I cooked Katherine dinner for St. Valentine’s day and going out on a limb I tried three new recipes gnocchi, pesto sauce and chocolate fondue. I included the recipies for the interested, they are based off of directions I found on foodtv.com. It was nice to have a chance to cook something, and I played around with all of the recipes a bit.

The gnocchi recipe called for baking the potatoes for about an hour which gave me plenty of time to prepare the pesto sauce. Peeling the potatoes while they are still hot is a bit of a challenge, but a clean towel to hold the potato while peeling is helpful. I rolled my gnocchi logs a little to thick, around an inch thick, so I had to extend the cook time a bit.

Surprisingly both the gnocchi and the pesto sauce turned out pretty well.

After watching a weeks worth of chocolate manufacturer propaganda on foodTV, I decided to splurge on good chocolate. I found a box of Scharffen Berger 99% cacao unsweetened baking chocolate at Whole Foods Market, and it does taste better, much much better.

For once everything turned out wondefully the first time so we did not have to resort to plan b (ordering pizza).