Two recent meals at home were definitively Italian.  One was Cianfotta, about which I wrote last November.  I made the dish pretty much by the book, except for the addition of some excellent fresh spinach.  You can check the recipe via the link provided.

The next day, the leftovers were even better than the dinner version.  I piled the vegetables onto some toasted whole grain bread of mine (which I sliced and froze a few days after baking).  It made a magnificent lunch, served with a glass of Aaron’s 2017 Rosé, Idiopinkracy, from Arizona.

A few days later, it was pasta time.  The dish was Gnochetti Sarde with Vegetables, purely my own invention.

In my wine cellar I have a tall rack where I store my artisinal specialty food items — pastas, sauces, cases of Italian tomatoes, dried porcini, etc.  One of the pastas in there is a high-end American product, Baia Gnochetti, made with special American Durum wheat.  I made a sauce with available ingredients:

• onion
• tomato (peeled, chopped)
• zucchini
• yellow squash
• chickpeas (already cooked a few days before)
• home roasted and peeled peppers

These were cooked individually, and then all they needed were some toasted homemade bread crumbs and lots of good olive oil to bring it all together.  Add the cooked pasta and some pasta water, heat through for 2-3 more minutes, serve with freshly grated Parmiggiano and a glass of Tollara Malvasia di Candia from Emilia Romagna (imported by Nick Mucci), and I was transported back to the Mediterranean.