So, along with my cooking theme mentioned a few posts ago, tonight I will write about my two successes so far this week. I don't know if I've talked about my renewed interest in cooking; last year, I really wanted to cook more, but since I lived alone, it just seemed silly and wasteful. Now that The Boyfriend resides with me, however, I have been able to whip up delicious (and not-so-delicious) meals three to four times a week. On Sundays, I sit down and make up a menu for the week; this ensures that I don't overspend at the grocery store, since I go in knowing exactly what I need for the week. It's worked out pretty well so far and The Boyfriend and I have not been spending nearly as much as we had feared.
So anyway, the food. I did mention some failed gnocchi a while ago, so yesterday I decided to try again. Aided by a new recipe and a brand-new potato masher, I mashed and kneaded, rolled and snipped, until I got soft, pillow-like dumplings that actually tasted pretty good. I think I'll add more salt next time, and mash a bit more, since there were still some chunks of potato in the dough. It was, however, %1,000 better than the last attempt. I served it with vodka sauce (from a jar, unfortunately) and some steamed broccoli.
Today I made white-sauce lasagna. I'd only ever made lasagna once before, a month or so ago, and it came out alright. It was red-sauce, but had a bit too much going on and didn't stay together very well. I'm not a huge fan of red sauce in general, so maybe that's what I wasn't that big of a fan. Anyway, tonight I found a white-sauce recipe that looked good. Frozen spinach, ricotta, alfredo sauce, and portobello mushrooms; what could go wrong there? At first I was a bit concerned, because the recipe said to place the noodles on uncooked, but I decided it was worth one try just to see if it worked. That's what I really like about cooking; you can try it once and have it totally blow up in your face but then go back, figure out what might have gone wrong, and then try it again until you get it right. Endless do-overs! So, I spooned everything into my baking pan, and though the noodles weren't quite long enough, it looked pretty tasty. And let me tell you, what came out of the oven was a hot, gooey, cheesy pile of awesome. It wasn't too cheesy, like some white-sauce lasagnas I'd had, but it wasn't overly spinach-y, something I'd feared. It was, essentially, perfect. Go me.
I think this lasagna success story was especially welcome after an unsettling encounter I had with a Classics professor at BU on Monday, but that's a different story for another time.
If you're interested, the gnocchi recipe is here and the lasagna recipe is here. I didn't add carrots to the lasagna because that just sounds gross to me. Buon appetito!
ciao
