pledge to cook at home more in 2017 😉

Gluten-free koeksisters (A South African fried dough, dipped in syrup)
Dragon Ball from Takara (a local sushi restaurant)
Homemade Ginger Beer
Gluten-free Egg Yolk Ravioli
Gluten-free Yorkshire pudding
Gluten-free Croissants
Indian Pudding
Cornish Game Hens
Lamb Mango Korma from scratch
Baked Alaska

Happy New Year everyone! Best wishes that the hope and excitement of a new year lasts more than this day 🙂 What is on your cooking bucket list? Do you have a family favorite that you need help adapting to be gluten free? Let me know!

Completing My Cooking Bucket List

It has only taken me two years to (almost) finish my 2015 bucket list. I am working on finishing them before the end of 2016 and starting a new list in 2017!

1. Gluten Free Pretzels or Pretzel rolls

I made the rolls one night in August using a recipe from Nicole Hunn at Gluten-Free on a Shoestring. http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/pretzel-rolls/. They were delicious! We had some leftover pulled pork and meatballs in the fridge so everyone made their own pretzel roll subs for dinner. The next morning we made egg and cheese sandwiches, which would have been even better with some grilled veggies.

2. Poached Salmon (Still needs to be completed)

3. Gluten free Puff Pastry

I made the puff pastry on Valentine’s Day. It was an all day affair. It was delicious! But very time consuming. Again, I used a recipe from Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/gluten-free-puff-pastry/. I will definitely make it again for a special occasion.

4. Gluten Free Beef Wellington

I used the GF puff pastry to make Beef Wellington. It wasn’t pretty but tasted amazing! I made a mixture of mushrooms and chicken livers sautéed with fresh thyme, salt, pepper and a little beef stock and spread that on the pastry, when cooled. I used a top sirloin roast because that is what I had in the freezer. I based my cooking times on the recipe for Beef Wellington in The Good Housekeeping Cookbook from 1973. I did rush it and the meat was warm, so the puff pastry fell off of the roast, but the pastry was buttery and crispy while the meat with juicy and tender. Perfect! I will definitely make it again.

5. Coq au Vin

I made this way back in early 2015 on Superbowl Sunday. Not exactly traditional Superbowl food, but delicious! Julia Child’s recipe of course, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I skipped the cognac though since I didn’t have any and wasn’t sure if it was gluten free and used King Arthur’s gluten-free all-purpose flour as a thickener. Traditional recipes like this, can easily be made gluten-free. I was so happy with how this came out! It disappeared before I remembered to take a picture!

6. Duck

I made a feast for myself on Mother’s Day, with Karina’s help. I seared the duck breast (saved the fat) and served with lamb chops, a smoked mozzarella risotto and roasted asparagus. It was a real decadent meal! I used the leftover duck fat to make shoestring potato fries the next day! What a treat!

7. Chilaquiles

I made these for my birthday dinner 2016. It was a simplified version using the tomatillo salsa recipe below. I heated up the sauce, added some tortilla chips, shredded cooked chicken, and topped with sunny side up eggs (cooked in another pan), then sprinkled with feta and fresh cilantro. It was so good. The kids even ate it!

8. Develop my own of GF flours to make an all purpose flour

I haven’t done this yet for a couple of reasons. I am not a great technical cook. I don’t follow recipes exactly. I don’t always measure precisely. I cook from feeling. So I have taken help from the amazing GF flours already out there. I like to use Cup4Cup and King Arthur’s GF blend.

9. Gluten free pasta from scratch

I have made GF pasta from scratch a couple of times, once without a pasta machine and once with the pasta machine. I still need to do some more testing. Both times, no matter how thinly rolled, it still came out gummy. This is where a good flour blend would help to find a way to take out the gumminess. Anyone have any suggestions?

