Purple Potato Gnocchi with Roasted Beets

Gnocchi are a lot easier to make that one would think. The dough is made of mashed potatoes, flour and eggs. The preparation is very basic. The gnocchi bathe in boiling water for a few minutes and they're sautéed in a little butter.

To make it more fun and playful for the kids to eat, I used purple potatoes, called Okinawan sweet potatoes. They look very similar to a white sweet potato and are oval-shaped with pointy tips. To repeat the purple-colored theme, I paired the pasta dish with roasted beets. I also added sage for flavor and almonds for crunch.

We eat with our eyes first, and the vibrant color of this dish is sure to capture the attention of even the pickiest eater. After the reception it got from my girls, I expect I'll be making it fairly often.

Uncooked gnocchi.

Rosemary Roasted Beet Risotto with Ricotta Salata Cheese

I had half of a beet, puréed, leftover from the harissa paste I made yesterday. Since there are no infants in the house and all the adults have teeth, I had to find some other use for it. I finally decided to incorporate the beet purée in a risotto. The beets imparted a mild sweetness and beautiful pink color to the rice. I roasted some more red beets and added them as well for a texture contrast. I flavored the dish with rosemary from the garden and topped it with some ricotta salata.

Leftover ingredients can be a great way to test out new dishes. What I often do is combine the ingredient with a basic dish, such as risotto in this case, and couple it with complementary flavors that work well with the ingredient in other recipes. This way, chances are the new dish you've created will taste delicious. The real trick is knowing really well a few recipes that are easy to modify. 

Rooh Afza, Summer Drink of The East

I've featured sharbat (the South Asian equivalent of the Western chocolate milk for kids) in the past. The key ingredient in sharbat is a product called Rooh Afza, which is a syrup made of flower petals such as Gulab (Rose), coriander seeds, kewra and watermelon extract.  It literally translates to "that which tempts your soul".

Rooh Afza is fairly versatile and is used in many other drinks and desserts. One such recipe is similar to sharbat, but without the milk and nuts. I often make this drink when I need to cool off a bit. It's very refreshing and light.

Cardamom Spritz Cookies dipped in Mint Chocolate

I've made spritz sablé cookies before. The most recent variation was one made of orange and dark chocolate. The girls felt like baking today and they really wanted to make a fresh batch of the sablé cookies. I was all for it but I wanted to teach them to be creative and come up with a new flavor combination.

There was a tall pitcher of my mint and cardamom-flavored Arnold Palmer on the counter. Sunny, the eldest, looked over at it, then back at me, and said "why not mint and cardamom-flavor spritz sablé?". - I thought it was a brilliant idea. If you browse through the recipes on the website, you'll notice that I use cardamom in almost everything, from savory dishes, to drinks, to desserts. I knew it would make a perfect flavoring for the cookies.

I didn't want to add mint extract directly to the cookie dough because I thought it would be to overpowering. Instead, I used Guittard pink-colored mint chocolate chips to make a ganache, which I dipped the cookies in, once they baked and cooled. These particular spritz cookies are thicker and chewier than the orange and dark chocolate version. They both taste great so it's really a matter of personal preference. Try both and see which one you like!

Mint and Chocolate Filled Rose Thumbprint Cookies

Thumbprint cookies are similar to sablé cookies. They both have the texture of shortbread. The characteristic thumbprint shape is created by pressing down on the cookie with a spoon half-way through the baking process. A sweet filling is placed in the resulting cavity. The cookie itself has a mild sweetness that goes very well with the sweeter filling. The filling can be jam, preserves, caramel or even chocolate.

I chose a pink mint filling because of my little five-year-old sister-in-law. She came to me with the cutest request. She adores Cookie Monster, and often shares her cookies with the Cookie Monster doll we got her. Today, she came to me, hid her face with the stuffed animal and said in her best Cookie Monster impersonation, "Cookie Monster is hungry, I want pink cookies." My heart melted; I can't say no to my little munchkin.

All the girls gathered in the kitchen and pink cookies it was. I looked in the pantry and found several choices for a pink-colored cookie. Some pink-colored mint chocolate chips from Guittard, raspberry and strawberry extracts or rose paste. The girls voted and we went for a rose-flavored cookie dough with pink mint chocolate filling. Sunny, my 13-year-old eldest sister-in-law wanted to create some fun design in the filling, so we melted some bittersweet chocolate and vanilla chips as well. This has to be some fun designs.

We were all very happy with our unique cookies and needless to say, Cookie Monster also enjoyed our creation.