This concept is brilliant!

How about the possibility of  serving a delicious homemade-like pasta without boiling anything, meaning no waiting, no heating up the kitchen in summer. I picked up a single package of this gnocchi while at Eataly a few days ago, because I had been thinking about gnocchi, and the immediate selling point, at least as much as discovering the minimal and natural ingredients, was that its ‘use by’ date lay somewhere in March.

That was only my first surprise. When I was ready to serve it last night, of course I looked closely at the cooking  instructions on the package, and then I looked again, because I had read, “pour the gnocchi directly from the package to the pan with your favorite sauce…”.

Except for introducing a little ‘leftover’ cabbage and later some grated cheese, I basically I did just that, and then, continuing the directive, I added a half cup of water, gently stirred everything for about 2 or 3 minutes, and, ecco!

Of course I’m going back for more. It will become our go-to-returning-after-an-evening-out dinner, even quicker to the table even than ordering a pizza. I bought the classic, but there are several variations each with one additional ingredient or flavor.

Since it takes so little time to make, there’s little excuse for avoiding at least one additional course, an antipasto or a cheese or fruit course, or both. Last night we had cheese and toasts.

• 400g (14.1 ounces) of ‘mama gnocchi made with steamed fresh potatoes‘ from the Flatiron Eataly, stirred into a large vintage, high-sided, tin-lined copper pot in which 4 tablespoons of Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’ and maybe 40 small stemmed fresh sage leaves from Philipps Farms had been heated until the butter had become light brown, after which a large handful of shredded Savoy cabbage from Norwich Meadows Farm that had not been used in the meal the night before tossed in and wilted, slightly, up to half of a cup of fresh water added, the heat turned up a bit and the gnocchi and butter mix stirred until most of the liquid had been absorbed, when a generous grating of Parmigiano Reggiano Hombre from Whole Foods Market was mixed in, the finished dish served in shallow bowls

There was a cheese course, dominated by 2 excellent blue cheeses.

 

• three Consider Bardwell Farm cheeses, a goat blue, unnamed; a cow blue, ‘Bardem Blue’; and, in the middle an ‘un-blue’, their goat milk ‘Manchester’, as something of a palate cleanser
• toast from a loaf of She Wolf Bakery sourdough bâtard

the wine through both courses was an Italian (Tuscany) white, Marchesi Antinori Vermentino 2016, from Flatiron WInes

After the cheese, and after the few dishes were washed, there was also a digestif

• the drink was a fairly rare Italian (Sardinia) digestif, Tremontis Mirto dell’Isola di Sardegna, from Eataly Vino, served in small 150-year-old sturdy pressed glasses I’ve had for almost 50 years [love them]

 

• the music throughout the meal was Gottfried von Einem’s 1944-1946 opera, ‘Danton”s Tod’, with Lothar Zagrosek conducting the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Austrian Radio Chorus, in a 1983 recording, with Theo Adam, Werner Hollweg, Horst Hiestermann, Kurt Rydl, Marjana Lipovsek, Krisztina Láki, Helmut Berger-Tuna, Wilfried Gahmlich, Franz Wyzner, Ingrid Mayr, Alfred Muff, and Karl Terkal