Risotto with Saffron, Milanese Style

Cooking Italy Assignment Risotto with Saffron, Milanese Style, p246

A risotto this time, a bit different from others I've made before with no wine and meat broth instead of chicken broth. Not sure if that's what makes it Milanese, but it's definitely different, and quite tasty. The technique is much the same as any risotto, so there's not much to say there

Since I didn't have enough of the arborio rice left to do this, I opened the new packet, the carnaroli rice that I got when I mail-ordred the marsala. Can't say I noticed that the carnaroli was especially wonderful, but the flavor of this risotto was different enough that it might have distracted from the rice itself.

The recipe says it serves 6. I made a half recipe and it rather skimpily served two as a main course, with a big salad afterwards. Good to eat, though.

Veal Stew with Sage, White Wine, and Cream

Cooking Italy Assignment Veal Stew with Sage, White Wine, and Cream, p377

Now, this was an easy and delicious meal. Chunks of veal, floured and browned, then cooked in white wine with lots of sage, and a good slog of cream stirred in at the end. Yummy.

After trimming most of the fat from the meat, I cut it to the size required, more or less.

While the bits were browning, I decided some of them were still too big, so I halved them, dipped in flour, and browned the cut sides.

After the meat is browned, a bit of onion and a stack of sage leaves are softened before returning the meat to the pan with some white wine for a long simmer. The recipe called for dried sage leaves. I gathered mine in the misty morning air. A rinse, a pat dry, and a long sit on a paper towel was about as dry as these got. And they were fine. Since sage can be an overpowering taste, I was a bit afraid the whole leaves would be too strong, but that wasn't the case at all.

The dish smelled so good as it was cooking, I considered not adding the cream at the appointed time. But Ed thought it added a nice richest.

The recipe says it makes 4-6 servings. I had only about 1.25 pounds (where 1.5 pounds were asked) and this served two adequately. I find it hard to believe 1.5 pounds would serve even 4 as a main course.

This was really tasty and very easy to do. It would be a nice company kind of meal, since it doesn't need much attention to get it finished. Once it's simmering, an occasional stir and check on the liquid level is all it needs. This could be served as an easy main course with a starter that's a bit fussy perhaps.

Veal Scaloppine with Marsala

Cooking Italy Assignment Veal Scaloppine with Marsala, p361

After a bit of difficulty finding the marsala wine, I've finally made the veal scallopine. And good they were. Of course the technique is really simple. Dip some thinnish slices of protein in flour, brown in butter and/or oil and set aside, deglaze the pan with something interesting. Voilà! This version is deglazed with marsala, which makes a lovely sauce, but you can deglaze with all kinds of tasty liquids. (Thanks to Pam Anderson's HowTo for widening my understanding of pan sauces like this.)

I had just over 500g of veal scallops, which was quite too much for two people. This could have served three easily and four as part of a bigger meals. Once all the meat is browned, you deglaze the pan with the marsala, add a chunk of butter and stir till it's melted, then return the scallops to the pan to simmer in the lovely sauce.

Then, on to the platter and off to the table for serving.

So good for such a little bit of work.

Fried Calamari

Cooking Italy Assignment Fried Calamari, p319

Back in the Cooking Italy saddle with fried calamari. Who doesn't like these, I wonder?

Since I've pidddled with cleaning squid before, there was no challenge with doing that again. Instead, I took the lazy way out and used frozen rings, 500g (a bit more than a pound), for a main course for the two of us. Of course, when you buy a sackful of frozen rings, you don't get any of the cute tentacles.

The recipe really couldn't be simpler: flour the rings, fry 'em up, and serve. Hazan has you toss the calamari with flour in the colander. I kept a dish of flour and dredged the rings before dropping them into the oil. You simply fry them till they're done. She does suggest that you have a spatter screen since squid may burst while frying. Burst! Yipes! I did put down some foil to help keep the stove clean, but don't have a spatter screen.

Frying stuff like this is not one of my favorite kitchen activities. (I love onion bhaji, but don't make them very often, because I don't like all the frying around.) It is kind of fun that you drop the bits in the hot oil and they sink to the bottom in a fizz of bubbles, then come back to the surface to bob around for minutes more until they're done.

We ended up with two platters like this:

The calamari were really very good, and could hardly be simpler to make, especially using the frozen kind. I made some aoili to go with the squid, but I think I really preferred it with just a squeeze of lemon.

Like many fried foods like this, because of the timing and the fact you have to be in pretty close attendance for all the time they're frying, I'm not sure I'd want to make this for company. They might be alright for a starter if the rest of the meal doesn't require much attention to get it to the table.

