Green Blog Project - Caprese-style Salad -

Mozzarella & Tomato Salad with Pan-fried Gnocchi and Basil Pesto Ever since I read the post about Green Blog Project by L.G. of Ginger and Mango, I had been looking forward to posting an entry for it. It's such a lovely project of growing something in your own garden, making a dish using it as a main ingredient, and posting about it on your blog with the recipe. And finally, the day has come. Here is my entry – Mozzarella and Tomato Salad with Pan-fried Gnocchi and Basil Pesto!! And this basil pesto was, of course, made with the basil from my balcony garden. :D This morning I picked almost all the leaves on my little basil plants. Actually my original plan was making basil pesto and slathering it on fish fillet to grill… well, until I stumbled upon this Japanese site last night. Looking at this beautiful color combination of red, white and green, I just HAD TO jump on this idea and try it out myself. To make basil pesto, I chose this Fresh Basil Pesto recipe on Simply Recipes. But my basil harvest was much less than 2 cups, and the amount of pine nuts and grated cheese left in my kitchen was very limited, so I ended up making my pesto with these: Fresh Basil Pesto (obachan's version) -- Ingredients -- Apx. 1C fresh basil leaves 20 g grated cheese 1/4 C olive oil 15 g pine nuts 2 medium-sized garlic cloves, minced Salt and black pepper to taste Unfortunately my cheap electric blender could not handle such a small amount of ingredients... I had to rely on my good old mortar and pestle again. :O Making pesto with these old-fashioned tools was some work, let me tell you. Now, for the gnocchi, I was going to follow the pan-fried gnocchi recipe on the above-mentioned Japanese site. But since the dough turned out too mushy and sticky (I wonder why), I needed to add much more flour than the original recipe called for. So what I did was more like this: Pan-fried Gnocchi (obachan's version) -- Ingredients -- 2 potatoes (150 g) 4 to 5 Tbsp flour 1/2 egg, beaten 2 tsp basil pesto Salt and black pepper to taste I boiled and mashed potatoes, and added basil pesto, salt, pepper, egg and flour. Then I rolled out the gnocchi dough, cut out small round pieces using a cookie cutter, and pan-fried them with olive oil. After all the gnocchi were done, I placed them on a white plate with mozzarella cheese and cherry tomato slices and topped them with my home-made basil pesto. It was such a shame that I was too hungry to be more artistic. Now looking at these photos, I think I should have shown more olive oil on this white plate. But such a thought didn’t come to my mind then. As soon as I took these two shots of the salad, I just dug in. Oh, this salad was soooooooo good! Today’s lunch with this Caprese-style salad was definitely one of my best Sunday lunches. What I had read was right. The combination of tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and garlic is simply divine! And the basil-pesto-mixed gnocchi were really delicious! So after lunch, I happily started working on this entry for the GBP. Then, when I tried to upload the photos, I realized for the first time that I forgot something important: I forgot to take a photo of my basil before making the pesto!! :O AHHHHH!!! There was nothing else I could do but to take this shot of my naked basil plants. I hope this photo meets the criteria of the GBP. Is this OK, LG? Categories: Western-inspired