Pumpkin, Swiss chard and ricotta gnudi (a low carb alternative to ravioli or gnocchi)

After an extrememly warm and sunny September, fall has arrived in all its glory. I can tell by the orange and yellow leaves and the chestnuts covering the sidewalks of the city, I can tell by the variety of apples, mushrooms and pumpkins at the store. I can tell by the plentiful rain, my runny nose and my desire to eat something a little more substantial and comforting for dinner.

 

Enter gnudi.

 

If you are wondering what gnudi are, think of the love child between a raviolo* and a canederlo (or knoedel in German).

 

To be honest, they aren't really closely related to canederli, because gnudi don't actually contain any bread or bread crumbs. They are however reminiscent of them in looks and they share their versatility: you can make them choosing from a wide range of ingredients and you can serve them in broth or with a variety of sauces.

 

But when it comes to the actual preparation, they are much more akin to ravioli, so perhaps the best way to describe them is telling you to picture a naughty raviolo in its birthday suit.

 

 

 

Gnudo is indeed Tuscan dialect for nudo, which means naked in Italian. So gnudi are none other than dumplings or delicate gnocchi (out go the potatoes, in comes the ricotta) made using the same ingredients you would employ for stuffing ravioli, with just a small addition of flour to hold together the fragile ricotta pillows while they are cooking. I used regular flour, but you could probably substitute it with gluten free or no-carb options if you needed/wanted to (rice flour, chickpea flour etc.).

 

Basically, gnudi are a shortcut and they have the added bonus of being low carb. Sure,  butter and Parmesan cheese make a hefty apperance in the recipe, but the true bulk of gnudi is ricotta (which is not a cheese per se) and vegetables. So what it comes down to is that when you are making gnudi you are actually making a quick and pretty healthy vegetarian meal.

 

 

Spinach and ricotta are traditional ingredients for gnudi, but pretty much any leafy green will do and many other vegetables come to mind, from zucchini to eggplant and mushrooms. What is really key is squeezing as much excess water out of the vegetables as you can.

 

You can also swap cheeses: pecorino would work well and so would feta in my opinion.

 

And then there is the sauce: melted butter and Parmesan cheese are a classic, but psssst, if it hadn't been a week night meal (we usually try to keep those reasonably healthy and light), I probably would have fried up some pancetta and served the salty, crunchy morsels scattered over the gnudi. Bacon and pumpkin? Yum.
 

A cream and/or cheese-based sauce would work really well too, if you aren't counting calories. Blue cheese or a raw milk mountain cheese would be perfect to add some character to the ricotta base. And if you are going down the zucchini and eggplant road, a nice tomato sauce would be perfect.
 

 

 

Gnocchi di ricotta

 

 

This recipe was a cinch. It took no more than ten minutes to prepare and under three minutes to cook.

 

I served them with pesto, because I always keep some in the fridge for emergencies but - if you want to keep things simple - I think they would be great with a fresh, quick, summery tomato sauce and lots of basil or even just butter, sage and Parmesan cheese (and maybe a sprinkling of poppy seeds for extra crunch?).

 

If you are looking to make something a little fancier, these will taste great with pretty much anything. A tomato-based seafood sauce, a slow-cooked ragu, zucchini and saffron come to mind, but there is so much more you can do with them. Just be creative! 

 

 

Look at the concentration and tension in that little left hand!

 

Back to our dinner, or even further step back.

 

The fact is, my four year-old has been going through a bit of a phase  lately and has been acting up a little, so I have been making an effort to spend some quality time alone with him. 

. 

His sister is a true companion to him and he would be happy to be with her and follow her around all day long (sound familiar sis?). However, despite being a caring older sister, she has a personality that matches her charm and looks, so I feel like he sometimes needs some space.

Also, the last month of school saw me spending a lot of time with her in the kitchen doing homework and preparing for tests while he played in his room or hung around the kitchen table waiting (and making me feel guilty).

So, that is how I got the idea to cook with him one afternoon while my daughter was out at a girlfriend's.

Maybe yielding a sharp knife during,  ... let's call it an 'undomesticated phase', doesn't sound like the right approach. But I can assure you that, naturally under my close supervision,  it was exactly what he needed: it made him feel like a big boy and not just the baby brother.  

