Gnochi con Funghi, Asparagus, and Mushrom Crostini with Herbed Goat Cheese

I had a lot of fun creating this dinner, inspired by a meal I had at Gruppo Di Amici the other night.

For starters I served a Flame Roasted Red Bell Pepper and Tomato Soup. I started with four red bell peppers, which I halved, removing the stems and seeds. I roasted these in the broiler. Meanwhile I chopped up some onion and started sweating it in my soup pot, to which i added some sliced up garlic, and a potato, which i cut into small cubes.

When the Peppers where done, i removed the skins, chopped them up a bit and through it in the pot with the rest of the soup things. Next I added a few chopped up tomatoes (frozen from the garden last summer), and after everything was nice and happy in there I added enough veggie broth to more than cover everything, and I added some julienned Basil and other spices. I continued it all sizzling until it the potatoes were soft then took it off the heat.

After it cooled down a bit, I ran it all through the blender. This made for a nice smooth, thin soup. Light enough that it made a good starter for a big meal.

The Gnocchi con Funghi was by far the most time consuming part of this meal. I used several recipes, but mostly tried to follow the advice of Mario Batali in his Gnocchi recipe.

I began by boiling four large potatoes whole, 3 Russets and one large Red Potato. It took about forty five minutes for the Russet potatoes to cook through, and about fifty for the Red Potato. As soon as I took them out of the boiling water, i peeled them and mashed them.

Here's a fun trick for handling ridiculously hot things: Have a small bowl of ice water sitting on your counter and dip your hand in it for a while. I used this method to peel the hot potatoes. after a few seconds in the ice water, i could handle the potatoes for ten seconds or so, then back in the ice water.

To the bowl of mashed up boiled potato, i added a couple of cups of flour, and a couple of small eggs and a big pinch of salt. I first mixed the egg and flour together, and then mixed it in with the potato. I'm not quite sure how much flour I ended up using, it seems to matter a lot on the amount of moisture in the potatoes, so a recipe can never get it quite right, you've just got to learn to feel it.

After lightly kneading the gnocchi dough together, I rolled small baseball sized balls of dough into big long snakes about 3/4 inch in diameter, and cut those into about 1 inch little pieces. There are several different ideas on the internet about how gnocchi is supposed to look. I just made these little pillow shaped pieces, it's a little lacking in flair, but when you make home made gnocchi, that's pretty much already enough flair.

These little gnocchi guys only take about a minute to boil. Just throw a handful or so into a big pot of boiling water, and wait for them to float to the top. Once they float to the top, they're done. I removed mine to a big bowl and coated with some olive oil, then stuck them into the fridge to wait until I was ready for them.

I eventually heated up the gnocchi right before dinner in a skillet with some olive oil, and served them in a typical marinara sauce, with sliced mushrooms and sliced black olives, and chunks of Goat Cheese. The Goat Cheese and Mushrooms really went well with the flavor of the Gnocchi.

The other benefit of using the Goat Cheese and sliced Mushrooms in the Gnocchi is it helped bring the whole meal together, because on the side I served Mushroom Crostini with Goat Cheese.For the topping of this Crostini I chopped up and sauteed some Portabella Mushrooms with garlic in Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. For the bread I used a normal french Baguette, sliced diagonally, with a little olive oil on it and toasted in the broiler. I topped each piece with a big spoonful of the mushroom mixture, and a couple slices of herbed goat cheese, and just before serving, i put it back in the broiler for a minute, which just started to bake the goat cheese.

The asparagus was served as whole spears. I cooked it in olive oil on high heat for about a minute, then put some salt and pepper on it and splashed some balsamic vinegar on there. Another minute later and it was nice and happy. I like Asparagus cooked at high heat, so it gets tender, but not limp. Also the kitchen just smells amazing when the balsamic vinegar hits the hot pan.

Finally, to end the meal I made a very basic, but quite tasty cake. I have no idea what to call this guy, so if anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment. The cake part of this was a very bland, basic cake recipe, which I cooked a little extra long to dry out a little. I made it about an inch and a half high, in a ten inch spring-form pan. After the cake had cooled, I spooned some strong coffee over the top, to let that soak into the cake (that's why i let the cake get a little dry).

The second layer that you see there is about an inch of whipped cream. When I made the whipped cream, I added Aromatic Bitters to it, so it had a great alcoholic flavor. And finally, I pitted and halved a bunch of cherries to put on the top. Voila. Cake.