Summer awareness and ricotta gnocchi - Juls' Kitchen (2024)

I open the drawer to rummage quickly through my messily piled-up clothes. I have just five minutes to find something to wear. He’s waiting for me on his scooter for a quick ride before dinner. Today is the first day of summer.

We’ve been living together for three months now, sharing sleepy and silent breakfasts and late-night work, though I feel like we’re having a romantic first date. I choose a blue and white striped cotton pullover, and I style my hair into a braid to tame my curls.

My idea of a casual summer outfit is still strongly anchored in the 80’s fashion.

He hands me my helmet, I get on the scooter, and we leave for what looks like an adventurous ride, among golden wheat fields, grazing cows in the distance, stone villages perched on the hilltop, and recently shorn sheep, which raise their head from the grass as we pass by, releasing in the wind the silver tinkling of their bells.

This is the Tuscan countryside in summer, a beautiful postcard. It is right outside our front door, yet sometimes you need a date and the right clothes to realize it.

As the fields roll fast around us, I finally had the feeling of summer on my skin. I felt it again at dinner, when you could still hear the hypnotic cicadas sing from the cypresses around the garden.

In the last weeks I had the chance to live meaningful experiences, first in Alassio for Annette’s food photography and styling workshop, then in Provence with Giuseppina. I also managed to carve out some time to think and to read finally.

Following one of Annette’s wise advice, I decided to use this summer to better understand who I am and what I want to do, but mostly to figure out how to do it, find my own style, a clearer voice, my own unique way of being.

You can not change overnight, you can not choose a path in a few hours.

Three months, the brightest, warmest, and sunniest three months of the year, look like the perfect amount of time to work on myself. Three months of summer to hone my voice, my style, my expertise and our many projects.

The recipe to make ricotta gnocchi

A dish of pure white ricotta gnocchi speckled with herbs ushers in an awareness journey. They are elegant in their simplicity: who wouldn’t want to be defined like this?

We use a great deal of ricotta here in Tuscany: it’s one of my favourite ingredients for cakes, savoury and sweet tarts, and pasta dressings. I add a spoonful of ricotta in a bowl of fresh fruit for a light end of a meal andcastagnaccio in winter, when I want to show the best of our cuisine during a cooking class.

It was my first time with ricotta gnocchi, though. I’m not a huge fan of gnocchi, or rather, I was not a huge fan. When I started making them from scratch, I realized their potential, deeply understanding those who consider gnocchi one of the most comfortable food we have at hand.

I prefer to shape the gnocchi as tiny as hazelnuts, soft as pillows, I want my gnocchi to melt in my mouth, blending with their seasoning.

The best seasonal fresh herbs shine through these ricotta gnocchi: mint, basil, and lemon balm add a fresh and verdant note, enhanced by a bouquet of zucchini blossoms used as an unusual seasoning.

It’s like biting into an early summer evening, like a restoring nap among bushes of fresh herbs in the shade of a quiet garden.