10. Gluten free gnocchi from scratch

I have made gnocchi several times and it has always come out delicious! I use mostly ricotta and then sweet potato, Yukon golds or leftover mashed potatoes with a little GF all purpose flour. I will write the recipe down soon, I promise! I usually serve my gnocchi with a pesto or light cream sauce.

11. Gluten free bread from scratch that is good enough for anyone to eat

There are two cookbook authors I go to when I want to bake something GF. Nicole Hunn from Gluten Free on a Shoestring which you have heard me talk about a lot lately because of her amazing new cookbook coming out and the other is Roben Ryberg (You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten-Free!). I have been making Roben’s Everyday Loaf (corn-based) a lot recently. It is a good sandwich bread. More often, I have been making King Arthur’s GF bread mix, but that is expensive as is the GF bread my kids like, either Wegman’s or Trader Joe’s.

12. Gluten free pizza dough that is good enough for anyone to eat.

I haven’t even attempted this yet, but hope to soon. Fridays are our pizza night, so by the time Friday rolls around I’m usually exhausted, so we have frozen pizza (Freschetta’s GF Cheese) or I use the Against the Grain crust to make my grilled pizza recipe below. You can also bake it in the oven at 425 for 12-15 minutes.

Grilled Pizza (feeds our family of 5 with leftovers)

By Marie Ericson

Ingredients

2 frozen pizza crusts (I like to use Against the Grain)

2 Tablespoons of olive oil

1 6-ounce can Hunts Tomato Sauce

1 16-ounce block of mozzarella cheese, shredded

Salt and pepper

Toppings, optional and only limited by your imagination! Ham and pineapple, sausage, peppers and onions, fresh ricotta, olives, spinach and feta or leftover hamburger

Directions

Heat grill to about 400 degrees. Brush olive oil on one side of each pizza crust. Put that side down on the grill. Brush the other side of the pizza crust with the oil and close the lid for 2 minutes. Using spatulas (I have found 2 work best), flip the pizza crusts and turn the burners down to low or move crusts to a cooler part of the grill. Close lid for 2 minutes. Top the crusts with sauce, 3-4 Tablespoons per crust. (You will not need all 6 ounces, so reserve the rest for pasta the next day.) Sprinkle about 8 ounces of cheese on each pizza and add any toppings you are using. Close lid and cook until cheese is melted, 5 to 10 minutes, depending on your grill. Using 2 spatulas remove each pizza and put on serving platter, cutting board or pizza stone and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

For the remainder of 2016 I will try to finish this list by making Poached Salmon, maybe testing flour mixtures to make my own all purpose flour and make a gf pizza dough that is good enough for anyone to eat. I predict the Salmon will happen and the other two…well, maybe next year. What is on your cooking bucket list?

Gluten free fresh pasta, really?

Yes really. I used to love making pasta from scratch and eating fresh pasta. There is just something so comforting about it. I had just gotten the handle on a good recipe when our house went gluten free. My challenge now is to find the right gluten free recipe (and get a pasta machine!). I am determined!

I knocked one item off my 2015 Cooking Bucket list and made a brown rice pasta last week. It was really good, but I don’t have a pasta machine or the attachment for my Kitchen Aid, so I tried to hand roll it, like I used to with fresh gluten filled pasta. This did not work as well. I rolled it until it was almost transparent, but it was still a little too thick and gummy when I cooked it. Taste was there, but consistency was not. This was the recipe I used: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/05/gluten-free-fresh-pasta-recipe.html. I may try a couple of other recipes to see if hand rolling can work with them. If they don’t, you know what my next investment will be!

I didn’t have any sauce in the house, so used some tomatoes, onions, garlic, salt and pepper and sauteed together for a about 10-15 minutes.

I served it with some steamed peas and sockeye salmon I cooked in a foil packet in the oven with salt, pepper, lemon slices.

This weekend I may try to make Julia Child’s coq au vin! Not the most appropriate football or tailgating food, but hopefully it will be good 🙂 Here is a link to some old blogs that have more gameday appropriate food.