Home made Gnocchi

3/4 cup flour
1 medium sized russet potato
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon minced fresh herbs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Poke a few holes in the potato, then microwave it for about 5 minutes, or until it's quite soft. While the potato is still hot, break it open and scoop the insides out. Let the  potato cool enough to handle, then press it through a wire sieve. Toss the potato crumbs with the rest of the ingredients, then gently knead everything together. You don't need to work it very much, just until the dough comes together into a reasonably smooth ball. Squeeze or roll the dough out into a rope about 1/2 inch thick and twist off little balls. Set the balls aside until you have a large pot of salted water boiling. Dump in the gnocchi and wait for the water to return to boiling. Reduce the heat to a medium simmer, then wait until the gnocchi flip themselves over and they feel slightly bouncy against a spoon, about 3-5 minutes. Drain and serve immediately with your favorite sauce, they are nowhere near as good the next day.

Some thoughts:

1. Pressing the potato through the sieve is really pretty brilliant. What happens is that the cooked potato cells get separated into uniformly small particles without the starches inside them being turned into a heavy glob of paste, which in turn allows the potato to combine very evenly with the dry ingredients. The recipe I read suggested it and I thought well, I might as well give it a shot. Good call.

2. Add more herbs and maybe a little more salt? Depends on how you like them, and what you're serving them with. You can serve them in broth, like mini matzo balls, in which case go lighter on the seasonings. If you're doing a sauce with more flavor, you might want to punch them up a bit or they will get lost.

3. Gnocchi are dumplings, so think about what texture you like your dumplings to have. Lighter, fluffier? This recipe will do it. Firmer, chewier? Leave out the baking powder and chill them slightly before cooking.

4. In any case, don't over-boil them. Gooshy is not the same thing as tender.

5. Traditionally, you're supposed to roll each gnocchi under the tines of a fork to create ridges for the sauce to stick in. Pain in the ass. By twisting off the dough bits, the twisted surfaces of each one will remain slightly shaggy, which amounts to the same thing with less fuss.

6. Don't be tempted to make them much bigger. If you make them too big, you will have to cook them until the outsides fall apart before the centers are done. The potato dough has subtle and delicious qualities, but the drawback is that it does not have as much structural integrity as an all-flour dumpling, or one with egg as a binder.

7. What's that business about 'flip themselves over' mean? Well, as they cook, starches expand and become less dense, also, steam accumulates inside the part of the dumpling that is underwater. Eventually, enough of the dough will be affected by the heat to reverse the buoyancy of the dumpling mass, and the lighter, i.e. more cooked, part of the dough will roll upwards to the surface. Neato!

Noodles and greens, noodles and beans

  

   
I don't like bowtie pasta. It reminds me of my college cafeteria, a thing which was distressing and, on at least one occasion, traumatic. They served a lot of bowtie pasta. I don't like the name farfalle either. It sounds both prissy and ludicrous.

Elbow noodles, on the other hand, generally make me feel pretty chipper. It's true, I avoid cold macaroni salad, but elbow noodles themselves are not the problem. I just think letting your pasta go cold and mushy and then putting mayonnaise and pickle relish on it is gross. I like elbows. Elbows are what you make mac & cheese out of, and that's a good thing. Mac & cheese was a very special food in my childhood, and I retain great admiration for it. Also, the shape of the noodle itself is enjoyable. If you cook them to the right texture, you can squoosh the air out of the noodle with your lip and cause the elbow to suck itself onto your tongue when it bounces back into shape. I think mom didn't like that aspect so much, but I did. Maybe she just didn't like the fact that having attached a noodle to my tongue, I was eager to display the result to my dining companions. As an adult, I'm sure she was right about that.

I don't actively refuse to eat bowties, it just takes something kind of special to make me thing 'hmmm, I'd like to eat some of those.' That's what was so unusual about this recipe that a friend posted a link to. I got a bit excited about it. Pasta, nuts, greens, beans, garlic, sounds good. Even if the picture did have bowties in it.

1 cup small pasta, like elbow noodles
1 bag Trader Joe's baby arugula
1 large clove garlic, maybe 2, crushed or minced
1/2 can white beans, rinsed
1/2 teaspoon broth concentrate, maybe a smidge less
toasted walnuts
olive oil, salt, pepper

Boil the noodles in salted water, and save about a cup of the boiling water when you drain them.

In a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients comfortably, heat up a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Saute the garlic for a minute, sprinkle on a little salt, and put in all the greens. Stir them up until they are wilted and tender, then add the beans, the pasta and the broth concentrate with some of the pasta water. Stir to combine, and then let it heat through. Serve with nuts if you like them.


