11 Oct, 2012
Gnocchi – my new favourite side dish. And it’s cheap too.
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Recipes and Food
I think it’s nonsense that we, as North Americans, believe that there has to be a starch served at every meal. We’ve been conditioned, brainwashed, indoctrinated by Uncle Ben’s and the Potato Growers Associations!
If you have steak for dinner, why not just have steak and a huge salad? Instead of throwing some form of potato in there (mashed, baked, french fried) all the time? It’s better for you, and you’ll eat more greens.
BUT. Carbs are cheap. And I think kids need them, as does Mark who bikes 10km to and from work every day. (I sure don’t!) Gnocchi is one of my favourites. You can find them in the pasta aisle.
Here they are, looking rather rather unglamourous in my frying pan:
We used to call them MOUSE PILLOWS when the girls were small. We still call them mouse pillows. :)
A package of gnocchi will only set you back a couple bucks and it makes a good side dish for our family of four. But the best thing? It keeps forever in the pantry and only takes a few minutes to prepare. Woot!
This is my new gnocchi-cookin’ technique (which I only recently perfected):
1) Add a good dollop of butter to a large pre-heated frying pan.
2) Add gnocchi and toss to coat.
3) Put the lid on the pan and take care of the rest of dinner prep while they cook. They need about 5 minutes in there, stirring once or twice.
4) Take the lid off, add a tablespoon of brown sugar (FOR REALS), a squirt of fresh lemon juice, some thyme or sage, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for another two minutes.
SEE. And there you have it! A very easy to prepare side dish that helps fill some bellies, and gives everyone respite from the other starches that are on normal rotation.
I served them with pan-fried pork cutlets and homemade apple sauce last night. The plate was quite brown-coloured (we definitely needed more green in there) but we ate it all up. It was sooo good.
p.s Ever tried to make your own gnocchi? Here’s a recipe for purple (!) gnocchi over on Recipes.ca that looks pretty cool.
