If I can't go to the Amalfi....

it can come to me, yay!  Through the pages of a wonderful book called TRATTORIA Italian food for Family and Friends.  I love everything I have cooked from this book so far and am actually rather upset that I have never tried today's recipe before. It is so good! And though I personally cannot confirm whether the food is actually like what I'll find in an Italian Trattoria when I fulfill my dreams of visiting the Amalfi my dear daughter was was actually there last year sat down to lunch and declared 'Ooh I've had this before at....' and named the restuarant. I was rather chuffed.  So here it is....

Ricotta Gnocchi

 

 

Now the recipe says serves 4, maybe as a starter, but I found it did 3 of quite nicely for lunch.

300g ricotta cheese (see below for recipe)

85g 00 flour, plus extra for dusting

1 crushed clove of garlic

2 egg yolks

sea salt, fresh ground black pepper and freshly grated nutmeg.

Mix the above ingredients together in a bowl. Be quite generous with the seasoning. Knead it lightly on a floured surface and divide up into 3 or 4 pieces to make it more managable. Roll the dough out in a sausage shape till it's about as thick as your little finger, mine was more like ring finger size actually.  Cut at an angle in to small pieces, about the length up to the first joint of your index finger. Loving all the fingers, much easier that working in cm! Boil up some salted water in a large pan and cook the gnocchi in batches till it rises to the surface. Scoop out and you can either get straight on to the next bit, or pop them in the fridge till later for a super speedy meal later on.

to cook and serve

200g of cherry tomatoes, halved

2tsp of flaked dried chilli

2 tbsp of olive oil

a handful of fresh basil, torn

Parmesan grated, to taste (nice big chunky grating, not fine, well that's my preference :-) )

Now simply heat the oil in a nice large frying pan, add the chilli, tomatoes and gnocchi and saute away for 5mins or so until the tomatoes cook down and start coating the gnocchi. Remove from the heat, stir in the basil and parmesan and serve.

Sit down and eat and be transported to Italy!

Now then, here's a great little recipe that enables you to make the ricotta you need for this recipe at a fraction of the price of buying it. It is a lovely soft creamy ricotta just like you buy in the shops!

Makes about 750g (you could half and make less)

Take  2+ litre carton  of whole milk and 250mls of double cream, put them in a saucepan along with 1.5tsp of salt and  the juice of a lemon juice. Heat it up to just under the boil,  stirring occasionally. Switch the heat off and leave it to stand for an hour. It should split up into curds and clear whey.  Transfer to a square of muslin and hang up to drain for 2-3 hours, then it's ready to use. Simples.  (you may find you have the curds but the whey isn't quite clear, if not heat it up again and add a tsp of white wine vinegar, it should instantly sort itself out).

I was most excited to find that the same author Ursula Ferigno has another book, Real Fast Vegetarian Food which I could buy for 1p + post from Amazon so that's on it's way :-) Oops, like I need anymore books!