Something New

We cook a lot of good food around here.  Both Paul and I love to cook and have our own specialties.  His is usually more ethnic...Indian, Mexican, etc.  Mine tends toward pastas and soups and breakfast foods.  Between the two of us, there isn't much we haven't tried.  However, tonight I made something entirely new, something neither one of us had ever eaten before...gnudi.

Gnudi is a made-up name trying to sound Italian like gnocchi.  Gnocchi is classified as a pasta often made with a potato base.  It looks like little balls of dough and is quite good.  I've made it before using sweet potatoes and it was delicious.

Gnudi was apparently created by the Spotted Pig restaurant in New York City.  It has a base of ricotta cheese, eggs, and flour.  There is also lots of fresh ground nutmeg and some chives involved.  It sounded intriguing so I decided to go for it.  

I made fresh ricotta cheese, which is really easy by the way, and let it drain overnight.  Then I added the rest of the ingredients and formed the "dough" into 1" balls.  They were then buried in cups of semolina flour and left overnight in the fridge.  After bringing them back to room temperature, they are dropped in boiling water and cooked until they pop back to the top of the water, just a couple of minutes.  Really pretty easy.

I served them with chanterelle mushrooms (my favorites!) sauteéd in butter with garlic and thyme.  Oh, my!  They were like little pillows of deliciousness, slightly chewy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. They have definitely been added to our list of good things to make again.  How fun to discover a new taste treat!