Pappardelle with Long-Cooked Duck Sugo

Cooking Italy Assignment Pappardelle al Sugo d'Anatra — Pappardelle with Long-Cooked Duck Sugo

This is an assignment that has been hanging around since September, and I've had duck legs in the freezer waiting to be used for a while. The recipe is from Lidia's Italy (a book I don't have), by Lidia Bastianich, and comes from Maremma, in the southwest of Tuscany on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Duck legs (or a whole duck) are braised, the meat shredded, and added back to the sauce to top homemade pappardelle or other pasta.

You start the sauce by soaking some dried porcini (cèpes) in hot poultry or vegetable stock. I used the rest of my Thanksgiving turkey stock for this.

The recipe calls for 4 pounds of duck legs (5-6) or a whole duck. My four legs weighed in at 1.3 kilos, just short of 3 pounds. This amount of meat made a goodly amount of sauce, serving 4 as a main course and 6 (or even 8?) if the pasta were served as part of a proper Italian meal. If you have more duck, though, I wonder how big your skillet must be to cook them? My 4 legs fit comfortably in my largest skillet. Maybe a fifth one could have been jiggled into there, but that would make the "tumbling" pretty awkward.

While the legs are browning, make a pestata in your food processor by whizzing onion, celery, garlic, sage, parsley, and rosemary. (I was a bit surprised that there was no carrot included in this, since that seems to be very typical of Italian sauces.) Italian parsley was asked, but I forgot to buy this, so used the curly kind instead. Rosemary and sage from the garden.

When the legs are browned on both sides, you set them aside and reduce the fat in the pan to only 4 tablespoons (olive oil or duck fat or a combination). Warm this again, add the pestata, and cook till it's dry. Then put the legs back in the pan and "tumble". Add the soaked porcini and tumble some more. Then add white wine and continue tumbling. When the wine is gone, add the mushroom soaking liquid, heat to a boil, put the lid on ajar, turn the heat down, and let it simmer for at least an hour and a half. Check every 20 minutes or so and add additional stock when the liquid gets a bit low.

The house smells really good while this is simmering away. When the meat is done, I removed the legs and poured the sauce into another container where the fat could rise and be easily removed. Meanwhile, I shredded the meat back into the skillet, a messy, but fun job.

Add the defatted sauce back to the skillet and simmer for a while, while cooking the pasta. After a busy day, I didn't feel like making pasta from scratch, so I boiled up some store-bought tagliatelle. When it was drained, I put it back in its pot and tossed it with half the duck sauce.

Very toothsome, indeed, said Ed. We ate only half the sauce tonight; the rest went in the fridge for another night, probably accompanied by homemade tagliatelle. (I don't much like pappardelle anymore; it always seems too unwieldy, and the plate always looks too composed.)

This is a yummy sauce, but I wouldn't want to make this for company on the day I'm serving it. It keeps you busy in the kitchen for quite a while and there seemed to be a lot to clean up. (I also had a pot of stock simmering away, but that's just one pot and a quick clean-up.) But I think the sauce will only improve by keeping a day or two in the fridge.

Pasta e Fagioli—Pasta and Bean Soup

Cooking Italy Assignment Pasta e Fagioli—Pasta and Bean Soup, p102

Soup weather has arrived—this was the perfect meal for today. Pasta e fagioli is just want you want on a windy, cold, and snowy day.

In a very Italian fashion, you start by sautéing onions, then adding carrots and celery. I used less olive oil than Hazan asked, but more of the veggies, keeping the proportions the same but wanting the extra flavor and vitamins.

I opted not to use my precious seedless tomato sauce from the freezer, but added some strips of frozen slow-roasted tomato instead. (And, my doesn't that ziploc smell good when you open it!) I added a chunk of poitrine (a bacon-like chunk of meat and fat, including some bones) cut into three pieces, then the beans (borlotti aka cranberry beans, from a can) and meat broth.

This simmers away for a while. When we were about ready to eat, I took out some of the beans and mashed them with a potato masher, rather than putting them through a food mill. Those go back into the pot to thicken the broth along with the pasta. We couldn't find the ring-like pasta that would be traditionally used. The closest thing we could find was some fat, short macaroni things with ridges. Not perfect, perhaps, but good. While the pasta started cooking, I removed as much meat as I could from the poitrine, chopped it, and added it back to the pot.

