Saturday, October 3, 2009

Dinner Party, Darling!

Some good friends of ours came over on Friday night for a new tradition - dinner party! I don't get to see my friends nearly enough so this was a lovely thing.

I made the gnocchi from Vegan with A Vengeance with two different sauces - a chunky marinara sauce I've been working on all summer and a new favorite, a spinach hazelnut pesto. My sad basil plants provided the basil and I threw in baby spinach, hazelnuts and nutritional yeast. Lemme tell ya, I couldn't stop eating it before I even started on dinner!

Here are some rough measurements, I was improvising.

Spinach Hazelnut Pesto
1/2 cup basil
3/4 cup baby spinach
3/4 cup hazelnuts
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
s & p to taste
water to thin

Blend into oblivion

Chunky Marinara
Tiny bit of olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 onion
1 cup (or more) halved grape tomatoes (if in season; use canned tomatoes otherwise)
1 can tomato sauce
Splash red wine
desired spices

Saute garlic and onion in oil until soft and fragrant, add grape tomatoes, tomato sauce and wine and cook until tomatoes are almost falling apart. Season to your liking and serve.

Super easy, and I'm sure that everyone knows how to make a marinara that they like. I just can't get down with canned pasta sauces.

Dinner also included a rustic baguette from Grand Central Baking, Goats Do Roam wine and a fresh green salad. I absolutely can't wait to do it again!

Here's the leftover gnocchi, dressed in the sauces. The pesto went over really well.

3 comments:

vegan.in.brighton said...

Delicious! I love pesto on anything I'll have to do this soon.

Jen Treehugger said...

Yeah pesto rules. I'm loving the sound of this with hazlenuts.

snugglebunny said...

A marinara sauce based off of grape tomatoes. That I will have to try.