Trophie con salsa di funghi (Spiral Shaped Dumplings with Wild Mushroom Sauce)

This recipe calls for a knitting needle. Knitting. Fortunately I have a few of these floating around my house. The needles are used to make spiral shaped dumplings which are not unlike unleavened pretzels. I suspect my dumplings were a bit on the large size and this likely added to the Germanesque feel.

I myself wasn't completely fond of the dumplings. They were a touch chewy and seemed underdone (though I boiled them until they floated). There was too much dough to wrap the tongue around. My family, however, gave the dumplings a thumbs up (I won't tell them about the wheat bran in the dough). The kids ate them covered in melted butter and parmesan cheese. Of course they wanted nothing to do with wild mushrooms and thus wouldn't touch the sauce. Truly they missed out. The sauce was delicious and would be good with any variety of noodles.

As with all the recipes in the book I have been dutifully par boiling my tomatoes and peeling and seeding them. I wonder if this is necessary. According to this article the extra step is worth your while. For the sake of deliciousness I 'spose I'll continue. Plus it makes for a pretty picture:



Now in previous posts I alluded to an injury which occurred while making this dish. No I didn't burn myself with boiling water. Neither did I stab myself with a knitting needle. And I most certainly did not drop a hot tomato down my shirt.

In order to explain my injury I need to explain the cooking process. This recipe has one boiling the noodles until they float then keeping them warm in an oven. My primary oven was already in use so I elected to use the warming drawer which rests near the floor. I was using my feet to open the drawer and store the cooked dumplings. Had I been wearing steel-toed shoes all would be well. But no. I was wearing flip-flops.

I am fully aware that flip flops in the kitchen are, perhaps, not the wisest of all moves. I would have expected to obtain some sort of injury from, say, boiling water or by dropping a can of tomatoes on my toes. What I did not expect was to cut my foot open with the metal on the bottom of the warming drawer. Oi vay did that smart! The injury wasn't too severe (no stitches necessary) but a band aid would have come in handy. It seems, however, that the Costco sized container of band aids had already been commandeered by my children. As such I was forced to tuck a napkin into my flip flop to get the bleeding to stop. The term dork comes to mind here ...



As they say. All is well that ends well. We had a nice meal. My foot has since healed and I appear to be tetanus free.

Now scroll to the top and look at the photo of food rather than my foot.

Buon appetito!