I don’t have a lot of patience for people who bad-mouth chain restaurants. As I’ve written here, I am a shameless—that is to say, proud—devotee of Outback Steakhouse and P. F. Chang’s. I go to Chili’s all the time. T.G.I. Friday’s is cool. I’ve had a few bad experiences at Applebee’s, both in Greece and in the Kapitalist Pigdog States of Amerika, but I’ll give it another shot someday. But I have to draw a line somewhere, and I doubt many of my readers will complain: The Olive Garden sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. I do, you do, and so do The Onion and the latest episode of “Kath & Kim.” (It’s that show you watch three minutes of when you’ve tuned in to “The Office” too early.)
The Olive Garden claims that it maintains a cooking school in Tuscany. It probably does, though I suspect “cooking school” really means “post office box / LLC we maintain in case anybody checks up on this absurd fabrication.” When you “dine” at the Garden, you are essentially eating MREs without that merciful dose of Tabasco® sauce. You can make better Italian food in your own home. For instance: cheese and spinach gnocchi with mussels and an authentic Caesar salad. (You think the Garden makes its own dressing on-site with raw eggs? Not if the insurance companies have anything to say about it.)
I’ve been putting off this post because I didn’t make the gnocchi and my sous-chef has been far too busy to explain the procedure. It looked complicated, but I’ll attempt to explain it by referring to this recipe. For starters, gnocchi is (I think) usually made with potatoes. This one calls for ricotta, spinach, egg, and flour, worked over pretty good in a blender. The substance comes out looking like Nickelodeon Gak, one of the explosive “Nickelodeon compounds” used in the notorious 1989 coup against Generalissimo Giggles of the Popples Republic of Slapstickistan.
When the dough, if that’s what is it, comes out of the blender, it is rolled into snake-like tubes and then cut into little segments. You can make decorative patterns in them with the prongs of a fork, but whatever, you’re just going to eat them anyway. They should look like this:
Next you’ll want to boil the gnocchi for a few minutes each, or until they rise to the surface of the water. While this is happening, make the greatest salad dressing of all time according to Item #3 of my Egg Chronicles. Dump it over some hearts of romaine. Add croutons and parmesan. Serve.
You can use any sauce you like for the gnocchi, but here’s the recipe we used: “Heat oil in a medium saucepan on medium heat. Add the garlic cloves and cook until lightly browned on all sides. Remove and discard the garlic. Add the tomatoes (include any juices from the can) all at once (careful, they may cause the oil to splatter as the tomatoes hit the pan). As soon as the mixture boils, reduce the heat to low and let simmer, uncovered for 10 to 15 minutes. Season with salt. Stir occasionally. Use a potato masher to break up any solid pieces of tomato, you want a rough purée.” Steaming mussels is easy. Google it.
Note: If you understand the title of this post, you are an enormous loser and probably eat nothing but bantha fodder and Kraft Easy Mac®.