So last week was a week of making ingredients from scratch. I had a batch of Italian gnocchis kneaded using potatoes and flour and eggs. This week is the week to put them to good use. I must say, they turned out a lot better than I thought they would. And they tasted really great.
I’ve watched a couple of Italian cookshows and seen many times how those famous chefs could easily manipulate a chunk of dough to work them into small pieces of gnocchi with their very agile fingers. They cut out the gnocchi at an amazing speed and then, with their really skillful thumb and a fork, pressed and rolled the gnocchis down the fork to form a U-shaped pasta with striped patterns. And they don’t seem to have to put their mind to doing it right at all because they are so used to making them. And that was what made me want to try making gnocchis from scratch because it looked so easy and doable.
Loving this combination in my bread – cheese and pesto. It gives me one thing more to look forward to in the morning, a warm-hearted breakfast with home-baked bread to go along with my cuppa coffee.
Chicken karaage is the Japanese method of deep-frying chicken. This method sees the chicken chunks marinated in the basic Japanese condiments (mirin, Japanese sake etc) before being dredged in potato starch for the deep-frying.
The first time I tried breadsticks, it was in Rome, Italy. That was more than ten years ago now (thirteen? fourteen?) when I went to Europe for my first time with the guy. We were there the day on Christmas eve and it was crowded everywhere. I recall being quite tired and happily sat down on one of the impressive columns right outside St. Peter’s Basilica and settling my lunch there. Yes, with a huge box of Italian breadsticks. It was crunchy and fragrant, but probably not to best thing to savour on a cold winter day.
