Fine Italian Dining...With What's Around the House.

You don't always have to go out to treat yourself to great Italian food. Sometimes, just using fresh simple ingredients, is all you need. It's hard to go wrong with fresh potato gnocchi, so all I had to decide on was the accompanying characters in the dish.

I started off by sauteing some generic packaged sliced bacon, sliced into about 1 inch pieces. When the bacon was halfway finished (and all separated in the pan), I added some sliced baby bella mushrooms. Cook these two ingredients completely, and pour out any excess oil generated from the bacon (or cook off oil like I did by adding a little beer, or wine even).

While getting the beer to reduce the liquid, I noticed some left over haricot vert (green string beans). SO i cut them in half, and added them to the pan to heat up. At this point, I also decided that I'd like to have this gnocchi dish in a cream sauce. A common misconception, is that you need heavy cream, or lots of butter, to male a good creamy sauce. WRONG!

I used only 1 tablespoon of butter, and about a quarter of a cup of 2% Milk (you don't even need whole milk!). Add the gnocchi to boiling water and the milk and butter to the saute pan simultaneously. It will only take a couple minutes for the gnocchi to cook and the dairy to marry the ingredients in the pan. Drain the gnocchi in a strainer, add to the saute pan, and toss over a low heat.