Yesterday I made a hearty vegetable marinara sauce, my first,
to help prepare a friend who’ll soon travel to India where he’ll eat a complete
vegetarian diet for nearly two weeks. He’s been warned to “prepare” his
non-vegetarian body for the “shock.”
Coincidentally, someone from India recently asked, on a
Goodreads discussion, how to make vegetarian
Bolognese (meat sauce). Well, you can’t, because then it’s not a Bolognese. But
last night’s chunky vegetable sauce came out so good that I didn’t miss the
meat. I used it on gnocchi. Here’s an excerpt from
Half Italian (and then some):
“Gnocchi are
thick ropes of pasta, cut into bite-size pieces. My family has always made the
kind that’s potato-based. Gnocchi are well known in Italy, perhaps not as
typical as the hot dog in America, but I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like
them.”
Here’s the gnocchi, being made:
Here they are, boiling:
Adding boiled gnocchi to the pan with the chunky marinara...
…and ready to eat
(with some chopped avocado, a California touch that my immigrant relatives made
to nearly every salad, many sandwiches, even avocado pie -- but never to gnocchi!).
But now that the book is out, what’ll I do with this great
sauce idea!?
- Joe
