Lola at the Coffee House

I make gnocchi myself but they are far from my favorite thing, and the potato ones can be dead zones, never again, or at least not for a while. Never tried gnocchi in italy. Never tried beef either, except in ragu - rabbit or chicken or boar or, best, fresh out of the oven porchetta. Oh, and culabello di zibella and other salumi in Parma. And real pancetta. I've read about the chianina cattle being prized, but didn't try it. Didn't try horse either.

Gotta go back.

Did anyone here ever see the Les Blank short film Tanto Oregano? Well, anyway, similar to the concept of too much oregano, there can easily be too many gnocchi.

Then there was Blank's Garlic is As Good as Ten Mothers........

bump

Thanks Osso for all the extra info posted here. Whooda thunk my cooking experiment would have exited so much comment, or in Spendy's case, claptrap.
We will eat the rest of that TAGINE tonight.

Last night I made two copies of a CD I was given, of the NDO, the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra. A very good outfit, now disbanded, they were active in the 1950s and 1960s. Real musicians, from a time before boys with guitars took over the airwaves.

Dumplings osso. Flat-ribbed nosheroonie.

You should get hold of Philippa Pullar's Consuming Passions. She also produced a biog. of the infamous Frank Harris whose life was beyond her scope.

Way, way too hard to make...but my favorite Italian pastry.

Never knew the name of them before.

I only brought the matter up Mac because I know you pride yourself on your expertise in the English Language. I think most readers of English would be quite astounded to learn that you are looking forward to eating the rest of a tagine. (Female flim-flammers of a certain age on the Grauniad excepted. The idea is to buy wood pulp at 20 pence a pound and sell it for £2).

They would understand easily enough if you said you were going to eat leftovers of chicken stew.

There are few things easier to laugh at than pretentiousness and nothing at all more deserving of being laughed at.

While I am glad to have lightened your mood, I don't recognise your description and so I would invite you to stick your opinion where the sun don't shine.

My mood requires unlightening if anything Mac. I dare not eat crumbly cake whilst watching the news about confiscations of bank deposits in Cyprus or the dog's breakfast designed to call the press to order.

What could be funnier than The Independent welcoming government interference in a free press?

I brought this up several years ago before I learnt to spell it and osso was the one who ID'd what I was talking about.
Whenever spendi comes across trying to sound authoratative on subjects culinary, ya know hes speaking from his favorite orifice of communication (and I dont mean the one with teeth)

They calls em "SCHFOGGIES" in South Philly, an entirely Napolitanian dessert that I always enjoy by peeling the layers apart , whereas a cannoli is eaten like a huge Snickers bar, straight in "la Bouche"

Yeah, me too, as I suppose is obvious. I forgot to mention there is a filling, sometimes flavored ricotta, or almond paste, or similar.
As I'm more forgetful of words I used to know now, it takes me a minute to remember their name. Starts with S.. sa.. si.. sp.. sl... sfin (getting to sfinciuni, but no) ... then, aha! sfogliatelle - sfoglia meaning leaf.

I am guessing one can get them in NYC and San Francisco - but I'd rather eat one in an italian bar in Rome at 6 a.m. when they're fresh from the pastrymakers by minutes. I don't have a good sense of smell, not much of one at all, but my husband said the streets near us smelled wonderful around 4 a.m.

Constantly ascribing pretension as a motive to others is an apparent weakness: envy of curiosity comes to mind. Distain masking fear of some sort. Attention cries.

off to job interview, and then to work........back tonight

I allow ladies of a certain age to make cutting remarks at my expense, osso, without my resorting to, or even feeling like, retaliating. As long as they feel the better for it is sufficient for me.

But it was a chicken stew that Mac prepared and those things you mentioned are dumplings. If either of you feel you need to associate them with exotic locations it is okay by me and I think the Constitution permits me a snigger or two if I am so minded.

Do you think I have misunderstood the Dick van Dyke show and the best of Laurel and Hardy?

I love that Sf...sound in Italian. Watching the TV series, The Borgias is made more interesting by the interplay of the Borgia characters with the Sforza characters.

I have had sfogliatelle with ricotta...but I do not remember having the almond paste filling. It sounds great.

Hun, you make cutting remarks at others on a large percentage of your posts.

I've only had them with the ricotta too. Divine. There was this bar across from our cheesy - at the time, they've upgraded, I read - albergo on via Firenze, up from the opera house and adjacent to the Ministry of Finance. (That was the place with the kitty corner toilet and dribbly shower. No, not the finance ministry, the albergo.) We were usually early risers so would be in the bar across the street at what I think of as crack of dawn, along with a lot of workers getting their morning espresso, sometimes espresso corretto grappa.

Hey, there's an idea - Wassau! per favore! I'd like an espresso doppio corretto al cognac.

I'd love to see that series. The Sforzas, fascinating, the Borgias - hey, I've sort of liked a couple of them from a few commentaries I've read that tended to differ somewhat with general takes, Lucrezia and Rodrigo, aka Alexander VI. My italian teacher/friend in Los Angeles was a Borgia, centuries removed. I've lost touch with her, alas, she was an enthusiastic person. Taught the class to make pasta after one one of the final exams. My italian was excruciatingly poor and much worse now, but I enjoyed the classes a lot.

Starting just a few weeks ago, I decided to try some ricotta cheese with my pasta...my favorite of which are rigatoni. I buy a small container of ricotta...and dish some out on a side plate...and eat the two together.

Tastes a lot like ravioli...but better.

For some reason, during the last month, I have discovered parmesan. I have been partial to Romano all my life, but was given a wedge of parmesan recently...and tried it grated over pasta and risotto. Wow...I love it. I think it has replaced Romano as my favorite.

This ricotta with pasta was suggested to me by my sister-in-law over 40 years ago...and I dismissed it as a non-starter. Damn, I wish I had learned how tasty it is long ago.