Hazan calls for 8 ounces of pasta. When I was measuring I thought that 6 ounces looked more than enough. For me it was fine, but Ed thought the bigger amount would have been nice. To each his own. I might do this again with nastrini, De Cecco's name for small bowties. (Bowties are farfelle; small ones are often called farfellini, but not by De Cecco, who seems to have original names for many pasta shapes.) This is my current favorite pasta for soups. Using the smaller shape, it might be that a bigger amount wouldn't seem so overwhelming.

The two of us ate all of Hazan's six servings as a one-course meal. That's one can of beans each! All in all this was a very satisfying dish, certain appear on the menu here again.

Frittata with Zucchini and Basil

Cooking Italy Assignment Frittata with Zucchini and Basil, p280

This week's assignment was to make any of Hazan's frittatas. An Italian frittata is the same as a Spanish tortilla, an eggy dish in the omelet family with the "filling" cooked right in with the eggs. It's a nice way to use up leftover bits of veg or meat or even pasta. Having a zucchini in the fridge wanting to be used as well as some past-its-prime basil in the garden, I chose the one with zucchini and basil.

You start by assembling, cooking if necessary, the filling. Stir this into some well-beaten eggs, along with some flavorings. Turn this into a cast iron skillet and cook slowly until the bottom is set, but the top is still a bit liquid.

Put the pan under the grill (or in a hot oven) and cook until the top begins to brown. Voila, there's your frittata.

I've made frittatas before, never with any great success. Usually they were tasty enough, but stuck to the pan and turned out like browned scrambled eggs. Recently I bought myself a cast iron skillet, which is exactly what you need for making a frittata (among other things)—the original non-stick surface. I'm in love. My frittata popped out of the pan just like it's supposed to.

Since the recipe calls for a 10" cast iron pan and my new one is only 8" in diameter, I cut the recipe back a bit (to about 2/3), using only 3 eggs. This is a nice amount for dinner for two.

This particular frittata (zucchini and basil) we both found, taste-wise, kind of so-so as frittatas go. But I've always liked the idea of a frittata and am very pleased to find that it works so well in my new pan. Now I'm going to go dig out some of the old recipes I'd given up on.

Eggplant Sauce with Tomato and Red Chili Pepper

Cooking Italy Assignment Eggplant Sauce with Tomato and Red Chili Pepper, p160

Ed's comment about this was "Excellent!" I think he liked it. In fact, we both very much liked it very much. The first night's dinner was good, and the leftovers might even have been better.

You start by salting a mess of eggplant slices and letting them weep. This is frequently an instruction in eggplant recipes, but so little liquid comes out of eggplant when I do this, I really wonder if this step is needed.

The slices are patted dry then fried in lots of hot oil, drained, and cut into "batons."

Meanwhile you sauté some garlic in olive oil, add some parsley, tomatoes, chili pepper, and salt and simmer this for a while. I used some of the seedless tomato sauce (unflavored) that I made up during the summer. When you're about ready to serve, you stir in the eggplant slices, cooking till everything is warmed through. (Unfortunately all my pics of the served dish turned out blurry, except for the one that was flashed out of sight. :-( )

The recipe calls for spaghettini, which I used (De Cecco), although it looks huge in the photo. I served the leftovers over fusilli, and I have to say I thought that it worked even better with the chunky eggplant bits and holding onto the delicious sauce. Making the sauce ahead might even improve the flavor, making it an ideal company dish.

Our only negative comment about this dish is that it seemed awfully oily—those eggplant slices really did soak up the grease, no matter that the oil was very hot. When I do this again, I think I'll try grilling the slices with just a bit of olive oil brushed on by hand, like I do when making pizza. But I definitely will do it again, because it was DEE-licious!

A Farm Wife’s Fresh Pear Tart

Cooking Italy Assignment A Farm Wife’s Fresh Pear Tart, p589

Wow, this was a decided hit, definitely a do-again. Easy to make, good warm or cold. Yum. Start with some nice fall pears:

The peeled and chopped pears are stirred into a simple, hand-mixed batter. Since we frequently find dessert recipes too sweet, I cut back the sugar (sucre de canne) a bit, but only a bit, since several Cooking Italy folks found the tart not sweet enough. I used maybe 7/8 cup, rather than one whole cup.

The instructions say to make hollows in the batter at this point, optionally poke whole cloves into them, and fill with the hollows bits of butter. We're not clove fans here, so I omitted these, but I also (accidentally, I admit) neglected the butter-filled holes altogether and can't say that we felt it lacked anything and it was certainly that much healthier animal-fat-wise. Into the oven it went butter-less and came out delicious:

My cake pan was only 8 inches, rather than 9, so the tart might be a trifle deeper than it ought to be, but nobody complained.

