Tag: italian food

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Foodie Friday: Easy weeknight gnocchi

Satisfy your cravings for authentic Italian food with this recipe from Smeg. Easy to make and filled with flavour, this easy weeknight gnocchi is the perfect family meal.

Easy weeknight gnocchi

Try your hand at making this Italian classic with this easy but delicious recipe.

  • Smeg (or other brand) stand mixer
  • 700 ml tomato passata
  • 500 g pre prepared gnocchi ((recipe below))
  • 60 g baby spinach leaves
  • 150 g button mushrooms (finely sliced)
  • 250 g ricotta
  • Parmesan cheese and basil leaves to serve

To make gnocchi

  • 1 kg potatoes suitable for gnocchi
  • 2 – 2½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 egg
  • pinch of salt

To make gnocchi

  1. Wash the potatoes, leaving the skins on. Put them in a large pot filled with cold water, then bring them to cook over medium-high heat until the potatoes can easily be pierced with a fork. When ready, drain the potatoes.

  2. Peel them then pass them through a potato masher, letting them fall in the bowl of the stand mixer. Let them cool for 5 minutes.

  3. When the potatoes are slightly cool, add half of the flour, egg and pinch of salt. Using the Smeg stand mixer hook, mix on setting 1 until the ingredients are combined.

  4. Flour a work surface with half of the remaining flour, reserving the other half in a corner to use if needed. Put the potato dough on the work surface and roll into a large loaf, then cut into slices like you would a loaf of bread. Roll out each slice into a small looking bread stick, making sure to use a small amount of flour so it doesn’t stick to the work surface. Cut into small pieces.

  5. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Salt the water with 1-2 tablespoons of rock salt and add the gnocchi. Cook until the gnocchi float to the top; 1-2 minutes. Drain.

For the dish

  1. Set the oven to fan forced and preheat to 180⁰C.

  2. Pour passata into a large baking dish and gently stir through gnocchi, spinach and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and top with tablespoons of ricotta.

  3. Cook for 25 minutes. Serve hot topped with parmesan.

Dinner, Lunch
Italian
gnocchi, italian, pasta, tomato

Foodie Friday: Pasta with pancetta & caramelised onions

Sweet caramelised onions and salty pancetta are combined in this rustic, easy-to-make dish from Williams Sonoma. Spaghetti is a very acceptable substitute if bucatini is hard to come by. Uncork…
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Foodie Friday: Mushroom sweet potato gnocchi with burnt butter sauce

Perfect for the cooler days to come, this mushroom number by Miguel Maestre is easy to make and delicious to eat! Created in collaboration with Australian Mushrooms.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

  • 2 medium sweet potatoes
  • 2 cups all purpose flour 
  • 2 teaspoons salt flakes
  • Flour for dusting 
  • 250g Swiss brown and button mushrooms, chopped in quarters
  • 10 sage leaves
  • 2 tbsp toasted pinenuts (optional) 
  • 1/2 lemon 
  • 50g butter 
  • Grated Parmesan 

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Poke a few holes in the sweet potatoes with a fork, and then bake them for at least 1 hour on a bed of rock salt in the oven until they are tender and the skin starts to look wrinkly.
  2. While the potato is still warm, peel the skin away from the flesh and set aside to cool slightly.
  3. If you have a potato ricer, put the sweet potatoes through this. Otherwise you can use a fine sieve and push the potato through with a ladle or wooden spoon.
  4. Place the flour on a board, or your kitchen bench.  Make a well in the centre and add the riced / sieved sweet potatoes to the well.  Season with salt and pepper.
  5. Using your hands, work the sweet potato into the flour until it’s fully combined. You don’t want the dough to be sticky so keep adding flour gradually until you get a nice dry dough. This could take quite a bit of extra flour.
  6. Once fully combined, roll the dough into a ball and cut it into 4 even pieces. Roll each piece into a long sausage, each about a finger in thickness.
  7. Cut the rolls of dough into 2cm little pillows of gnocchi, and gently toss each piece into some flour on your work bench to ensure that it’s dry. At this point you could also use a gnocchi board or fork to press grooves into each piece of gnocchi to make it more professional looking but this is optional and tastes just as good without!
  8. To cook the gnocchi, bring a large pot of water to the boil and add the salt. Blanch the sweet potato gnocchi in salted boiling water until they all float. Then drain, reserving a little of the cooking water.
  9. In a large frying pan, over a high heat, add a splash of olive oil and a teaspoon of butter, add the quartered mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until golden. Spoon out the mushrooms into a bowl. 
  10. Using the same frying pan, add the cooked gnocchi and sear until crispy. Add the remaining butter, pine nuts, sage leaves and mushrooms you just set aside. Cook until the butter starts to burn.
  11. Then add lemon juice and Parmesan and serve.

