A Saint for Italian food

I probably shouldn’t make fun of this but today the Vatican beatified father Carlo Gnocchi, a military chaplain during WWII who went on to dedicate his life to the disabled. It’s not clear what miracle father Gnocchi is said to be responsible for (you need to have performed one miracle to be beatified – the first step on being cannonized) – but I want to believe that it was something to do with food. Perhaps a bad cook somewhere prayed to him to make a good Bolognese sauce? Yeah, I doubt it too – but with a name like that I think it’ll be hard to not associate saint Gnocchi with food and perhaps today, as I attempt a boeuf bourguignon recipe based on Julia Child’s, I’ll pray to him 😉