Now I Gnocchi!

It’s just plain fun to say “gnocchi.” Perhaps this is what prompted me to try this silky and luscious potato dumpling.

Shane: What are we having for supper this evening?
Emilie: Gnocchi. Giggle, snort.

For those who want to pronounce ga-nawchee (much the way I pronounced it until a friend of mine who claims to be Italian laughingly corrected me), repeat aloud: no-chee. Almost akin to saying “no-cheese,” but my gnocchi had Parmigianino grated into the dough.

Admittedly, my little dumplings were not very eye-appealing. Because they were so sticky, as I plopped them one-by-one into boiling water, I could not keep them in their original, pillow-shaped stage. Gnocchi are fickle little guys. At first they want plenty of flour to bind the potatoes, eggs, and spices. However, too much flour and they become bloated and anchored, refusing to free their little gnocchi-selves to rise to the top of the boiling water. Wouldn’t you just gnocchi?

To dignify the not-so-uniform appearance of my gnocchi, I topped the gnocchi with some of my basic marinara enhanced with a touch of well-aged and earthy Gorgonzola cheese. Without the added blue cheese, marinara sauce is just red sauce: tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil. It’s meant to top pizza crusts, be mixed with meat and wine for ragu, or sometimes added to Italian soups for extra punch. If I have some marinara in the freezer, I’ve been known to make a bean and tomato sauce with bacon, and in a pinch on a busy night and when the budget says “recess,” it is tasty enough to toss with plain pasta, cheese or no cheese. Gnocchi, however, is no plain pasta. With enough body to strut in only stilettos, less is certainly more when it comes to how gnocchi should dress. Fitting a lightly sweetened gnocchi with a heavy sweater of red is a fall fashion travesty. How will I do things differently next time? To serve the gnocchi with browned butter mingled with fresh thyme could quite possibly become my fall of ’08 runway hit.

Just the Gnocchi:

Four servings

1 pound russet potatoes
1 pound orange-fleshed sweet potatoes
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
2 cloves of garlic, green germ removed and minced
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
½ teaspoon salt
A couple of pinches of nutmeg
Freshly ground black pepper
1 ¼ to 1 ½ cups all purpose flour plus more for dusting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prick russet and sweet potatoes, wrap them each in foil, and bake for 1 hour or until soft. Remove from oven and let cool. Once potatoes have cooled enough to handle, peel potatoes and pat off any excess water. Using a standard potato masher, mash potatoes together in a large bowl. Try to mash as many lumps out as you can, although I admit that I left a few lumps on accident. It didn’t seem to hurt the texture. If you own a potato ricer, dust it off, thank the person who gave it to you as an oddball present, and try it. I wish I had one.

Bring a pot of water to boil. Rip up some sheets. Panic. Oh, wait, I’m not in a sitcom and Lucy is not giving birth. However, do start a pot of water to boil because after the flour is added to the dough, you will want to test a dumpling.

Make a well in the mashed potatoes. Add the egg and egg yolk, garlic, cheese, salt, nutmeg, and pepper. Mix well. My hands were the best instrument in this case. Go ahead, get them dirty. Sprinkle about a ½ cup of flour over the mixture and press it in to the dough. Fold dough and sprinkle over more flour. Keep doing this with the remainder of the flour until the dough begins to hold together. You may not need all the flour. In fact, I’d recommend not using all the flour. When the dough is rolled, it will pick up more flour, and you do not want overly-floured gnocchi dough. Do not be afraid of sticky dough. Yes, sticky dough does make ugly gnocchi, but too stiff of a dough will produce a heavy dumpling that will not float. Form a ½ inch piece from the dough and drop it into the boiling water. It should only take about 1 – 1 ½ minutes for the dumpling to float. If the dumpling looks feathery and eventually falls apart, add more flour to the dough. If the dumpling does not float, too much flour has been added to the dough.

Much like an Olympic swimmer soaring to the water’s surface, I’m sure your test piece of gnocchi swam flawlessly to the top of the water. So now the dough is ready to roll and cut. Sprinkle a bit of flour on your work surface, and flour your hands. Divide the dough into 4 to 6 pieces. Keeping the unused dough covered, roll each piece into a ½ inch log and with a serrated knife cut log into ½ inch pieces. The pieces will not be pretty, and your stomach will not care. Continue rolling and cutting with the remainder of the dough keeping the unused dough and formed gnocchi covered.

