Gnocchi alla Romana

Most of us are familiar with potato gnocchi. They are made from a soft dough of potato, egg and flour. Making potato gnocchi is a hard-won skill that takes many of us years and years to master (I am far from mastery - I promise to hold forth on potato gnocchi soon). Gnocchi alla romana (or (Roman gnocchi), on the other hand, are yours to master, right out of the gate.

The basic recipe is this: semolina flour is cooked in simmering milk, then butter, cheese and egg yolks are added. After the batter cools off it's cut into shapes, sprinkled with cheese and baked/broiled until piping hot. Even better, you can do everything up to a few days ahead and heat it up right before dinner. The hardest thing about it is finding semolina flour. However, many supermarkets carry it now. The brand I see most frequently is Bob's Red Mill. Look for it in the baking supplies section.

Oh, and how do these gnocchi taste, you ask? Holy crap, these are good. I sprinkled ours with Maytag blue cheese and they made a fabulous pairing with the veal scallops I sauteed to go alongside. Do yourself a favor and work this dish into your routine soon. They are a perfect canvas for experimentation: I think my next batch will be laced with thyme, and then sprinkled with gruyere and caramelized onions (sort of a French onion soup vibe). Let me know what you do with yours.

Gnocchi alla Romana

Serves about 4 as a side dish (you don't need a lot for a serving: these are very rich)

adapted from Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and epicurious.

• 2 cups milk
• 2 ounces butter
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 4 ounces semolina flour (about 3/4 cup)
• 1/4 cup parmesan, romano or grana padano cheese
• 2 egg yolks (omit the yolks for a lighter gnocchi)
• Cheese of your choice for gratineeing

Bring the milk, butter and salt to a simmer. Slowly whisk in the semolina flour, ensuring there are no lumps (I didn't whisk, I stirred and I got lumpy semolina. Whisk, whisk, whisk.). With a spoon or rubber spatula, stir the paste, over medium-low heat until the mixture is thickened, about 5-10 minutes. Turn off the heat and whisk in the parmesan cheese. Taste the mixture for salt, and season to taste with pepper, nutmeg, or any other herbs or spices you want to use. Whisk in the egg yolks. Spread the mixture in an even layer into a parchment-lined 9x9 pan. Let the mixture cool and then put it, covered, into the refrigerator.

When you are ready to bake the gnocchi, take the pan out and lift the cooled sheet of gnocchi paste out of the pan. Use a cookie cutter or knife to cut the paste into pieces. Layer them (I shingled them into a baking dish) or lay them in a baking dish and sprinkle them with cheese. Put the pan in a 375 oven until the gnocchi are warmed through. After the gnocchi are hot, run them under the broiler for about 5 minutes until browned and bubbling.

Enjoy them piping hot, although they were great at room temperature too.

Week of November 15

This week, I am trying to use up a lot of my fridge's backlog of ingredients. Does this happen to you every now and then? You open the refrigerator and it is full, full, full of random ingredients. As a result, this week's is a little, shall we say, loose.

The week ends with my next Julia Child class and I am psyched about it. It's a lot of work, but it's great to be with a group of like-minded food lovers in such a social setting.

My little helper gave me a hand with this week's menu:

Sunday

Sauteed veal scallops (the veal is from Kellie Brook Farm in Greenland, NH - local, humanely-raised and delicious)

Steamed white asparagus (bought this on sale, after eating it I do not see much point in white asparagus - maybe if it was local or fresher?)

