Very simple, pretty classic, and perfect.

 

The sauce was conventional, at least by Italian convention, but it was combined with the very best gnocchi I have ever had, anywhere, so it had to be the really wonderful handmade little potato dumplings that made the dish so great.

I’ve been dealing with a really bad head cold over the last two days, so on the first of them I had produced a not particularly good meal (I’m now thinking that a combination of nettle pasta and oyster mushrooms really needs a clear head in order to succeed); for the second, I had avoided even trying to cook (an excellent pizza source is our go-to in such cases).

But I took a chance today, buoyed in the perhaps ill-judged confidence that my condition could only improve, and that, in any event, there was no way that I wouldn’t be able to put together a pretty simple sauce for a very good fresh prepared pasta I might pick up at Eataly while I was in the neighborhood.

I still have the cold, but I’m feeling much better now.

• ricotta gnocchi, which also included parmesan and goat cheeses, made by Luca Donofrio, the pastaio at Eataly, with a sauce of Japanese eggplant from Berried Treasures, seasoned, patted dry and sautéed until slightly browned, removed and allowed to drain in paper toweling, before being combined with two ‘Striped German’ heirloom tomatoes from Queens County Farm which had been chopped, sautéed in a little olive oil in which sliced garlic from Berried Treasures had been heated and allowed to color, then seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little sugar, and tossed with basil leaves off of a Full Bloom Market Garden plant from Whole Foods, torn
• there was also a cheese course (I mean, pasta is called a ‘primi’, and for good reason)
• the wine was an Italian white, La Cala Vermentino di Sardegna 2013
• the music was Antoine Dauvergne’s “Hercule Mourant’