Bachelor Pad Royale: Quick Gnocchi with Pasta Sauce

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Dec 4, 2007 3:30PM

So yesterday in our "One Bottle of Wine" post we alluded to some gnocchi we had Saturday night. We felt the need for something to really stick to our ribs with the sleet and frozen rain falling all night, but we didn't want to go through the process of actually making these popular Italian dumplings from scratch.

Lucky for us, the produce store by our house (Egg Store, 3008 S. Halsted, 773-284-8704) often carries pre-made foodstuffs for sale cheap. We found this gnocchi for $1.89 a package. We already made the pasta sauce from scratch and were growing tired of farafelle and fusilli, so we were just begging for an excuse to change things up.

If you've ever made gnocchi, you know it's pretty easy to cook. It's even easier if the prep work's already been done for you. All we had to do is boil the water, add the gnocchi, and wait for them to start floating to the surface. Then we skimmed them out of the water, added the pasta sauce and some grated romano cheese, and immediately had a dinner that would keep us and Svengoolie company.

Egg Store always has the lowest prices on fresh fruits and vegetables in the neighborhood. They also carry loads of fresh produce geared toward Bridgeport's Chinese-American population — lots of roots, herbs, and tubers. We've probably saved about a year's rent with all the shopping we do there.