Potato Gnocchi with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce and Fresh Peas

There was unfortunate sauce breakage, but other than that, the gnocchi were perfect pillows of  deliciousness.

 My long-held desire to make homemade gnocchi has been balanced by the spectre of gnocchi dissolving as the little dumplings hit the boiling water or ending up as a gummy, tooth-sticking mess, but for my (belated) birthday dinner with Lynn, my ever-ready amico in la cocina (Lynn had never eaten gnocchi - what? Impossible! Really?), we decided to give it a shot.

Fresh peas!

 "Gnocchi", derived from the Italian word "nocchio" (a knot in wood, or knuckle), is considered to have been introduced in Italy by the Romans who based their dumplings on a semolina porridge dough mixed with eggs. Potatoes didn't come into the mix until the 16th century. Gnocchi derivatives are geographically widespread and diverse in ingredients (bread crumbs, eggs, no eggs, etc.). As with many dishes, a dish of gnocchi (cheap-ish carbs or left-overs + liquid and a binder) is economical and filling the world over.

They take well to nearly any sauce, but a light hand with other ingredients is encouraged. These are delicate pillows that you don't want to crush (literally or as it applies to flavor). You can cut them and cook them without rolling to get the ridges, but those ridges - as with pasta shapes other than flat noodles - are certified sauce delivery systems.

This is the last picture before the one where the rolled gnocchi are in the pan. Dough-crusted hands are not a good choice to handle a camera.

In Lidia, We Trust

We have both watched Lidia Bastianich make gnocchi countless times on her cooking shows and didn't think of  looking elsewhere for a recipe. We looked around and found the same or very similar recipes from a variety of sources, but always held them up against Lidia's as the standard from which we wanted to start. We did  mine the internet for some videos and tips and found the following useful:

• We chose to boil our potatoes although there are some methods that specify baking the potatoes (at 425F on a bed of kosher salt on a baking sheet). Start cooking the (skin on!) potatoes in cold, salted water and cook until a sharp paring knife or skewer slides in and out of the thickest part without resistance. Do not overcook and if the skins split, this will not bode well. Cooking time will vary with the size of your potatoes so start checking at 30 minutes.
• Peel the potatoes while they're hot. Hold them in a clean, folded kitchen towel and use a sharp paring knife to gently peel off the skin.
• I can't imagine making these without a potato ricer or a food mill. Some tips included substituting a grater, but YMMV.  You could even push the potatoes through the holes of a colander (as with spaetzle).  You want them fluffy! The riced potatoes need to be a cooled (so as not to cook the egg) and be a fluffy, airy mound when you start to incorporate the egg and then the flour.
• Once you start mixing your dough  and until you are finished rolling and cutting the gnocchi do not stop. Work as fast as you can, over time the sitting dough gets moister as it absorbs the liquid from the potatoes.
• Don't overwork the dough. This isn't pasta, these are dumplings. Work the dough a little more than you would biscuits. Lidia's recipe specifies that it should take about 3 minutes to incorporate the flour and that worked beautifully for us. Your hands are the right tool for this job.
• When you cook the gnocchi, do not add them to boiling water, add them to water that is at a righteous simmer in small batches of a couple of handfuls at a time. If you are not serving them immediately, shock each cooked batch in ice water and set aside in a colander once cooled. I would classify "immediately" as 15 minutes. To reheat, saute them briefly in a little butter or add them to the sauce for just a minute before you serve.
• If you want to make them further ahead of time or make them to be used on another day, place each dumpling on a clean, floured kitchen towel on top of a baking sheet - not touching - or a piece of floured wax paper or parchment and freeze. Once completely frozen, put the dumplings in a seal-able freezer bag, removing all possible air. They should last up to 2 months. Do not defrost the frozen gnocchi when you add them to the water. Add a scant 1 minute to the cooking time after the gnocchi rise. 

...and probably most importantly, do this with one (or more) people, especially if you're rolling the cut dumpling pillows to form ridges. The first ones will look awful, but soon you'll be rolling them like the Italian nonna you may never have had. You can see a couple of different methods here, or follow the directions in Lidia's recipe here. 

Even with all of the possible 'gotchas', this recipe isn't at all difficult. Just give yourself the luxury of time.

The one minor fail  was with the sauce. We made a reduced cream sauce with aged gorgonzola and peas. This type of sauce, with nothing to stabilize it, has a shelf life of approximately a blink of an eye before it breaks. If I hadn't added the peas, I could have re-emulsified it before serving. If we make this again, I'd follow the steps listed in the recipe (after the jump) for the final preparation rather than how we handled it last night.

