Little pumpkin parcels of delight

Transcendent

Light, fluffy sweet potato gnocchi is heaven on a plate

Little pumpkin parcels of delight

Emperor D has been on a bit of a carb war lately. Several months ago, he went off refined white pasta and rice, switching - at first - to brown pasta and rice, and now he's gone a step further and cut rice out completely. Because I flatly refuse to give up pasta, he's stuck with the wholemeal stuff, at least. I haven't followed his lead, however - being too much of a lover of white pasta and disliking brown rice - so occasionally it causes a bit of tension at dinner, especially now there's always an extra pot to wash up (or try to fit in the dishwasher). 

Little parcels of  light pumpkin deliciousness

After making the ravioli with the pasta maker a few weeks ago, I decided not long after it was time to give gnocchi another shot. Usually, Emperor D is the one who makes gnocchi, seeming to have a natural gift for it. But having received a gnocchi board from my mum for Christmas (along with the ravioli cutters I'd used the week before), and having brought my potato ricer from home two years earlier but yet to use it, I decided it was time I gave it a try again.

With Emperor D reluctant to have a white potato gnocchi, I decided to try a lower carb version in a sweet potato gnocchi. I found a few good recipes through a google search, but ultimately went with the recipe found on American chef and food blogger Kelly Senyei's website, Just a Taste.

The recipe looked simple and easy to make, but I usually have an aversion to ricotta. I figured the sweetness of the sweet potato would balance it out, so decided to go with the recipe as it was listed. 

I'm glad I did. Not having a microwave - an occasional lament that I soon get over - I decided to steam the sweet potato using my rice cooker. They were a little underdone, meaning the middle of each was still quite hard, so I had to leave a little bit of each out. After passing the potato through the ricer, and mixing with the ricotta, I added as little flour as I could get away with, in order not to make them too dense and heavy. 

One word: yum!

Being left with a ball of soft, and just a little sticky, dough, it's simply a matter of rolling them out into long sausages and cutting them up into little parcels of gnocchi. Finally, I give my gnocchi board a go, and gently roll each one down it, leaving slight indentations on the outside and a small dent to finish, to make sure the shape can catch as much of the sauce as possible. 

After quickly boiling the gnocchi and making the burnt butter with sage leaves and balsamic sauce, it's time to plate up and eat. I had invited a couple of friends who are also on a low-carb kick, given there was plenty of gnocchi for four people. It went down a treat. Little pumpkin parcels of delight. The light, slightly sweet gnocchi was perfectly matched with the nutty flavour of the burnt butter and the tang of the balsamic in the sauce they were tossed through. It was easy to go back for seconds, yet as it's lighter than traditional gnocchi, it left me feeling satisfied, but not uncomfortably heavy or over-full. 

This is a easily a recipe that will go into my repertoire for those weekends spent cooking in. Can't wait to make it again! 

Betty now makes pasta

Tragedy
While the pasta was great, nothing could save the bland, soggy lasagne

Betty now makes pasta

I've had my Betty for awhile now. She's great at making cakes, slices, even pizza. But I thought it was time Betty expanded her range of tricks a little, so being a pasta fanatic, I recently invested in a Kitchenaid pasta attachment for her.

Feeding pasta through the attachment

I've made pasta by hand before. It's actually pretty easy and there's something satisfying about eating pasta that you've made yourself. Before I bought the attachment, I used to borrow my mother-in-law's hand cranked pasta machine. Those pasta machines are fine, but there's a little bit more fiddling around - you need to clamp them to a table top, then hand crank the pasta through the machine while feeding it through with one hand, and then needing a third hand at the same time to catch it.

Having a pasta attachment on Betty though is so much easier. The pasta is fed through the rollers automatically using the stand mixer's motor. Without having to hand crank the machine, it allows me the free use of both hands to feed the pasta into the rollers and catch it on the other side at the same time. Good thing too, as rolling some of these pasta sheets out, they were getting pretty long - a couple of metres in length at least.

Loooong pasta sheets rolled out

The recipe for the pasta itself is pretty simple - flour (I used Tipo 00, found in my local Italian grocer), eggs, a splash of water and some salt. Allowing me to be virtually hands off, Betty mixed the ingredients together in a bowl to form dough, briefly kneaded it with the dough hook and I then left it to rest.

Next was the question of what to do with the pasta. The attachment set I bought included tagliatelle and spaghetti cutters, so I had planned to make tagliatelle with a basic chilli, garlic and tomato sauce. But the day before, I spotted some butternut pumpkin, and - it being scarcely ever available - picked some up, decided I could make a vegetarian lasagne with it, especially since Emperor D has been asking me to make one for awhile. I also picked up some sweet potato, another of Emperor D's favourites. So after some research with what I could make with the pumpkin and the sweet potato, I decided to make Lorraine Pascale's Butternut and Sweet Potato Lasagne.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly to plan - I didn't have any sage leaves and didn't use the breadcrumb topping, plus I'm not a fan of ricotta, so used my own much more simple béchamel sauce - but it shouldn't made so much of a difference to turn out to be so bland as it was.