Tips

  • Putting the potatoes through a sieve or potato ricer is a vital step to making gnocchi, as this breaks down the starch!
  • If you make gnocchi often, a potato ricer is a fairly inexpensive kitchen tool that is handy to have.

Celebrity chef Miguel Maestre has released a Mushroom Meal Makeovers series in collaboration with Mushrooms Australia to spice up healthy home cooking with some simple and versatile meals featuring his favourite superfood, mushrooms.

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Foodie Friday: Spinach & ricotta ravioli & burnt butter

 

Today’s recipe comes from Barbetta, a new restaurant in Sydney’s Paddington. The Cipri family were food-obsessed long before Barbetta. A close-knit clan from Palmi, Reggio Calabria in the south of Italy, they have been sharing their love of their culture and cuisine with Sydneysiders for over 30 years, particularly through their nearby fine dining restaurant Cipri Italian. Still feel a little intimidated by this recipe? Why not attend one of their fun cooking workshops and let them show you how?

BASIC PASTA RECIPE

What you’ll need:

• 100g flour per person (plus extra flour for dusting) • 1 large egg per person

Throw it together:

1. Mound the flour in a bowl or on your kitchen bench

2. Make a well in the centre of your flour and add the eggs

3. Using a fork, beat the eggs together and then slowly start to incorporate the flour, starting with the inner rim of the well

4. As you mix, the well will expand. Keep pushing the flour up to retain the well shape

5. When half of the flour is used, the dough will begin to come together. Fold the dough in on itself a few times and then start to knead by hand on the bench for around 3 minutes

6. Rub your hands together to clean your hands of all dried dough. The dough will still be a little sticky

7. Place dough in a bowl and cover with a tea towel or table cloth to rest at room temperature for around 15 minutes before rolling out

SPINACH & RICOTTA FILLING 

Serves 4 (makes approx. 30-40 ravioli – multiply basic pasta dough x 3)

What you’ll need:

• 300g Ricotta
• 200g Baby spinach
• 1 clove garlic
• 50g Parmesan, grated
• Pinch grated nutmeg
• Salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Throw it together:

1. Pan fry spinach with oil and garlic
2. Once cooked, strain well. Finely chop and allow to cool 3. Combine all ingredients together. Mix well
4. Spoon mixture into pasta shapes

RAVIOLI PREPA

Prepare pasta dough as per our pasta dough recipe above.

1. Cut dough in half and roll each half of the dough out on a floured bench, into a very thin sheet (about 1/16 to 1/8 inch thick).

2. FILLING THE RAVIOLI: Drop about 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon fuls of spinach & ricotta mixture about 1 1/2 inches apart all along the dough.

3. When the sheet of dough is fully dotted with dabs of filling mixture, lightly brush egg wash around the edge of filling mixture to act a seal.

4. Cover filling with other sheet of dough.

5. Using your fingers, gently press dough between each dab of filling to seal it.

6. Cut ravioli into squares with a (zig-zag edged) pastry cutter, or very sharp knife.

7. DRYING THE RAVIOLI: Allow ravioli to dry for one hour before cooking.

8. COOKING THE RAVIOLI: Drop ravioli into 6 litres of boiling, salted water and cook for about 8 minutes, or until dough is tender.

