Beet and Goat Cheese Gnocchi

As a result of my overzealous CSA shopping, I have more Pipe Dreams goat cheese than I know what to do with. Luckily, Alejandra from Always Order Dessert posted a beet/goat cheese gnocchi recipe earlier this week that used up a decent amount of goat cheese and looked amazing to boot. The pink color of the gnocchi really caught my attention, as did the browned butter sauce. You know how I feel about browned butter.I made gnocchi (sweet potato) once before, in the early days of this blog, and while they were decent, they were a little dense and a little bit of a pain in the butt. Alejandra's gnocchi looked light and fluffy, so I thought I would give gnocchi another try... these were super satisfying, despite the fact that when I made them, they looked like little pieces of tuna sashimi! They had the sweet earthiness from the beets and a slight tang from the goat cheese. Plus the brown butter... brrrooooowwwwwnnn buuuuuuttterrrrr....

Squash and Ricotta Tortellini with Brown Butter Sage Sauce

I made these squash and ricotta tortellini with some delicata squash I had from the CSA. Pretty tasty, although I find working with the wonton skins to be kinda a pain in the butt... they stick, they rip. I'm not sure I have enough patience for them! The sauce is nice, though: browned butter, crispy sage, dried cranberries and toasted walnuts.

Cookie Dough Ice Cream

This is not your typical cookie dough ice cream. It would probably be more accurate to call it brown sugar/browned butter ice cream with chocolate chunks. I saw this recipe on Joy the Baker's blog and immediately had a Pavlovian response: drooooooool.

Chuck can attest to the fact that I have trouble making chocolate chip cookies. Trouble meaning I can barely get the dough onto the cookie sheet without a re-route to my mouth.

This ice cream is pretty awesome... it has an amazing caramel flavor. It's definitely not traditional cookie dough ice cream- the boring vanilla with those anemic and strangely grainy faux cookie dough bites. This stuff is hard core delicious.

Tonight's dinner...

Browned butter sage sauce with sage from the roof: tasty.

Sweet potato gnocchi: to be honest... kind of a pain in the ass!

Horovatz in Mer Nation's Capital

As I said last week, Tim hosted a mini Peace Corps Armenia reunion this weekend in mer nation's capital (i.e. DC)... having practiced some Armenian-style cooking last week, we were pretty well prepared to host the metz kev (big party) for a horovatz (BBQ).

Still using "Simply Armenian" by Barbara Ghazarian as the basis for our meal, we repeated the beet salad and minted cucumber and yogurt soup, improved upon the lamehjun by cooking it on a pre-heated baking stone at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes so it crisped up evenly all around, and made a couple new dishes to make sure everybody got enough to eat: grilled lamb skewers and pilaf. Recipes after the jump!

Shiitake and Pumpkin Ravioli

I'm cleaning out my cabinets (as well as the freezer and fridge) this week because.. wait for it... Tim and I are moving to Bangkok, Thailand.  Woo!  More details to come soon over at the other blog.  For purposes of this blog, moving means cooking and eating through the substantial pantry I have built up over the past couple years here in Jakarta.  This meal made a dent, taking care of: a can of pumpkin, half a container of walnuts, parmesan cheese, and a pack of gyoza wrappers from the freezer.

I used this recipe for shiitake and pumpkin ravioli, although I changed it up a teeny bit, using regular soy sauce in lieu of tamari and rosemary in lieu of sage.  Also, for the sauce, I browned the butter with a handful of chopped walnuts and minced rosemary.  Awesomesauce.  Literally.

I highly recommend this recipe- it's super easy and quite a tasty delight.  The sweetness from the pumpkin is great with the savory/umami of the mushrooms and soy.  Perfect!