Pumpkin and sweet potato lasagne

The other problem was the lasagne sheets. I'd made fresh lasagne once before, but swore never to do so again. They're of course easy to make, but when I made them the first time, I thought I had to pre boil them, and did so. They became extremely difficult to handle, becoming stuck together, and tore once cooked - it ended up being so hard that I decided I wouldn't do it again. That was a few years ago, and making lasagne this time around I quickly remembered why I said back then I would never do so again. I had the same issues again this time and it turned into a disaster. This time I swear I definitely won't make fresh lasagne again.

The end result was a lasagne that was soggy from too much water, and rather flavourless. I was lucky to eat half a piece. Utter tragedy.

On the upside, I had so much pasta that I was able to make tagliatelle and freeze it, so I'll find a sauce to go with it and make that soon. But with the attachment, I can't wait to make lots of fresh tagliatelle, spaghetti, ravioli - and blog about it.

Pumpkin perfection

Pumpkin perfection

Transcendent  
Creamy - but without the cream - butternut pumpkin soup is a winner

So we're back into my favourite time of year - autumn and winter - and with it, comes my favourite type of food - comfort food. Perfect pastas, brilliant braises, steaming soups.

Soups are one of my most favourite things to cook and eat. They're so easy to make, yet can be as simple or as decadent as you like. They can be clean, nourishing and light - like chicken noodle soup - or they can be dense and knock your socks off, fending off any would-be cold - like my spicy barley and lentil soup.

I've written before that there's a few things you can't get in Switzerland. But I was pleasantly surprised when the shops started stocking butternut pumpkin a few weeks ago. (Which, I must add, I was shocked to discover that butternut pumpkin - as it's called in Australia - is not actually a pumpkin at all, but rather a squash.) Picking one up, I suddenly had a craving for butternut pumpkin soup.

Perfect pumpkin creaminess

I had plenty of recipes amongst my recipe books and volumes, but none really suited what I wanted; a rich, smooth soup, easy to make, creamy - but without the cream. I've never been a big fan of cream in anything, but especially in soups. However I found the perfect recipe - pumpkin and chive soup. This recipe uses potatoes - the starch of which provides the smooth creaminess - a tiny bit of sour cream - for depth of flavour - and a sprinkling of chives - for a hint of crunch.

After sautéing onion and garlic, and then simmering peeled and cut potatoes and pumpkin in chicken stock (add veg stock to make this vegetarian-friendly), it's time to break out the equipment and whiz it all up in a food processor, in batches, to a super smooth, creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper, add sour cream and finely chopped chives - and voila - pumpkin soup perfection. 

Peel, chop, simmer, whiz, stir - very easy to make. Sweet pumpkin taste, balanced by starchy potatoes and dense sour cream - very tasty. On a cold, wintry night, what else could you ask for?

When lamb is expensive, go legumes

Triumph

Spicy tasty chickpea curry is enough to convince one to go vegetarian

When lamb is expensive, go legumes

Since moving to Switzerland, I’ve had to learn to adjust to some things; different brands, different ingredients, even no ingredients (seriously, no white vinegar?! It’s a crime not to have white vinegar on fish and chips!). It’s meant that some of the recipes that had become midweek staples back home in Australia – harissa chicken for one – I haven’t made since being here because I haven’t found harissa (though to be fair, I haven’t really looked).

Swiss cows have expensive taste -
CHF70/kilo for a steak!

One thing that I wasn’t prepared for – and which I still don’t understand – is the cost of meat. It’s ludicrously expensive – CHF27 a kilo (roughly AU$30/kilo or US$16/lb) for top quality beef mince; CHF70 a kilo for good beef fillet steak. That cow must have had expensive taste in its previous life. I don't understand it; Switzerland is admittedly not a big country, but if you saw the number of cows I do when you go past just on a train, you'd wonder why beef is so expensive too. Ironically though, I've found Switzerland - or at least my part of Switzerland - to be cheaper for seafood; seafood is getting quite costly in Australia. 

The cost of meat, especially beef, has meant that we’ve had to have more chicken or vegetarian dishes. One of my favourite vegetarian dishes uses chickpeas, which I just love. Chickpea curry from – I think – Family Circle’s Classic Essential Curries is a recipe I’ve had for years. It’s from one of my mum’s cookbooks and was one of the first recipes I put into the first volume of my recipe volumes. I love it and it’s so easy to make.

Chickpea curry in all its glory

I have no idea how authentic it is – especially since this time around I couldn’t add garam masala because I forgot that I didn’t bring any from home – but it tastes delicious. The chickpeas are really soft and tender, especially if you use canned ones, along with the sweet acidity of the tomatoes and the spicy aroma and flavour of the spices. If vegetarian dishes taste like this, I’ll have to find some more and blog on them!