9. Remove cooked ravioli from pot carefully with a skimmer or a large slotted spoon, and drain well.

10. Best served with Barbetta’s Salsa Napoletana (Napoli sauce) or Burnt butter & sage sauce (as per our recipe)

BURNT BUTTER & SAGE SAUCE

Serves 2

What you’ll need:

• 100g salted butter
• 15 sage leaves, torn
• 20g grated parmesan
• Freshly ground black pepper & salt to taste

Throw it together:

1. Over low heat, melt the butter with the sage in a small saucepan until the butter is lightly golden. Remove sage and set aside for later

2. Continue to cook until the butter is golden brown. Add 150ml of boiling salted water from your pasta

3. Remove from heat and stir through a small pinch of sea salt, or to taste. Add your cooked pasta to the sauce and stir through. Add parmesan and garnish with sage to serve.

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Foodie Friday: Roasted cauliflower risotto

foodie friday logo

The Temple & Webster team gathered for a winter feast by the water in the Royal National Park south of Sydney. T&W’s resident foodie and senior stylist Jonathan Fleming shares some style secrets and this recipe for delicious cauliflower risotto. For the full menu, visit T&W Journal.

CaulirecipeIG

On the table
Entertaining friends over a long, leisurely lunch is one of my favourite things to do on a winter weekend. The ultimate goal is to create something with a little wow factor for my guests, but that still allows me to relax and enjoy the afternoon, and I think I nailed it with this combination of tabletop styling and menu. For the look, I took inspiration from the bayside location, and kept with a cool wintry palette of whites, mint green and ice blues, starting with a whitewashed timber tabletop. 

image-3A classic white dinner set like Marc Newson for Noritake makes a great base to layer different colours and organic shapes. The colours and shapes carry through to the serving platters and boards. The gold cutlery warms up the palette and adds a touch of glam when entertaining. I added raw-edge linen napkins, and decorated the table with waterside finds such as driftwood and Spanish moss.

Wintertable

On the menu
Don’t fuss over three courses, the great thing about Italian is that you can cheat with store-bought antipasti to start, and serve them in the middle of the table, as you can for the risotto. Everyone loves having their own individual dessert to dig into, like these easy puddings filled with poached pear and flavoured with wintry spices.

THE RECIPE

Roasted cauliflower risotto with mustard burnt butter

Serves 6-8

Don’t be intimidated by the idea of making risotto, all you need is a little patience and the rewards of this rich, creamy dish is well worth it. The mustard burnt butter adds even more indulgence.

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower
Olive oil, to drizzle
120g unsalted butter
1 tbs wholegrain mustard
1 onion
350g Arborio rice (or other risotto rice such as carnaroli)
150ml dry white wine
2 litres homemade or salt-reduced chicken stock
100g parmesan, grated
Chopped flat-leaf parsley, to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Cut off the cauliflower stem and chop, then break the head into small florets. Spread the florets on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, then set aside. Chop the onion.

In a small frypan, melt 100g butter over medium heat, then cook for 3-5 minutes until it is just beginning to turn brown. Remove from the heat, stir in the mustard and set aside.

Place the chicken stock in a saucepan and bring to a simmer, then keep warm over low heat.

In a shallow casserole or large, deep frypan, melt the remaining 20g butter over medium heat. Add the onion and chopped cauliflower stem and cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring, until softened but not brown. Add the rice and stir for 1-2 minutes until translucent. Add the wine and allow to bubble for 2 minutes.

Add the stock a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly and allowing each to be absorbed before adding the next. Continue for 15-20 minutes until the rice is al dente (you may not need all the stock).

Meanwhile, roast the cauliflower for 10-15 minutes, turning once, until browned and starting to crisp.

With the final ladleful of stock, add the burnt butter and parmesan to the risotto and stir vigorously to melt the cheese and create a beautiful, thick, rich sauce.

Serve the risotto in shallow bowls and top with the roasted cauliflower and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

Recipe & styling: Jonathan Fleming | Photography: Denise Braki