Savory Gnocchi with Tomato, Basil, and Cheeeese

I've gone through the labor of making gnocchi and couple of times now and every time Andy comes up with something tasty to top them with. This time was no exception. Gnocchi, if you are not familiar, are delicious little pillows of potato pasta. I take my recipe from here and wouldn't change a thing about the process. We are not in possession of a ricer, which is exactly what made this version of gnocchi production so appealing. I won't walk you through the making of the gnocchi since the linked site does a stellar job, but in a nutshell here's what it looked like in our kitchen:

Though a fairly simple process I will say one thing, it's time consuming. Every time I get the notion to make gnocchi I somehow convince myself it won't take that long. Lies. All together (from baking to shaping) these little guy's will probably set you back a couple of hours. So be prepared. Worth it though.

On to Andy's part of the deal, because as delicious a canvas gnocchi may be they aren't much until you do something with them. So to follow in his footsteps here's what you will need:

Gnocchi (prepared ahead of time)
1 10 oz. container of grape tomatoes
5 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup basil
1 cup shredded parmesan
4 T butter
1 T flavored vinegar (we had marionberry to hand)
1 T brown sugar
6 pieces of thick cut bacon
1 package of (spicy, if you please) Italian sausage
2 t red pepper flakes

To get the party started you will want to get a large pot of water set to boil. Be generous in both the size and amount of water in the pot as the gnocchi likes it's space and you will like not having a mass of glued together gnocchi. Next toss a slice of bacon into your pan. This is to get some grease going and add some extra flavor for cooking your sausage, because everything is better with bacon. I did mention this is one of Andy's lower calorie meals, right? So, render some deliciousness out of that bacon and then add the sausages so they can get friendly. Generally we find that we don't require all of the sausages that come in a package, at least not all in the same meal, so of the five or so that come in the package only three were used in this particular meal.

Once you have cooked the sausages to the point of the casings being browned remove them to a paper towel to drain. Add the remainder of your bacon to your pan and crisp it to your desired level. Remove and drain. Now that your sausages have cooled slightly you can quarter them lengthwise and then dice up the lengths so that you are left with generously sized pieces. Return these to your pan to finish browning. Browning achieved guess what you can do? Remove and drain. This is greasy stuff people, no need to hang on to all of it.

Speaking of grease, you will now have some leftover in the pan. Remove all but a little and and add in your vinegar now. Scrape around the pan a bit to lift up some of that yummy flavor that's remaining and then add in your butter. As the butter nears complete melting it will look something like this:

This is the time when you can add in your tomatoes. Allow these guys to cook solo until they start to burst (yum!) and then reduce your heat to low. Add in the garlic, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes at this point. Note that the red pepper flakes, though a pretty regular star in Andy's repertoire, are not a necessary addition. We just like things a little bit spicier around here.

Allow all your bits to meld together and once the garlic begins to brown you can cut your heat. Return the bacon (now chopped) and sausage to the pan and mix together. You can now turn your attention to the task of cooking the gnocchi. Depending on the amount of gnocchi you are preparing you might want to cook them in batches. You want to allow for enough room in the pot so they can freely bubble to the top when ready, we found that no more than two cups worth of gnocchi at a time is a healthy standard. Drop the gnocchi into your now boiling pot of water and stand at the ready as they only take a couple of minutes to cook and rise to the top for removal.

Scoop the gnocchi out as they are ready and deposit them into the pan with everything else. The dish's coup de grace can now be administered, the basil and cheese. Stir together...

...and your done! Plate it and eat it.

Fall time White Bean Chili

This could also be titled the best use of leftovers yet. Of the many reasons I love Andy's cooking one of the biggest is the level of thought he puts into it. I DO NOT like to think about my food. I appreciate a good meal but I would prefer not to put forth the effort it takes to come up with and produce said delicious meal. No matter what we are working with, whether it be a freshly stocked pantry or a bare bones we-probably-should-go-shopping kitchen desert, Andy always comes up with something good for us to eat. This meal was produced from the latter end of the resource spectrum, cobbled together from odds and ends. And? It turned out amazing. Perfect cold weather fare and packed with veggies the kids unwittingly ended up eating. So here we go:

White Bean Chili

You will need the following-

4 carrots
4 stalks of celery
2 cobs of corn (could also use canned)
8 cloves of garlic
1/2 of a white onion
1 package ground sausage
2 12oz cans of diced tomatoes
2 cans cannellini beans
3 red bell peppers
3 cups of beef stock
2 cups of water
3 T chili powder
2 T salt
1 T red pepper flakes

1 baguette and olive oil for optional bread crumbs

Start out with the easy stuff and brown the meat first. Choose a sufficiently deep enough pan as this will also ultimately house the entire chili, so you'll need some room. Remove the meat from the pan to drain, sausage in particular can be a bit greasy so we let it sit on a paper towel to remove the excess grease. Keep some grease in the pan for future browning purposes and get out your blender. Not for the meat. Grab your red peppers and give them a rough chop before tossing them in the blender with the 2 cans of cannellini beans and 1 cup (out of your 3 total) of beef stock. Blend until smooth. Now you can corral the rest of your veggies (carrots, celery, corn, garlic, and onion) and chop them up, rustic style. Meaning you don't need to be too thorough, large chunks are okay. Bear in mind that if you do choose to use corn on the cob you will need to remove the corn from the cob at this point too. Now you can retrieve your erstwhile pan and toss your chopped up veggies and half your allotted salt in to simmer over a medium heat for about ten minutes. It's time for everything to come back together now so return your meat to the pan as well as your mix from the blender, the remainder of the beef stock, water, and seasonings. Bring to a boil and then reduce your heat and cover to simmer this dish for at minimum 4 hours, 6 if you've got it.

This dish is yummy on it's own, but if you so choose as we did to serve it with a little something extra you can toast up some quick homemade bread crumbs. All this takes is some leftover bread, in our case a baguette, cut up into crouton sized squares. Arrange on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil and a light sprinkling of salt. Bake at 400 degrees for about eight minutes, or until golden brown. Top your chili with these little bits of awesome, add spoon, and enjoy!

Welcome and Hello

Hi All and welcome to our new blog home. This space is something Andy and I (Jeni speaking) have talked about creating for a long time. I've been working away following the dialogue of our familial life for the past four years over here --> A Little Piece of Perfect, which has been a great outlet for me and a wonderful way to document our life and times for the consumption of friends and family. That space is mine though, and in this home of ours there is more than one creator. Andy, my better/kinder/manlier half, also creates in the form of delicious (sometimes healthy, sometimes not as much) food. My husband makes good food, true story. He started dabbling in the kitchen shortly after we were married in 2006, something I gladly welcomed as I by far prefer to clean up after the food production rather than labor in the kitchen making the magic happen. Unless it's for the sake of baking, but we will get to that. His successes were equal to his failures, if it's fair to call them that, in the beginning. Now, after sinking some five years of effort into the endeavor (and even catering a wedding in the midst) I can attest that he is pretty much the best cook I know AND his successes now greatly outweigh his occasional flop. My own chef, not bad right? He is also teaching our boys to cook as well, so if this goes right I just may never have to cook for myself again.

All this to say that this new space is going to be much more Andy's space than our little family blog. I will still provide the words, but all the meals and thought behind them are entirely his. My hope in this is twofold. One, we really need to start writing down just what exactly it is that he does in the kitchen since often times inspiration for a meal comes in the production and then disappears after the consumption. Andy doesn't follow recipes and he has yet to take the time to write his own down. Hopefully this will change that. Reason number two, I want to share my husband's good food with you all too. So welcome and hello to this new space of ours.