I love winter squashes, but OH is not a fan. It’s difficult to get him to eat 2 forkfuls of plain squash. This is my secret weapon: Hokkaido ricotta gnudi. 600g of dry-roasted squash, 250g of drained ricotta, 2 small eggs, 40g grana, 380g flour. S&P, nutmeg. I made 200, and we ate 50. The rest freezes beautifully in bags and makes three easy impromptu dinners. Simmered until they float and then tossed in brown butter and served with crispy bacon, crispy sage leaves, and a drift of finely grated grana. Nice for a summer night, OH loves them, and they are easily digested.
2 Likes
Disappointing. No cervelat?
I didn’t know one could add so much stuff in what we call Chnöpfli or Spätzli here. I will definitely try it. Specially as I’m somehow on the Chnöpfli-trip lately, making them at least once a week.
Not sure we needed this information? 
Here’s something cute I found on one internet site–rolled carrot steaks. Thinly sliced carrot strips are salted, rinsed, dried, and rolled like a tomato rose, each strip overlapping the previous one. They stick together just long enough to get a string around them. Saute in a little butter until caramelised, and put on a very low flame until they are soft. Toss in a clove of garlic and sprigs of thyme while they cook, cut the string, and plate. Delicious, and pretty too.
1 Like
For most of our neighbours, hiking is a way of life in summer. They go to their mountain huts and pick mushrooms on their own land. This summer’s rains have brought a bumper crop of chanterelles, and three neighbours have shared their bounty in the past weeks. Yesterday the lovely Ursula brought us a pound of them, so I fried them in butter, finished with Sherry, and served them over the Hokkaido gnudi I froze last week. A quick and delicious dinner on a warm night.
5 Likes
These weird days of not-quite-summer, not-quite-winter (low of 11C last night!!) call for some comfort food. Last night I blind-baked a phyllo base with a coil in the centre, then stuffed a lovely dolce Gorgonzola-grana-crispy bacon mixture into the interstices and filled it with a custard of creme fraiche and herbs–mint, tarragon, parsley. It was a little fiddly, but worth it.
2 Likes
Looks like a Pite. And very much as if I’d love it 
1 Like
I overcrowded the plate, but it still tasted really good. Trout filets amandine, garlic prawns, broiled oxheart tomato with scallion and grana, rice with parsley from the garden, Pureed spinach with saffron cream swirl didn’t make the photo.
4 Likes
Yummy. What’s for dinner tomorrow? Might pop bby.
No plate pix–didn’t have time, because OH demands hot hot food. This jelly-roll-like double-baked souffle is a bit of work, but fun. The first bake is just a flat Parmesan-flavoured souffle, which rises to almost 10cm in the oven. Then it’s slathered with ricotta and whatever you want from the fridge–leftover chicken, pesto, roasted red peppers, mushrooms, spinach…last night it was porcini and chestnut mushrooms. Roll it up, top with more Parmesan, slice it and re-bake it until it turns crispy on the outside and light and fluffy within. If you prep ahead of time, it makes a pretty impressive dinner-party dish.
3 Likes
No cooking last night. Bresaola with a nippy arugula salad, topped with shavings of grana. Just the thing for a warm evening.
4 Likes
Lovely food but your use of the word “Grana” on many of your posts really grates with me (if you excuse the pun).
Grano means grainy - and just that. Can’t you just use the correct term ‘Grana Padano?’
Nothing wrong with sometimes shortening words and phrases but the way Americans do it makes me cringe.
It’s like when they go to a café in Italy and ask for a ‘venti’.
Is there anything that doesn’t grate with you?
1 Like
Oh very well played Sir.
Also worth noting that Grana refers to a part of the process and can be used for any cheese made in that way including Parmesan. Padano is just the next best known of the protected name areas that make it.
2 Likes
Yes, including sheep cheese and goat cheese. It’s the granular texture and it’s not the process, it’s the description of the texture.
Many other foods have the same texture but we don’t use that to describe them otherwise people would be eating cat food instead of fleischkase if people were told to serve their potatoes something pinkish, slimy and foul smelling.
Actually, bad example. I should have used two dissimilar items and not two that were basically indistinguishable.
OK, call things what you want.
I didn’t think it warranted pages of discussions and for a mod to get personal and to make things not about the names of food but she (@BelgianMum) can’t help it.
Other people might have just said 'oh sorry, seems I was wrong, I stand corrected ’
Or just scroll on
But I’m not wrong in this case and so don’t need correcting.
And a bit of advice for you - wikipedia is not always correct - especially if a page is written by someone unknowledgeable on the subject.
So @bossybaby, what sort of granular cheese do you use?
It’s obviously not parmigiano reggiano as you specifically state if you are using that.
Advice which you could well heed yourself.
HTH.