I hope your water is still boiling. In batches, submerge the dumplings into the boiling water. With a slotted spoon, be ready to scoop the dumplings as they start floating toward the top. It’s likely they will not all cook at the same time, so don’t leave the early developers while you’re waiting for the rest of the dumplings to rise to the surface. Let cooked gnocchi drain in a strainer. After all the gnocchi are cooked, serve with your choice of sauce, keeping in mind you don’t want to cover the delicate taste and texture with anything heavy. Serve with a light salad and a medium-dry white wine.

*Make extra gnocchi and freeze uncooked gnocchi on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Once frozen (about an hour later) place gnocchi in a freezer safe bag. When ready to cook, no thawing is necessary; just cook the frozen gnocchi as usual. Talk about an easy weeknight meal!

Flour, Water, Salt

Concepts that float around and somewhat astound me: people born in 1998 are turning 10 years old this year, which means I will celebrate my 30th birthday this July; Shane enjoys cleaning the bathroom; and a small boule of artesian bread costs $3.00. Add walnuts or raisins to the bread and add another $2.00 to the cost.

What makes bread? Bread is made from flour, water, salt, and leavening, and leavening in this case is a pinch of active yeast juxtaposed with time.

So I will make my own $3.00 bread. In fact, as a good night’s sleep gave me a brilliant idea as I was mixing the ingredients for my dough. I will add fresh thyme and increase the value of my bread to $5.00. Brilliant! I hastily cleaned and stripped thyme twigs. Brilliant! What else can I contribute to my dough? Dried Kalamata figs? I hurriedly chop 3, no 6 figs and add them to the mix. Just right for a small, yet fig-filled, loaf, six figs and about two tablespoons of fresh thyme tickled my nose as I kneaded this morning’s loaf. How fancy of me.

As the loaf baked, comforting smells of sweet and savory drifted in and out of the kitchen. However, the taste of both the thyme and figs were lost in the overall loaf. On my next attempt at a fancy loaf, I will double the amount of figs, and up the thyme to three tablespoons for a one pound (or just under) loaf of bread. If you like a more subtle loaf, keep the amounts as written in my recipe. Typed in parentheses are amounts I believe will make a stronger flavored loaf. I’ll file this one under “still experimenting.”

My First Attempt at a Fig and Thyme Boule

½ cup all purpose flour
¼ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup lukewarm water
1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast

Mix ingredients together in a large bowl, cover, and let sit overnight up to 12 hours. Mixture will be bubbly by the end of 8 hours, but I leave mine for almost 12 hours to increase the flavor of the bread.


When ready to knead the dough, add to the above mixture:

1 ½ cups all purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh thyme (3 tablespoons)
6 medium to large dried figs, roughly chopped (12 large)

Add 1 – 1 ½ cups lukewarm water to the mixture. Feel your way through the dough. Sticky dough is good, but do not allow the dough to become soupy. If too much water is added, balance it with a few spoonfuls of flour. The sticky dough will become firmer as the flour soaks up the excess water. Knead dough until it is firm, bouncy, and it passes the windowpane test. This could take up to 20-25 minutes. If you’re used to kneading bread dough in a food processor or with dough hooks in a stand mixer, feel free to do so. I have never kneaded dough with anything but my ten digits, two palms, and a lot of four letter words, so I have no clue how long either of these machines will take to knead bread dough. However, if kneading by machine, I would recommend adding the figs afterwards and just kneading them in by hand until they are incorporated into the dough. A few figs will pop out of the dough on occasion; just poke them back into the dough.

Shape dough into a tight ball and place in a lightly greased large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or lid. Let rise for 2-3 hours, or until dough has doubled in size. Punch down dough and shape into a boule or whatever shape is preferred. I shaped my dough into a boule and let it rise freeform. However, I usually prefer shaping it to fit my 9 inch round rising basket.

Okay, it’s shaped. To keep dough from drying out on top, I cover the top of the dough with greased plastic wrap. Some bakers prefer lightly dusting a tea towel (non-fuzzy towel) with flour and draping that over the top of the dough, but I’ve never had luck with the towel’s not sticking to the dough.

