Ricotta – Angelgrrl

raw-gnocchi
Ricotta gnocchi is my latest culinary obsession. Unlike the traditional potato, flour, and egg gnocchi recipes, ricotta gnocchi is really easy and also not very hard to mess up. Since gluten immediately causes nausea for me, I decided to search for a gluten-free flour that would work for this recipe. I found a white rice flour by Bob’s Red Mill that kicks ass for this purpose and makes a really nice light and fluffy gluten-free gnocchi. Another plus, the ricotta adds some protein to an otherwise all-carb dish. Finally, I would like to give Gar a shoutout because he is the one who came up with the method I use for shaping the gnocchi. So here it goes:

2 cups ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan
2 eggs
1/2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 and 1/4 cup white rice flour
Semolina flour for dusting work surfaces

vesuvius-rigatoni
I have not had a food crush like this in a while. I was watching a tv show about Italian street food and saw this dish and cooked it the next day. I even found a recipe for it online in Italian and translated it to English to find out what exactly was in this dish. I didn’t make the recommended sauces for it (in small part because I didn’t have tomatoes from the foothills of Mount Vesuvius) so I topped it with Julie’s Pasta Sauce. Also, they originally baked these at 300 degrees in aluminum tins lined with plastic wrap but I just used a 6-count nonstick muffin tin instead and it worked great. I’m still very unsure about the whole plastic-wrap-in-the-oven-thing. I tried researching the details about such a thing with inconclusive results. Ok, back to the fun part. To make this dish you will need to dice up a log of fresh mozzarella, mix together grean peas and ricotta cheese (I ended up using about 8 oz.), make mini meatballs (I made simple mini turkey meatballs by combining 1lb. lean ground turkey, one egg, breadcrumbs to texture, garlic powder, salt, and freshly ground black pepper), and boil large rigatoni pasta for 4 minutes. Trust the four minute cooking time and do not worry about stopping the cooking process of the pasta once drained. 4 minutes is perfect.