Points to consider:

1. On a practical level, elbow noodles are about the same size as beans, which makes it easy to keep the pasta to legume ratio constant throughout the dish. This is good for eating, but not as interesting to look at as having something like bowties. I'd rather have my food eat good than look good.
2. On the other hand, the arugula will have an insurmountable tendency to clump up. You will have to take a fork and comb the greens apart a bit in order to eat them with the noodles and beans. You could chop the greens slightly, but somehow that seems...incorrect. I could just be fussing over details.
3. The finished product can be anything from quite dry, almost like a warm pasta salad, to something more like soup, depending on how much liquid you add back to the pot. It's up to you. I made it dry this time, because I want the noodles to be at least semi-solid tomorrow when I take the leftovers for lunch, but if I was pretty sure it was all going to get et at one sitting, I might make it more soup-like.
4. Yes, you want that whole bag of greens. At least. They shrink to nothing, pretty much.
5. The only reason this isn't vegan is because I use chicken stock. You could just as easily use veggie broth.

Tasty Noodles & a Side Dish

I fixed these noodles once about 8 years ago and then for whatever reason, I never did it again. They were definitely good enough that the recipe stuck with me, but somehow I never had all the correct things at the same time, or it never crossed my mind. I can't remember if I put chicken in it last time, but I had some I needed to use up. For this, a slightly under-ripe avocado is best because the firmness will stand up to a bit of frying better.

Noodles
Chicken- I used 5 tenders
1/3 red bell pepper, in small dice
4 green onions, both tops & bottoms chopped fine
1/2 avocado, diced
Olive oil, salt & pepper

I usually take some frozen chicken parts, salt and pepper them, and dash on some olive oil before leaving them in the fridge until I remember to eat them. It's a good generic prep for anything I can think of, and it makes the meat tender and flavorful without much thinking. So I had some of those.

Use some type of wide noodles- papardelle, linguini, etc. Farfale would be ok, but I don't like those.  Have those cooking (about 3 servings worth, 2 if you have big appetites) in salted water while you do the other things.

Brown the chicken bits in a medium-high skillet. Heat some oil in the pan, then put in the chicken in a single layer. Let it brown without moving it, then flip once and let it sit for a couple seconds. If you use tenders the way I do, they'll already be done when you flip 'em, cooking the other side is just for looks. Take out the chicken and set it aside, and if the pan is pretty dry, add some more oil, about a tablespoon. Then brown the peppers and onions. Remember to add a sprinkle of salt to encourage them to brown. Add the avocados toward the end so they get cooked, but don't have time to turn into mush. When it's looking pretty good, but before the stuff stuck to the pan goes black, tear up the chicken and put it back in along with any juices that have accumulated, and throw the cooked noodles on top. Add a good shake of pepper and another pinch of salt if it needs it, turn off the heat and stir it around until the brown stuff has come off the pan.

You know what I forgot? Pine nuts. There should have been pine nuts in it. Dang. Oh well. If you use those, put them in the pan at the end of the part where you brown the peppers and onions.

I had beets & basil with it. No secrets there, just beets, fresh basil,  and a pinch of the white parts from those green onions I was using. Dress with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper. But I do want to add that cooking beets in the microwave is super convenient and I don't know why I never did it before. Just stab some holes in them so they don't blow up, and put them in a covered container with a half inch of water. 4 smallish beets took 3 rounds of 3 minutes at full power. Brilliant!

Should have taken a picture

I was faced with a need to make something tasty, quick, and acceptable for last minute company. I had not been to the grocery store, at least, not to do more than pick up a couple eggs.

Chicken and noodles in a Florentine-esque sauce

Somewhere, I read that when something is labled "florentine" it is supposed to indicate that it contains spinach. Florence being known for its spinach, I guess. Likewise, in things named "vichysoisse" you ought to expect to find peas, which are supposedly abundant and/or especially special in the neighborhood of Vichy. Which makes me think that it is rather typically american that the one thing best known (to me at any rate) as Vichysoisse is a potato soup, with nary a pea in sight. But that is neither here nor there.

Again- chicken and noodles, etc.

4 frozen chicken tenders
salt, pepper, dash of olive oil

Set a large pot of salted water on to boil the noodles.

Heat a deep skillet with the oil and a sprinkle of salt in it to about medium. Put the frozen tenders in and sprinkle over a generous dash of pepper and a touch more salt. Cover. Meanwhile, assemble:

half a large onion, diced small
2 T tomato paste
1 and a half cups frozen chopped spinach
1 garlic clove
a bag of trader joe's plain papardelle

Flip the chicken tenders over after they brown a bit, and re-cover. When the other side has browned, they will probably be slightly raw inside. That's fine, just put them in a bowl and ignore them for a while. Put a little more oil and a sprinkle of salt in the pan, and throw in the onions. Stir them around, and if they don't sweat enough on their own to take up the chicken residue, add a half cup of water and then crush in the garlic. Stir every few minutes until the onions are caramelized, then add 2 cups of water and the tomato paste and spinach. Cook until the spinach is done, check to make sure it has enough salt, then slice up the chicken bits and return them to the pan to finish cooking. It'll probably only take a couple seconds. Remember to put any juices that may have drained out back into the sauce. Somewhere in there, the water will have come to a boil and you can drop in the noodles, but remember that it only takes about 4 minutes for those things to reach al dente.

Serve with grated cheese, and optional chopped olives.