Cooking like the Irish

Last weekend I was sort of laying low and not wanting to expend too much energy, so I decided to do a little cooking. It's a great activity for when I need frequent rests: work on this or that, put it in the oven, rest until the timer goes off.

I started off with gnocchi. Have you ever made gnocchi? It's kind of tricky. But my pal at 101cookbooks.com has a recipe re "How to Make Gnocchi like an Italian Grandmother." So I gave it a shot. It's basically potato, egg, and flour. How hard is that?

So I boiled potatoes, mashed them as she directed, drizzled the egg over it, and started folding in the flour. You know what you get when you add liquid to flour and potatoes? You get paste. Starchy paste.


I was not deterred. I took my paste, er: dough, and made it into strips the width of my thumb as she suggested. Then I cut them into inch-long segments.
Did this weird 'push the piece into a fork' thing. Why can't I just push the fork into the dough? Nevertheless, I got this far. Then what do you do? You take your gnocchi segments and drop them 20 at a time into boiling, salted water.
You know what you get when you take little chunks of dough made from potato, liquid, and flour? You get boiled paste is what.
My heritage is heavy on the Irish, easy on the Italian. I'm all about the potato, that is. Next time, I think I'll just boil it and smother it with butter and chives as god intended.

Fresh off that failure, I moved on to roasted veggies. This was a symphony for the eyes and nose. Brussels Sprouts, beets, onion, sweet potato, butternut squash, thyme, rosemary, a little salt, tossed in olive oil and popped in the oven.
Here it is after the chopping:
And while cooking:
And just out of the oven. Mmmmm.

Then I had an acorn squash that I had started cooking so that I could peel it and add it to the roasted veggies, but I left it in too long, so I just pulled it out, let it cool, and peeled it right up. Sauteed some fresh grated ginger and chopped up apples with a touch of olive oil, dumped in the roasted/chopped squash, added a splash of orange juice, and simmered it for a while. Then tossed the whole mess into the blender. Voila! Acorn squash soup with hints of ginger, apple, and orange. The orange juice really added a nice kick. [I had a lot of orange juice on hand as it's my convalescing drink of choice when I tire of the hot tea. Plenty of Vitamin C!]

No photos -- it just looks like baby food.

After that -- a huge pot of split pea soup. Onion, garlic, carrots, bay leaf, water with bouillon, and the dried peas. I like this soup because 1) it reminds me of home and 2) it sort of makes itself. Heidi over at 101 cookbooks suggests pureeing half of it, but I like it sans blender. I also like it because I can freeze it in smallish containers and use them for lunch.

Also no photos. No reason.

So I made pumpkin cookies and pumpkin muffins, frosted with a cream cheese frosting for a little bday get together on Sat. night.
Then I made these yummy ginger snaps that stay soft and moist -- not snappy at all.
Blurry dough.
Mmmm. Rolled in sugar and baked and a whole lotta fall goodness.
There might have been other stuff here and there. Oh! I seeded two pomegranates and sprinkled a few of the seeds on the acorn squash soup. That's not really cooking, but it takes a lot of effort, so I thought I'd throw it in there.

Buon Appetito!