Tomato-Mascarpone-Gnocchi -pasta

Well my friends, I don't know how to call this stuff, but my best guess is that it indeed is pasta. Following the code of the Pastafarian this stuff is extremely unhealthy (read: delicious) and relatively easy to prepare. The story goes as follows.

It was Friday I believe. I wanted to prepare some strange-ass cousine for me and my relatives so I turned to my semi-pro cook-slash-architect friend to provide me some decent recipe for a late sunday night brunch. As it happens, I had to modify the monstrosity a bit, but believe me this stuff will blow your head off.

The Incredients

-400g of gnocchi. You can either use the fresh, original version or the more pasta-like version. Just be carefull with the pre-cooking.
-1 onion
-3 garlic cloves
-Tarragon
-1 can of minced tomatoes
-250g Mascarpone cheese (or similar)
-100g of cheddar cheese
-Parma ham (the more the merrier)
-1 handful of sundried tomatoes
-raspings / breadcrumps
-Olives
-Olive oil
-Salt
-Pepper

The Works

Pre-heat your oven to 180-degrees. Put a frypan to a heat. Chop the onion into rings and fry with olive oil untill they are slightly transparent. Mash the garlic and throw them in the frypan. Add a pinch of tarragon, mix, cut the heat and let the mixture rest.

Put the gnocchis in a kettle, add water, olive oil and salt. Depending on what kind of gnocchis you are using boil them 2 to 10 minutes. If you chose the pasta-type hard gnocchis 10 minutes should be fine. The gnocchis should be al'dente at this point, so boil them a few minutes less than the inscription on the package says...

Mix the minced tomatoes, Mascarpone-cheese, sundried tomatoes, salt and pepper in a bowl. When the mixture is smooth put the heat on the frypan again and pour the mixture on the onion-garlic-tarragon hash. Do not let the mixture boil!

As the gnocchis and the sauce are heating up, grate the cheddar cheese and mix it with bredcrumbs/raspings. Cut the Parma ham in to bitesize helpings. For the meat you can basically use salami as an addative, but stay away from the breakfast-type meat slices.

When the gnocchis are al'dente, pour them in to a baking tin. Mix the cheese-onion -sauce with the gnocchis. Sprinkle the cheddar-breadcrump -mix on the gnocchis and add some olives. Lay the Parma ham (or the meat of choice) -slices on top and add color with some chopped tarragon.

Put the baking tin into the 180-degree oven for 25 minutes.

Enjoy, preferably with red wine or a dark lager.