Gnocchi night in Little Italy!

The end of the month signs, once more, the time to have another Gnocchi night. Pietro’s fame as a great chef must have gone around the island quite fast, as plenty of people showed throughout the night, with our immense joy and also worries, as we were not sure anymore we would have enough food to feed everybody. In Italy, culturally, it is very embarrassing not to have enough food to satisfy every guest’s appetite. So we shrink the ratio that everybody got, and the dinner turned out from being a typical Italian dinner in which, at the end of the dinner, everybody is just laying down on the floor staffed with food begging from some limoncello (that we do not have, and that it is used as a digestive), to a very healthy dinner in which everybody ate the right quantity of food… and the cake… Pietro surprised as all with the best cake anyone probably as ever seen on island…

Even the gnocchi producing line was under his supervision, and he added few changes that improved the gnocchi quality. I will share his methodology with you, if you feel like preparing the perfect gnocco for your partner, friends or just yourself.

1. boil the potatoes in the water with the skin still on. In this way they will absorb less water and you will need to use less flour. If you use old potatoes are even better, as they contain less water to start with.
2. when the potatoes are soft, peel them (in this way, too, you can take away just the surface skin, leaving most of the nutrients with the potato) and smash them
3. Pietro adds one egg for each kilo of smashed potato. Also add about 1/3 of flour (if you have 1 kilo of potato, add 0.33 kg of flour… more or less, with part is very artistic, you need a feeling of it…). Kneaded it all!
4. roll the mixture in line, and cut the gnocchi out. Roll each gnocco on a fork, to shape it with the three line on the top (that will help the sauce to stick to it.
5. Cook the gnocchi in boiling salted water until the surface, then take them out with a strainer (do not throw the water! You will use it to boil the other gnocchi!)
6. put the cooked gnocchi on a fry pan and salte’ with the sauce (we make a carbonara sauce and a butter-herbs of Provence sauce).
7. Serve, eat and enjoy!!!

And we did enjoy them indeed! We had quite a mix crowd, lawyers, scientists and engineering of course, the full Argentinean family, Rusty the oceanographer visiting from Hawaii, Paul my ex visiting from Samoa (next island, the independent one)…Little Italy is really taking shape the way it is supposed to be!! :)

(everybody does something: cooking/cleaning/setting up the table/looking for beers...)

(Sara, Scott, Brian with baby Noa, and Rusty)
(Pietro, Paul and Mia)
(Time to eat!!!)
(Rusty and I preparing the cake!)

As for me… my knees hurt! I went to the clinic yesterday, and all they told me was that I did a great job cleaning the wounds, and they gave some antibiotic bombs to avoid infections… in such a hot and humid weather, they are very common. Then I went to look for the car, that mysteriously disappeared. I finally tracked it down in a garage in Vaitogi, that is the very last village where I want to go. I asked why the truck was taken there instead than at Oscar’s business as they were told to, and they said: “hum… it was making a funny noise from the back”… I turned black (I very rarely get upset, but this guys can really prove my patience). “of course, it is making some noise from the back! The truck is wrecked!”. The most stupid excuses! The towing company was hoping I would let the truck his friend’s garage to be fixed, since it was already there, and would get a percentage on the work. Island style. The police was even more disappointing. They were supposed to contact me on Sunday to do the report, but it never happened. I went to the police station to write my report of the accident, and they told me they did not know anything, and that I should wait until 7:00 pm for those guys that do the night shift to come back., Then they told me to go to Fagatogo (just before Pago Pago) to look for a guy that was following my case. In Fagatogo, they told me to go back to Tafuna’s police station to look for another guy… I wrote me report there, I got one for Alyssa to write too, and left frustrated. Well, the police is what it is, the health system is what it is… not working, not ideal, but after all this island wouldn’t be the same and as much fun with an organized functional system, where the prisoners are not allowed to “escape” to go to the airport to say goodbye to their mams, and where the doctors do actually read the medical card of the governor before prescribing him medicines he is allergic too… I foresee that this all process to get through the police report/insurance is going to last for a while… I guess one more reason to renew the contract! ;)