it's all homemade

The one thing that is great about cooking is you are in charge. You can change the taste of the dish, saltiness, sweetness, sourness, fluffiness, you name it.

After a whole week of work, I have planned out my weekend with delicious homemade dishes.

The best place to shop for fresh and cheap groceries (in Boston) is of course haymarket. Get off the T at haymarket and you will see a row of vegetables and fruits stands along Blackstone street.

I bought a whole week worth of fruit and vegetables for only $16!

After dinner, I start preparing my main course, pesto gnocchi.

First the pesto sauce. This is an easy and delicious sauce, of course, you would buy the ready made sauce, but i prefer making it.

Ingredients are: basil leaves, garlic and pine nuts.

There are a lot of alternative for the pesto sauce but this is the original. The amount you put in different for everyone. After you cut up everything, put them in a blender and blend until it is a texture of a puree.

I do not have a blender at hand, therefore I used a suribachi instead. (very tiring but it's all worth it). 

Then i start making my gnocchi. The enjoyment of making everything from scratch is very personal. There is no way to explain it but I started 10 and worked until 2 in the morning. This does not usually take that long, i was taking my time and slowly working through my gnocchi.

So the main ingredients: potato, flour and egg.

You can either bake the potato or boil it. It gives a different texture and it's all personal preferences. 

I boiled the potato and it turns out to be a heavier gnocchi but still chewy. 

REMEMBER! let the potato cool down. The heat in the potato create more water which makes it harder to combine forcing you to put more flour than needed. Do not rush this step. You can make these gnocchi beforehand. Wrap them in parchment paper and put them in a ziploc bag and stick them in the freezer.

First, cook the potato (about 1 1/2 pound) and peel the skin off. Put them through the ricer and spread them out to cool.

After they are cool down, beat in a large egg yolk and add about a cup of flour and some olive oil. Mix them in and flour your working area and put the dough to knead. Add flour if the dough is too wet to hold together. Then roll then into a 3/4 inch thick rope and cut them into tiny pieces.

Cook them in salty boiling water. They are ready in about 4 minutes or once they float. 

Pesto gnocchi.

Add a lot of olive oil in the pan then add in the pesto. Once it start boiling, add some milk and a little bit of the pasta water. Taste for additional salt and pepper. Put in the gnocchi and mix it up and you are ready to eat.

Voila! Enjoy.