Is she even Italian?

This post spans a couple days and involves several embarrassing Google searches.

Last week, on Friday night, I cooked a meal from scratch. I made the Pioneer Woman's meatballs and some mashed potatoes.

Yummy!

I decided to make it a tradition, this made from scratch meal thing.

This week, I decided to attempt gnocchi. I've never made it, but I'm pretty good at eating it.

It's worth a shot.

I started out grocery shopping on Friday night.

The first problem I encountered was with the sauce.  I love Top Chef, and Mike Isabella's pepperoni sauce is something that I've always wanted to try.

Okay, back to the problem.

The sauce recipe calls for a pound of pepperoni, cut up.

Um, I didn't even know you could buy pepperoni by the pound. I looked all over the store for it. I found chorizo, and wondered if I could substitute that instead.

Wait, you have to cook chorizo first, right?

The embarrassing Google searches started, asking what chorizo is, if it was the same as pepperoni, and how to cook it.

After roaming around aimlessly in the store, I finally found the pepperoni. FYI, it's not in the refrigerated section. It's tucked away, on the bottom of a cardboard display that has pizza stuff on the top of it.

It's also kind of pricey. Oh well, it's worth it. 

A few other problems:

- the imported Italian stewed tomatoes ended up being a .59 cent can of tomatoes at the grocery store up the street from my house. I live in western Kansas. I had to make do.

- I couldn't find fresh bay leaves, so I had to settle for the dried kind. Ah, bummer.

- Pepperoni is really hard to cut up. First world problem.

- Toasting fennel seed makes me feel like a grown up.

The gnocchi recipe goes like this.

First, you bake two Russet potatoes in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour. While you wait, go back to watching Orange is the new Black.

After an hour, take the potatoes out of the oven. Wait for them to cool. Again, you can go watch your Netflix show, because you're cool and you finally opened up your wallet for Netflix.

Next, scoop the potatoes out with a spoon, leaving the skin behind. Add a beaten egg, a little flour (I used a little less than 1.5 cups), until the mixture is kinda sticky, but not too sticky.

I rolled the dough out in four thin rolls, then cut them up into sort of even pieces. I'm not going for perfection here, so it really doesn't matter if some are big and some are small.

Like the picture shows below, drop those cute little gnocchis in boiling water. When they float, they're done cooking.

Taste testers

Pepperoni? Please?

Look at my gnocchi! They're so cute!

First gnocchi in the pot. I feel like my kid just went off to college. I had a hard time letting go.

The sauce part also takes forever. Feel free to go back to watching TV.

Instead of typing it out, I'll just tell you to Google Mike Isabella's pepperoni sauce. I added a can of tomato sauce, because I read online it was way too meaty and concentrated for some people.

I also read online that some people add the sauce to pasta sauce. I might try that one of these nights.

The verdict?

The gnocchi definitely needs salt, or an added boost of something to make it more flavorful. It was definitely a solid first attempt, though.

I'm pretty proud of myself right now. I made Italian food from scratch.

I turned out okay after all.

The sauce is really pretty.

Yummy.