Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with! She also said we could experiment and come up with our own recipes and such. I elected to make some gnocchi with my favorite Bolognese
sauce.
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| seriously, how great does this look? |
So this was a bigger process than I ever anticipated it would be! HOLY COW! But then, most of that was my own sillyness getting to me. So I definately brought it on myself. I started with an
easy gnocchi recipe It seemed the way to go since I can't make home made mashed potatoes to save my life. Seriously. It started out really easily. I decided to double the recipe to make sure I'd have some for another night....yeah...some...try two more dinners full! This recipe made a TON! so moral of the story, don't double a recipe unless you've tried it out first! A month after making this and I still have bags of it in the freezer!
It started with instant mashed potatoes. It's all cool in a big metal bowl! I added the boiling water then let it sit to room temp because of the beautiful eggs I was putting in next. I didn't want the heat of the potatoes to scramble the eggs.
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| Eggs from my chickens, aren't they pretty? |
I learned fairly quickly that I didn't plan far enough in advance. Really, I completely forgot to think about flour needs before I began this project. Nathan was kind enough to go to the store for me and get some flour. Gosh I love that guy. *swoon*
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| begin mixing...and mixing..and mixing. |
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Now I thought about using the mixer for this portion of the challenge but, I remembered that it's a machine free challenge. I now have one arm of incredible strength. This was the point when I forgot that I had doubled my recipe...so I was crazy confused as to why the dough was so loose. It was slightly more than a soft dough. It did not want to roll into snakes. It did not want to do what I wanted it to do! I had to knead and knead and knead the stuff, turns out that much kneading will even out your arm strength.
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| kneading, kneading, kneading and MORE kneading! |
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| roll into a long snake. SSSSSSSS! |
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| cut into bite size pieces. |
This was really the fun part, rolling into ropes and cutting into bite size pieces. I just put them on a cookie sheet to sit while I worked in batches to get them rolled and cut. It also made it easy to get them frozen. They were already in a single layer so I just popped the cookie sheets into the freezer to freeze up then later I put them into freezer bags. Those that didn't go into the freezer were the lucky ones who got to be eaten! Fresh pasta always cooks up faster than dried pasta. So I dumped some into a big pot of super salty boiling water. They sink when first dumped in and then float when they're done cooking.
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| all done! I'm hungry now. |
The sauce is super simple, it takes some time, but it's soo worth it! I hate buying pasta sauce any more because I know that mine just tastes so much better. It's easy once you get the hang of it, and if you use a crock pot it takes even more guess work out of it, not that there was any.
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| You can't go wrong with bacon!! |
I start by browning up some bacon. I pull the bacon out of the pan leaving the grease there to cook the onions and mild Italian sausage in.
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| can you say YUM? |
after these are cooked up you can either keep them in a big sauce pot or you can transfer them to the crock pot. I put in some tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, garlic, italian seasonings and green peppers. Let it simmer all day and then put on your pasta (in this case gnocchi!)
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| soo good! |
Everyone loved it. Gnocchi are a bit unusual in that they have a firmer texture than most other pastas. They are, after all, more of a dumpling than a noodle. So expect some chewy-ness. If you want you can add plenty of Parmesan cheese. It's flavorful enough without it that I didn't, but some prefer it.
Bolognese Sauce
1 lb ground mild Italian Sausage
8 thick cut slices bacon
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1-3oz can tomato paste
1-20 oz can diced tomatoes
1 10 can fire roasted diced tomatoes
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 Tbs garlic
1 bay leaf
Brown the bacon in a deep sauce pot or skillet if transferring to crock pot. Remove the bacon to drain while keeping the grease in the pan. Brown the sausage and onion together in the grease. Add the remaining ingredients if cooking in a sauce pot simmer for 1 1/2 hours on low. If cooking in the crock pot dump the all ingredients into the crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours.