Sauteed R.A.G. (random assorted greens from the fridge: kale, napa cabbage, bok choy and cauliflower leaves)

Roman gnocchi (post forthcoming)

Monday

Chickpea soup

Roasted broccoli

Tuesday

Linguine with clams casino sauce

Green salad

Wednesday

Korean rice cake stir fry thing (inspired by this dish, we'll see how it goes)

Thursday

Old-fashioned meat sauce with pasta

Green salad

Garlic bread

Friday

Mastering the Art of French Cooking Class

Mussels gratinee

Carbonnade of beef

Garlic-mashed potatoes

Green salad with French vinaigrette

Souffled lemon tart

Mastering the Art of French Cooking Class

One of the things I've done a lot of this fall is teaching cooking classes. One series of classes is based on Julia Child's classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The classes are held in conjunction with the lovely folks at Jewett Farms Studio in downtown Newburyport, MA. Their cabinetry showroom has a gorgeous demonstration kitchen, complete with a massive Viking range. So on October 18, twelve of us gathered for the first class, titled "Family Dinner". The menu - with all recipes taken from the cookbook:

Potage Parmentier / Potato-Leek Soup

Poulet Roti / Roast Chicken

Gratin Savoyard / Potato Gratin

Asperges Hollandaise / Asparagus with Hollandaise

Gateau de Crepes a la Normande / Flambeed Crepe "Cake" with Apples

I had decided earlier that these classes would be "hands-on" optional. The idea is that we'd all gather to prepare the meal and eat together and people could help if they wished. This was a nice compromise: folks could sit and chat sip wine, ask about recipes, or dive in or get their hand a little dirty with prep work.

As a group, we trussed chickens (check out Christian showing off his mad trussing skills), flipped crepes (go Annjea!), and assembled the cake. Egged on by my enthusiastic cheering section, I demoed whisking up a batch of hollandaise and flambeed the gateau. A full photo set from the night is here. We dined as a group and everyone was sent home with recipes, wine notes and a full belly.

We had a great night and a great meal. I am really looking forward to our next class on November 20 (Carbonnade, an oniony beef stew, is on the menu). It's already sold out, but there are still spaces available for our

December class (Roast duck, pear tart, remoulade) on December 11. Click here for a PDF flyer with the full menu and registration details.

Bon appetit!

Menu for the Week of November 8

It's been a while since I've posted one of these, huh? Planning a weekly menu is always a chore, but as I've learned over this past summer, it is a necessity for us. My work schedule has been crazy and irregular, and so I have been blowing off the menu planning. As a result, I've been frequently stressed out at mealtimes.

So, I'm going to try to buckle back down and plan again. This week I was not selling at my booth at the Newburyport Farmers' Market so I was able to visit it as a customer. I wanted to take advantage of whatever products caught my eye, so my shopping list needed to be written in a very general way.

This was my shopping list:

• Vegetables for Indian-style Sunday dinner
• Vegetables for Tuesday night dinner
• Vegetables for 2 side dishes
• Meat for Wednesday night dinner
• Beef for Monday night dinner (recipe testing)

What was great about this list: I picked up a gorgeous head of romanesco broccoli, beautiful Swiss chard (see above), some delicious fingerling potatoes, more of that awesome purple broccoli, and some goat stew meat and an eye of round roast. All local, all delicious. I got to take advantage of what was available and buy on a whim, as opposed to sticking firmly to a detailed list.

So here's the menu I ended up with for the week:

Sunday

Indian dinner - this meal was inspired by a visit to Shalimar Foods in Cambridge. So many great ingredients and a blog post to come! All the recipes I used were from the new Gourmet cookbook, Gourmet Today.

South Indian Shrimp Curry

Lentil Stew

Romanesco Broccoli and Potatoes (original recipe called for cauliflower, the romanesco was a nice, if non-traditional, change)

Basmati Rice

Monday

Beef Carbonnade (testing this recipe for a series of classes I'm teaching)

Green Salad

Potatoes

Tuesday

Frascatelli (a kind of semolina pasta I read about recently - will let you know how it goes) with Swiss chard saute

Roasted Broccoli

Wednesday

Curried Goat Stew

Jasmine Rice

Thursday

Vegetable Fried Rice (using up leftover rice and leftover bits from the fridge)

Friday

Field trip

Arctic Char with Lentils and Mustard Beurre Blanc

This is another recipe (with a lousy picture, sorry) I have been meaning to post for you for a while. Arctic char is not a fish you may think of right off the bat, but it's a great fish to seek out and cook with. Char is similar to trout or salmon (they share a family tree) and can be safely substituted in most recipes calling for either. The char you will find for sale is likely farmed and will be a product of the United States, Canada, Iceland or Norway. Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch site for more info on choosing sustainable seafood options.