Rise bread for half as long as the first rise, 1 – 1 ½ hours. At least 30 minutes before the bread has finished rising, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Slash bread and bake for 30-35 minutes. I usually bake my bread for 35 minutes, but I like well-browned bread. To check for doneness, insert an instant read thermometer into a conspicuous section of the bread (somewhere on the bottom). When it reads 190 – 200 degrees, bread is done. Remove bread from the oven and let cool on a rack completely before slicing.

Listen closely to the bread. When it’s fresh from the oven the bread will sound of crackling, akin to a fall fire or carbon paper receipts being crumpled. Over crashing symbols, pop songs, and even cicadas in the summer, freshly baked bread is my preferred music.

Beauty and the Baguette

Before I reveal my startlingly ugly baguette blunders, I want to prove that I can make pretty bread. This is my standard loaf of bread. I made a dough from 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour, 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour, 2 tablespoons of my home grown sourdough starter, 1 teaspoon of salt, and enough water to make a shaggy to firm dough, roughly 1 1/3 cups. After a 25 minute hand knead and a 30 minute nap, the dough grew nicely in my well floured 9 inch brotform.

Twelve hours later a doughy, lightly sour-smelling butterfly emerged from it's wicker cocoon where I slashed it crosswise with a serrated knife. In a mega-hot, 450 plus degree oven, my beautiful butterfly let out a mighty RAWWRRR as it ripped its crust Ala the Incredible Hulk. Fortunately my bread is not as sour as Mr. Hulk, and it tastes much better with a variety of sweet and savory food things. My latest breakfast trend has been to slather toasted slices with almond butter and plum jam.

Oh but how my ego whimpers as I long to make a loaf that is somewhat passable as a baguette. This darling was one of three that rose horizontally instead of vertically even with my cushioning each baguette with an oil-slicked slice of cling wrap. The baguettes were conceived from the same formula as above. With a quickly sinking love for baking, I slashed each baguette, bummed my beauties couldn't even make it to the swim suit round. Even a blast of hot, gassy air wasn't enough to inflate the impossible. Not feeling worthy enough to display these loaves next to a hearty soup or with a hunk of cheese and olives, I devoured part of each (quite tasty) loaf for breakfast that week. A pop under the broiler and a smear of almond butter and plum jam was yet again a nice way to begin my day.

With a little help from a sheet of parchment paper crafted into a complicated couche, my next loaves did obey my command to sit and stay. The top loaf was another sourdough, victim to a drag and slash. And the bottom loaf is a faux baguette, meaning I used leftover egg and olive oil enriched dough to create a baguette shape in order to practice my slashing technique. Naturally, my mock baguette is the most attractive of the three, although the egg and olive oil gave the loaf a soft crust and mildly flavored crumb. Eating breakfast as if I were a king, or at least prime minister, I toasted slices of the bread, smearing each slice with (mmmm yes) almond butter and plum jam

But my heart beats to beautify my collection of baguettes. While the complicated couche did a stellar job cradling my baguette dough, I prefer the rise-and-dump method of a brotform. It's less fussy and I've never had luck with a real couche. Dough sticks to the cloth, I yell embarrassing words and glare at the oven for the half hour. Therefore, I have almost talked myself into purchasing a brotform especially for baguettes. Perhaps I can once again cheat my way to making more authentic looking baguettes with a promise I'll start pairing even the ugly ones with a gorgeous slice of Stilton to go with my plum jam.

Not Quite Finished

After a week of pure exhaustion and laziness, I decided it was time to perk up our palates and our plates. Many months ago Shane and I concocted a dish that consisted of cayenne dusted scallops and butternut squash risotto. I made notes, hid them from myself, and just last week I ran across our musings. "Ah!" I thought. "This is exactly the endeavour I need to feed my ego, er, I mean pull myself out of a cooking rut."

Convincing Shane that I can cook $15.00 worth of bay scallops should have been the hardest part of my adventure. Being that this was my first time to ever cook scallops, I was a little anxious on how they would cook. Too long, too rubbery. Too short and we may as well go out for sashimi.