 

  

 

 

 

End of story: he had fun (and was extremely proud throughout dinner), I had help, and the family enjoyed a good meal.

 

Perfect solution.

 

End, end of story: did the meal serve its purpose, magically turning my son into the calmest, most obedient of children?  No, certainly not. Just yesterday his kindergarden teacher told him off. But I am more than happy to keep making these in order to reach my goal ;o)

 

 

 

Plum galette with ginger ricotta filling

 

 

Plums may have been one of the first fruits to be domesticated by humans. Remains have been found dating from the Neolithic age. They were mentioned in writing by Confucius (also, in Chinese mythology, plums are associated with age and wisdom), the Greeks and the Romans.

 

They are the most cultivated fruit in the world after apples and they come in many colors, sizes and shapes. Plums are used in both sweet and savory preparations. They can be dried, pickled and are used to make alcoholic beverages in several countries.

 

Blah, blah, blah...

 

I know. You didn't come here for this. I mean, these facts may have been interesting and even amusing (in a nerdy-foodie kinda way), but this? This is just boring. Stuff you already know, and if you don't, maybe it is because you don't particularly care to know it.

Am I right?

 

I did want to tell you something... it's just that...

 

...

 

... my mind is a total blank...

 

For the life of me, I cannot come up with one single amusing or entertaining thing to write today.

 

 

 

 

 

But I have a dessert for you that I am just dying to share. I want to tell you about it even if I don't have a cutesy preamble for you. After all, this is a food blog, is it not?

 

So I am going to cut right to the chase and give you the recipe for a delightful, very seasonal, rustic yet elegant galette to make with your overabundance of plums.

 

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.



 

 

Pasta with ricotta and sundried tomatoes

Remember we spent last week end in the Alps?

Well, after trekking through the forest and sitting among the flowers in the meadows to have a picnic we also stopped to admire cows (my son, who is currently obsessed with bovines as only a toddler can be, calls them cow, mucca - Italian for cow - moo or even all three in a row depending on his level of excitement) and then walked up to a little farm to buy cheese, butter and salami.

Since we couldn't make up our minds, we ended up buying most of the cheeses on display.

One of the cheeses we bought was ricotta, although it technically isn't cheese as most of you probably already know, because it is made from a byproduct of cheesemaking, whey.

We ate it that same evening so that we could taste it at its freshest. This ricotta was not the white, sweet, smooth cream you can just gobble down by the spoonful that you buy at the supermarket.

 

This was the real deal, it was a little grainy in texture and tasted slightly like the stable and the cow it came from. It almost mooed.

 So I decided to make it with some pasta and to offset the creamy texture and slightly milky sweetness I chopped up some sundried tomatoes preserved in oil.

Those little ruby nuggets added a punch of fabulous flavor to each and every forkful. Add a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, a dusting of freshly ground pepper and this pasta is the thing of gods. I think I will try adding some toasted pine nuts the next time I make it.

 Have a great week end!

Sweet polenta bread. Are you a purist or not?

Let me just clarify: I am not trying to be fancy. I am not calling this recipe polenta bread instead of plain old corn bread because I want to give myself airs. The truth is I used polenta flour in it and my impression is that it is ground a little coarser than corn meal. I am however not so sure about this anymore, after some research on the Internet. There seem to be very discordant opinions. Some vouch they are exactly the same thing, others say the flour used to make polenta is coarser. Who knows? What matters is that they are pretty interchangeable and so let's just say I called it polenta bread in honor of the country I live in.

Before you read this, I apologize to all corn bread purists. I know to you corn bread is sacred and I will understand perfectly if you skip on to another post with mild annoyance. It has happened to me many a time and a few posts I read this morning got me thinking. How important is it to exactly execute a traditional recipe? Is there a right way to cook something in the world we live in today, where everything is going global and fusion is ever more popular?  In a world where food bloggers are inspiring each other to cook recipes from every corner of the planet, using new ingredients and techniques?

I started thinking about this when I commented on Taste of Beirut's new post. Joumana asked herself why she had never thought of doing something before that saved her lots of time cooking a traditional recipe. My guess is that when you have been taught to do something a certain way, it is so imprinted in your being that it is sometimes hard to think of a simple change that will be helpful and that may seem obvious to someone from another background. Then, when I read Design, Wine & Dine's new post, she mentioned substituting one ingredient for another missing one. Mind you, they are both ingredients that are very much used in that cuisine and I am sure either way, the dish is delicious. But as I read the post after my morning reflections, I couldn't help picturing a Maroccan somewhere tsssk-tsssking because this foreigner had ruined his/her mother's recipe.

