Did you know that you don’t need to put eggs in your gnocchi? It turns out that gnocchi is one of the easiest recipes to veganize. You just ditch the egg, and there you have it: vegan gnocchi! I have eaten them many, many times. They are just like the non-vegan ones. Most people cannot tell the difference: with or without eggs are pretty much the same.
For the Gnocchi alla Sorrentina I would also need mozzarella and grated cheese. Lately, Argentina has started to produce really good mozzarella cheese. My favorite brand so far is “Felices las Vacas“. They not only have mozzarella, but also cream cheese (“queso cremoso”, also known as “queso mantecoso”). The grated cheese is easy enough to make it at home: you just blend cashew nuts, nutritional yeast (ideally, cheese-flavored), salt, and some garlic powder.
Recipe of the Week: Gnocchi alla Sorrentina
I think this was not my first time doing gnocchi from scratch. As a child, I had also helped my mom many times to prepare them on Sundays (or the 29th of the month, as we use to do in Argentina). This was my first try with the “sorrentina” variant, though. You prepare your regular gnocchis, and then bake layers of gnocchi mixed with mozzarella (I used “Muzzalmendra”, made out of almonds and starches) and grated cheese.
The salsa was both simple and effective. I learned that I can throw a whole garlic clove (I used two!) in the sauce, along with basil leaves. I love basil, and I don’t use it nearly as often as I’d like. I have to change that! 🙃
The basic recipe for the Gnocchi:
And the directions for the Gnocchi alla Sorrentina:
I did the cream with tofu, instead of cauliflower. I should have probably added more water to the sauce in the end, but I like the result anyway. On top of the pasta, I sprinkled cashew shredded cheese (homemade!). One thing I would try in the future is adding some (vegan) bacon flavoring powder to the tofu.
New Vocabulary
I added 22 new cards to my Anki deck, based on new words and expressions used on the YouTube videos used for this recipe. There were some words in this list that I already know, but I want to reinforce. I used the Google Chrome extension “Learning Languages with YouTube” (from the same creators of “Learning Languages with Netflix”).
That’s all for now! 😊