The main part of tonight's meal focused on the the risotto, only to accessorize with scallops and a lamb's lettuce salad dressed with balsamic vinegar. In the morning, I so carefully caramelized a large red onion and chopped and skinned a large squash. I have found the easiest way to chop a winter squash is to score the squash a few times and microwave it for about 5 minutes. This will soften the skin a bit and make for easier cutting. Let the squash cool for a few before hacking into it. I bought about a 2 - 2 1/2 pound squash which yielded roughly 6 cups of chopped squash. Now that I look back, I should have hidden about half of the chopped squash in the back of my refrigerator. Nevertheless, that evening I plunged into my risotto, sleeves rolled and determined to create a memorable landscape of orange rice, Italian-style.

As most risottos list white wine as an ingredient, I opted for a Romanian Gewurztraminer we had hanging around in the refrigerator. For $6.99 for 750 ml, it is very drinkable, and I come from the school that advises if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it. From the freezer came the homemade chicken stock, roughly 2 1/2 cups, thawed and ready to be soaked by the scant 1 cup of Arborio rice. A good chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated until it reached 1/2 cup, sat in a bowl near the stove. I brought the stock to a boil, added all the squash, and simmered, covered, until the squash was tender. Now, to my credit, there was enough stock for the scant amount of rice, even after I simmered it with the squash.

The previously made caramelized onions were gently reheated with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Along with a carefully spice blend of 1/8 teaspoon each of cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, and freshly ground black pepper. Like a good little risotto chef, I coated the Arborio with the oil, spices, and onion. Left to itself to sauté for 3 minutes, the Arborio further pick up the flavors of the onion. Without feeling the need to perform quality control, I measured a good glug of white wine, a generous 1/3 cup. It was time to add the stock, now a brilliant orange and somewhat thick. My first ladles of broth produced enough liquid for the rice to absorb. But around the fourth or fifth ladle, the stock started getting a little thicker.

This is when I started having squash reservations.

I wasn't even 10 minutes into the game when I started adding more squash and less stock to the rice. When it reached a point where I was stirring a potion and my rice was absorbing all the liquid it could muster, I made an executive decision to thin the squash-laden stock with more wine. As a marathon runner reaches for Gatorade, my rice sucked the liquid and was still skinny and thirsty. After 15 minutes of trying to plump my grains, they were still crunchy and stubborn. So to bring to a simmer, more wine and a touch of water went into the pan of simmering squash. And another dose, more water less wine. More water. By now I should have had a perfectly simmering pot of creamy, plump rice, ready for me to add the cheese and adjust the seasonings. Instead, I had a thick, orange puree that, instead of slightly bubbling, is instead giving way to mini-explosions. The underside of my stove's hood is now worthy of an art gallery.

Thirty minutes, the rice was almost edible, and it was time to start the scallops. In my giant skillet, over medium heat I warmed 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When the oil was warm enough, I added 3 cloves garlic, smashed and then minced. After a minute, in went the scallops, a dash of salt and a grinding of pepper. It only took 2 minutes per side to allow the scallops to sear and release their sweet smell. I dusted the scallops with a smidgen of cayenne and a few knocks of sweet paprika before I covered the skillet and placed it in the cold oven. By removing the scallops completely from the heat and setting them aside for 5 minutes, they gently finished cooking.

In the meantime, I added the grated cheese to the risotto, plunked a lid on the pot, and tossed a salad made of lamb's lettuce, goat cheese, and toasted walnuts. My ever-so-versatile balsamic vinaigrette melded nicley with the goat cheese and tender lettuce leaves. Everytime I make salad dressing, I make a little extra to store in the refrigerator. Grabbing a jar of homemade dressing often comes in handy when I'm juggling to put supper on the table at a reasonable hour.

When the meal was finalized, after 45 minutes of explosions and stirring to create more explosions, I announced dinner and poured Shane and myself the remainder of the Gewurztraminer.

The spice, sweetness, and creaminess of the squash married well with the sweetness and tender chew of the scallops. However, the texture of the rice was faint, and the nutty taste of the caramelized onions I was expecting was masked by the squash. I could not see nor taste the onions. This left the risotto with less spunk than for what I was hoping.

But this dish is not quite finished. I will spend another $15 on scallops (with more confidence) and try another risotto with less squash and more chicken stock, less squash, and more caramelized onions, less squash and more cheese, and less squash -- about half the amount I used this time. And the half of the squash I don't use? Perhaps I'll simmer it in an open pot and add to the art display underneath the stove's hood.