Now, I live in a country where tradition is everything. Recipes have been made just so for decades, even centuries. In Italy you cannot even speak of regional cuisine, it is more a local cuisine. I have read endless debates on whether pumpkin ravioli should be made with or without adding amaretto cookie crumbs to the filling. These ravioli are typical of the Mantua area (even this may raise a debate...) and if you move just a few kms north or south the dogma changes. It basically boils down to how your nonna made them. That is the recipe, the only way to make something here.

I think I have already mentioned how Italian men will sit at a restaurant eating a plate of pasta and dissect the recipe, comparing what each of their mothers used when making the same dish. Whole meals are spent talking about food. That is why often it is said that Italian cuisine is one of the best in the world, but that it is a touch too traditional, static. Many of you Italian readers right now are probably thinking your food is so good that there is no need to change it, right?
The complete opposite example is Australia, with its everchanging, innovative cuisine influenced by a variety of cultures and ingredients. It is a reasonably young country and as all things young, it is more open to change.

I will admit to cringing or feeling a little snooty at times when I read how someone cooks a risotto or ruins something as simple as a Caprese. I mean, certain techniques or ingredients were chosen because after years of experimenting they turned out to be the best possible choice for that dish. If something has a name, like the above mentioned Caprese, then why make it with avocado and still call it a Caprese? We all feel that when someone goes and violates something that is a part of our history, our heritage or even simply our family tradition, something we have eaten countless times made that way by someone we love, it is wrong. But then we feel equally free to play around and experiment with recipes from other countries by adding, adjusting or substituting ingredients.

The truth is that sometimes a person with a different cooking experience has a new and fresh take on things and they can teach us that change is not a bad thing. More often than not, change is positive and it is only by experimenting and trying that we can come up with something new and perhaps outstanding.

What do you think? Are you a purist or do you like to be adventurous?

This polenta bread is a sweet version of your typical corn bread. It is perfect with a cup of tea or coffee. You can eat it on its own or spread it with jam. It has a wonderful crumb and is rich and moist. I substituted the cup of milk in the original recipe I found on About.com with 1 cup of ricotta and a 1/3 cup of cream I had in the fridge. I also used olive oil instead of canola oil. I used up all the open dairy products in my fridge and came up with a perfect breakfast.

Grilled eggplant and goat ricotta puree

I mentioned in my last post that in the morning, before getting all wrapped up in the LiveSTRONG initiative, I was getting ready to post a light, healthy recipe.

On Sunday our close friends C&R baby-sat our offspring and sent us off to a morning at a SPA. Not bad, huh? To then spoil us with a homecooked picanha (a Brazilian cut of beef) lunch.  

Now, we are not really SPA habitués, preferring to indulge in a meal in a restaurant over a hot tub (I am sure you knew that). But our four closest friends treated us to gift cards to this place just a few months after our  second child was born. I think they saw the dark circles around our eyes and decided we needed some quiet, alone time. Time passed and we never really got our act together. There was always some obstacle: finding a baby sitter, leaving the baby for more than a few hours, work...until we realized the gift cards were about to expire.

My MIL's torta di ricotta, or ricotta cake

  

It is fashion week in Milan. That is synonymous of total chaos. It means the traffic, which is already pretty bad here, is horrendous. It means scooters, bikes and pedestrians weaving dangerously in and out of the aforementioned traffic. It means stressed out people everywhere ready to snap. It means bored looking models invading the city. It means double and triple parked Ferraris and Maseratis and papparazzi scurrying around photographing "It people". It also means me desperately trying to get from work in the smack center of Milan to pre-school and back faster than the hours it seems to be taking each way. Because each time I ride my bike down the pedestrian roads of the center I get stuck for about a half hour in the hordes of people craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the catwalk behind the 6-foot tall bouncers in sleek suits and sunglasses they built about 100m from my office. It also means that I will never in a 100 years get a reservation in that restaurant I am planning to go to for my birthday.