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Meatless Friday Meal Recipe Linkup: No Fuss Ricotta Gnocchi

By on March 16, 2012 in Meatless Friday, Recipes

So, every week during lent on Friday I will be sharing a meatless meal with you all and I am inviting everyone to link up to a meatless recipe on their own blog.

The only rules are:

1. You must post a link to the actual recipe on your blog and not to your front page.
2. Please place a link in your blog post back here so everyone can find all of our recipes.
3. Only post one recipe per week.

Thats it!

Here is my recipe for this week.


When I was a young bride, Poppa and I would occasionally go out to eat on the weekends.  His favorite dish was always gnocchi.  To surprise him at home once in a while I would purchase gnocchi in the refigerator case and make but it never held a candle to the restaurant version.  One day, inspired to make it myself, I spent 3 hours with an Italian cookbook only to come out with a mushy mess I was embarrased to show him…back to the refigerated stuff.


It was only a few years ago that I ran across an easy version with ricotta instead of potatoes in a doctors office magazine.  I jotted down the recipe from the magazine and threw it in my binder.  It was probably a whole year later that I was organizing all my recipes into a binder that I found that slip of paper and started playing around with it.  After a few attempts, I made a gnocchi that was BETTER than the restaurant and so easy.  In this recipe I add lemon zest but you could leave it out if you like.  I also love to add fresh minced tarragon instead.  The other thing you can do is pan fry them in butter instead of boiling and they are yummy but Poppa likes them like this.

No Fuss Ricotta Gnocchi

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1 large egg
1 tsp lemon zest (only the yellow part of the skin, use a microplaner)
1 tsp sea salt

grate the parmesan and lemon zest and put aside in a bowl
combine flour, ricotta, egg and salt, 
with your hands, mix together the flour mixture
add the cheese and lemon zest until just incorporated, do not overmix
cut into three portions and roll each one out
cut into 2 inch pieces and meanwhile, put a large pot of salted water to boil on the pot while you work on the next steps
if you like the grooves you can do that by running the gnocchis over the back of a fork 
one or I use the bottom side of my egg slicer.  Its really just for the looks. 
  
Transfer gnocchis to pot of boiling water and gently stir them in the water.  When they float to the surface let them cook for another minute or two.  Transfer to a strainer.
Toss with your favorite sauce and serve
If you have a meatless meal that you would like to share, just include the link at the bottom.  

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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Strawberry season – Balsamic strawberry jam

By on March 6, 2012 in Preserves, Recipes

I am lucky enough to live in a town full of farms.  Farms where you can find free range eggs, chicken and beef, scores of different types of veggies, corn fields, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries, orange and citrus groves and strawberries.  Right now we are in the middle of strawberry season so I will be slowly making enough strawberry jam to last until next season.    I have posted before about how to make strawberry jam, today I am sharing MY favorite.  I few years ago I saw a dessert of strawberry and balsamic vinegar and knew that the French often add wine to their strawberry jam to make the taste pop so I tried it with balsamic vinegar and I loved it.

This weekend I got a half a flat of local organically grown strawberries and popped them in the fridge to use on baking day.  My back was killing me so I got no baking done but I did put up 14 half pints of yummy jam. You don’t taste the vinegar but to me it deepens the flavor of the strawberries and is amazing on whatever you want to put it on.

Something I have wanted to share.  I have noticed that when some people are cutting their berries for jam, they just slice off the top part completely.

I don’t.  Why? You see that white part which most people cut off, it contains some pectin.

Pectin is what helps jam to set so I want to leave that in.  I just pull off the green leafy part, then with a little knife I cut the stem out.
Chop it up and throw your berries in a bowl.
I ended up with 16 cups of berries (you need to measure how many cups of strawberries you have)
the dark stuff you see in this picture is the balsamic vinegar I just put it in the pot along with the berries and sugar.
This is one of my favorite little vintage jam jars.  I don’t know why but I think its so cute and since I had more jam but not enough to fill one last half pint jar, I pulled it out of the cupboard and sterilized it too
This jam has a more grown up taste but my kids still adore it.
Balsamic strawberry jam
4 cups chopped strawberries
2 cups turbinado sugar (white sugar would work too)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Put the strawberries, sugar and balsamic vinegar into a pot and cook on medium high.  Mash the berries a little to get the juice out.  Once it is boiling, lower to medium and let cook for about 25-30 minutes until it passes the freezing plate test (drop a little bit on a plate you had in the freezer and if it does not drip and gels up you are done).  Scoop off the foamy stuff at the top and ladle your jam into sterilized jars.  Process in whichever way you use to can preserves.  If you go to the link above to my Nilla Strawberry jam, the instructions to simple water bath canning are included.



If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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