RECIPE: POTATO GNOCCHI WITH GORGONZOLA CREAM SAUCE AND FRESH PEAS

Friday Dinner: Tuscan Pork Stew and Polenta

Tonight, with rain coming down in buckets, it was a perfect night for a warm, aromatic stew over creamy polenta cooked with milk and finished with some Asiago cheese and parsley. When Lynn, my cooking partner extraordinaire, suggested that we make this I was immediately all-in but since polenta's not her favorite thing, I was a little puzzled. She found a recipe on the Food and Wine site and  and thought that polenta was just the thing. It looked great to me, too - pork shoulder marinated in wine, aromatics, rosemary, sage, bay, and cloves! ... and juniper berries! According to the writer, it was developed by Chef Joe Sponzo to be made with wild boar.

...not that we don't have feral pigs with a little wild boar in the historical breeding mix here in Northern California. When I lived in Clayton for a little while (in Contra Costa County), I would read news reports of the wild/feral pigs that are the scourge of parks in and around Mt. Diablo, but no... we used pork shoulder.

One thing that struck both of us about the recipe is that it seemed like it hadn't been adapted for pork instead of wild boar. Some of the aromatics (juniper berries, cloves) and methods (boiling the meat before searing and braising it - don't do it) seemed more oriented towards game so we made some changes that I'll pass along in the recipe. In addition to the stew and polenta - we went a different direction with the polenta - we had roasted asparagus (Spring!) with garlic, salad and we drank a San Giovese with dinner.

RECIPE: TUSCAN PORK STEW WITH POLENTA

Quick Preserved Kumquats - When Life Gives you Kumquats and Not Lemons...

This is the tabouli-ish salad I made using the quick preserved kumquats

Nagami Kumquats

I've run out of my preserved lemons and I am sad but I cheered up when I read the article, Preserved Lemons Brighten a Stir-Fry by Melissa Clerk at the NYTimes online site. Ms. Clark is spot-on when she writes, "A jar of preserved lemons sitting in the fridge is a boon for the busy cook. Chopped up and tossed into salads, stews and sautés, they add a bright, nuanced burst of flavor in one speedy step — as long as you happen to have some on hand."

True, dat. It's also true that the quick preserve method doesn't give you the same complex flavor as true preserved lemons, but this method provides a good substitute when necessary. Or you have some Nagami kumquats

Her recipe calls for 1 1/2 Meyer lemons, but I had a few of the Nagami kumquats and a plan to make a kind-of-a-tabouli salad and figured I'd give Ms. Clark's method a try. I love kumquats to eat out of hand, but I prefer the Miewa kumquats that I get from Will's Avocado's at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market which, while still tart inside, have a sweeter rind.

The Nagami's would make an awesome marmalade but for me, one or two eaten raw is my limit (Hmm... Shaker Kumquat Pie, anyone?). I eat the Miewas seeds and all but for this recipe, I de-seeded them as they would be used in a salad. Getting rid of the seeds is a bit fussy but since I wasn't working with too many, I didn't mind.

QUICK PRESERVED KUMQUATS

Roasted Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup

I love chickpeas and I love that I've found something new to do with them. Not a starring role this time, but a solid supporting role.

Many soups that are purèed call for a potato to thicken the soup. The potato serves that purpose nicely without adding too much flavor that affects the taste of the main ingredients. Well, I don't cook potatoes at home and never have them in my pantry. I'm not anti-potato, I just love them too much, you know?

In this soup, I used chickpeas to thicken the soup and it works beautifully. They aren't quite as neutral tasting as a potato but they work beautifully and add protein and additional fiber to the soup. There is one important element to getting a silky  purèed  soup: you must use a blender to purèe the soup if you want it to be silky smooth. A food processor or stick blender just won't do the trick. Just as you must use a blender if you want to make silky smooth hummus (you do, you know - really), it's necessary to this soup, too. When it comes to hummus, some would say that you can't make a silken hummus without rubbing off the skins but I swear by the blender method.

...but I digress. I replaced the "one medium russet potato" called for in several recipes I reviewed with 1 cup cooked chickpeas in the recipe I ended up with. You could use canned but did you know that when you use canned chickpeas or other beans, unicorns cry? It's true!

ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND CARROT SOUP

One Side from One Sister: Potato, Fennel Gratin

My sisters and my brother all love to cook and at gatherings, and especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas, many, many good dishes are made. I featured Christine and Cathy's dishes from Thanksgiving in a previous post (Thanksgiving 2011: Three Sides from Two Sisters) and now it's Sara's turn.

 For our Christmas Eve dinner, Sara made a potato, fennel gratin based on a recipe by Ina Garten, from "The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook", and it's a very good recipe, but Sara's tweaks made it better still.

Slight caramelization of the onions and fennel, a little nutmeg plus a combination of Gruyère and Fontina (also doubling the amount) cheeses elevate the dish.

RECIPE: POTATO-FENNEL GRATIN