The pressure is on to come up with tea times two. First request green pasta (easy!) Store bought ricotta and spinach ravioli. Drizzled with fresh cream, grated Grana Padano and finely diced truss tomatoes. No guilt. Every food group covered including the green vege. and two very happy munchkins.
Now for the second part of the challenge. MM and moi. So I pulled out the remainder of the potato pumpkin gnocchi made a few months ago from the freezer and pretty much replicated the kids sauce but with fresh torn basil instead of the tomato. Sound plan. Fast. Easy and fuss free all in line with the rules of 2008 family living.
But...
Lesson one: frozen fresh gnocchi goes to mush on re-boiling? Any comments or experience with that? MM not one to waste food said "not to worry we will make it into soup." And got busy draining off some water from the water logged soggy mush. Next the usual suspects he loves to cook with, a spoon of minced garlic, a few super Hot Calabrian Peppers and a dash of cream. Out came the Bamix stick blender a few whizzes later a spoon was dipped. EEICK YUCK even I could behave like a three year if forced to eat that! No MM not one to quit so easily decided to cool things down with a splash of milk. During which time I reminded him that along with the potato and pumpkin that a large component of gnocchi is flour and perhaps flour soup enhanced with reconstituted pumpkin and potato (think DEB!!!) and garnished with Calabrian chillies may not make it to the table of any great restaurant. Fortunately MM for once listened to his wife and started tipping his soup down the sink.
Meanwhile I still had two mouths to feed.... I flipped over the pasta packet and low and behold a fast fresh recipe jumped out to the rescue.
Now I was so surprised by this that it only be fair I share. Of course I was missing a few ingredients and decided to add a few more so La Tosca would probably struggle with the copyright of their bastardised recipe now.
Beef ravioli tortellini or the kids left over green ones. Whatever you have handy in the freezer.
Now while they are boiling whiz some almonds (or walnuts, pine nuts even) in your food processor add some olive oil, a knob of butter, some cream, small handful of fresh basil and some salt and pepper. No measurements needed.
Dice some swiss brown mushrooms (2 medium ones was heaps) and saute in some hot frothy olive oil and butter. Soak a few porcini mushrooms in some pasta water if you have some handy for a few minutes and add these as well. When the pasta is nearly done add your food processor mix to the pan. Heat ever so slightly, drain your pasta, toss together in the pan. Serve it up with a good grating of Parmesan cheese and some cracked black pepper.
Fantastic! Sometimes no matter what you plan in the kitchen the results that were not planned can end up being the gems for years to come. So my tip for the day is this:
"Live on the edge... if it fall's apart, read a packet and maybe there will be an answer there that I would ordinarily be too snobby to read. Missing some ingredients? Substitute them with what you have to hand, that way no one can accuse you of cooking packet pasta!"