This recipe is part of Teach a Man to Fish, an online event focused on drawing attention to the problem of overfishing and to cooking with sustainable seafood. In its third year, Teach a Man to Fish is organized by the lovely Jacqueline Church. Visit her site here for more information and lots of recipes and seafood info.)

This dish has lots of components: the fish, the sauce, lentils, kale and onions. Everything but the fish and the sauce can be made ahead (even a few days ahead), and you can just use a few components instead. For instance, the char and sauce would be nice over pasta or rice. I'm going to to give the components as separate recipes so you can decide what to use.

All recipes serve four people. I plated my dish with lentils in the bottom, kale and onions on the sides. Then I placed the char on top with a healthy dollop of beurre blanc to melt over the plate.

Seared Arctic Char

• 1 1/2 pounds Arctic char fillets, cut into four pieces of about 6 oz. each
• salt and pepper
• oil for pan

Heat a 12" skillet, preferably not non-stick, over high heat. While the pan is heating, prepare the fish fillets: lay them skin-side down on a sheet of paper towels to ensure the fillets are really dry. Sprinkle the flesh with salt and pepper. Pour a little oil in the very hot skillet and lay the fillets skin-side down in the skillet. Sear the fillets about 3 minutes, until the skin is browned and crisp. Carefully turn the fillets and cook another 3-4 minutes until the fillets are cooked through.

Mustard Beurre Blanc

• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 shallot, minced fine
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 8 ounces (yes, that's two sticks) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• salt to taste

Put the wine and shallot in a small saucepan and boil over medium-high heat and reduce to 2 tablespoons. Whisk in the mustard.

Whisk in butter, piece by piece. Don't add all the butter at once, you need to emulsify the sauce with the butter, and you won't succeed if you try to rush it. Whisk vigorously, adding each piece as it's absorbed into the sauce. When all the butter has been added, season sauce with salt to taste.

Keep sauce warm until time to serve.

Lentilles du Puy

• 1 cup lentilles du Puy (see my lentil posts here and here for more info on this type of lentil)
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• sprig thyme
• olive oil

In a medium saucepan (3 quart-ish) over medium heat, saute the onion and garlic until softened and just starting to brown. Add the lentils and stir to coat with oil. Add 2-3 cups water and the thyem and bring to a simmer. Simmer until lentils are cooked through. Depending on the age of your lentils, they will take from 20-45 minutes. Add more water as needed; you want the lentils to stay covered with water while they cook.

When the lentils are tender, remove them from heat. Season with salt and pepper.

The lentils can be made several days ahead and reheated when you need them.

Braised Kale

• 1 bunch kale, leaves pulled from stems, leaves cut into thin strips
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• oil for sauteing
• sherry vinegar

Saute the garlic until it starts to soften, add the shredded kale and a sprinkle of salt. Saute over medium heat until the kale is wilted and soft. If the kale starts to stick, or the pan seems too dry, add a splash of water. Season to taste with salt and a splash of sherry vinegar.

Caramelized Onions

• 10-30 small onions (cippolini or boiling onions - judge how many you need by their size: they're garnish, not a side dish), peeled and halved through the stem end if large.
• 1 -2 cups chicken broth
• 1/4 cup sherry vinegar
• brown sugar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Saute the onions in a skillet large enough to hold them in one layer. Let them brown gently over medium heat, about 10 minutes. Pour enough chicken broth onto the onions to cover them halfway. Partially cover the pan. Simmer until onions are soft all the way through. Remove cover from pan, turn heat up and boil until the broth is reduced to a glaze.

Deglaze the pan with vinegar and add a sprinkle of brown sugar to make a glaze that coats the onions. Taste: if things are too vinegary add a little more sugar. Add salt and pepper to taste.