Someone (I forget who, sorry) at Cooking Italy suggested adding some chopped walnuts. Very finely chopped and sprinkled on the bottom, this might be quite nice. Having disavowed the cloves, I thought a bit of ground cardamon in the batter might be nice; that's a spice that seems to go very well with pears. (Try it in pear butter sometime.) Next time ...

Chicken Fricassee with Porcini Mushrooms, White Wine, and Tomatoes

Cooking Italy Assignment Chicken Fricassee with Porcini Mushrooms, White Wine, and Tomatoes, p332

Cooking Italy has sprung back to life after quite a long vacation—hooray! This week's assignment was a chicken fricassee with nice mushrooms in a tomato-wine sauce. Nothing fancy, just nice homey food.

And it could hardly be simpler to make. Soak some dried porcini (aka cêpes). Brown your chicken parts. Deglaze the pan with some white wine. Add the soaked porcini, their soaking juice, and some chopped tomatoes. (Instead of chopped tomatoes, I used some of the simple tomato sauce I made from seeded tomatoes this summer.) Simmer away for 50 minutes or so and serve.

There's no special reason to use a whole chicken here; use the parts you prefer or have on hand. We liked the mix of light and dark meat. I thought it might have been nicer to have cut the chicken into eight parts, rather than four, though.

Strawberry Gelato

Cooking Italy Assignment Strawberry Gelato, p610

Choose your gelato. Ok, the strawberries were looking especially good at the shops, so I chose those. This is about as simple a frozen dessert as you could find. Purée the fruit in the food processor with the sugar, whip the cream slightly, combine, cool (per ice cream maker's instructions), and freeze.

I put the mixture together on Tuesday evening, expecting to freeze it for dinner on Wednesday after picking Bill up from the train station. But his train was delayed leaving the Netherlands, so he arrived here very very late and we didn't take the time to freeze it. I did this the next night, after it chilled two days in the fridge. Never mind, it was yummy.

The recipe says it serves 4. These would be very generous servings. We had the 3 largish servings shown here, plus another 3 servings, a bit smaller, served with slices of a nice cake we bought at a foire during the day.

Pesto with Ricotta

Cooking Italy Assignment Pesto with Ricotta, p178

Catch-up time. This is an assignment from May that I've finally made. A nice pesto with some fresh pasta was just the sort of light dinner we felt like.

Pesto with ricotta is just your regular sort of pasta with ricotta added. Here it is all ready to blend, basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, ricotta, and salt:

After this is smooth, you turn it into a bowl to stir in the remaining ingredients, including cheese and butter, the amount of which is reduced for the ricotta pesto. I don't recall every using butter for pesto before, but that's what Hazan asks for and she's l'expert.

After mixing, voila, it's pesto!

To go with this, I made some tagliatelle, rather than the bigger piccagge that Hazan suggests. I froze the rest of the pesto in 2-tablespoon lumps to use for a taste of summer whenever it's needed.

And I forgot to say it was good, creamier perhaps than regular pesto, but just as tasty.

Panzanella—Bread Salad

Cooking Italy Assignment Panzanella—Bread Salad, p554

Panzanella is a salad, long on tomatoes, with bread, assorted raw veggies and a tasty dressing. I'm sure there are as many variations of this are there are Italian cooks. For this assignment, I stuck pretty closely to Hazan's recipe, since she's usually a good source and I've never made this before.

The dressing starts with a base of garlic, capers, and anchovies.

These are mooshed together with a mortar and pestle or with a spoon against the side of a bowl. (You could use a food processor, blender, etc., but they seem a bit much for such a small volume.)

Once mooshed, the mixture is turned into the serving bowl and stirred together with some chopped bell pepper, plus oil and vinegar.

Now you toast some stale bread with the crusts removed and cut it into to cubes. Personally, I'm a crust person, and I wouldn't do the de-crusting again. I think the crusts would add a nice texture and it's a shame to loose all the flavor. (Although they do give a pile of munchies for the cook.) A puréed tomato is stirred into the bread cubes and left to soak for a while.

Meanwhile, more tomatoes and some cucumber are cubed. And some thin slices of onion are soaked and squeezed and soaked and drained and soaked and drained, and so on till you're reading to use them. Manhandling the onions in this way seems to soften the taste of the raw onions. Of course, if you Plan Ahea... you'll start this process before you start the rest of the salad, otherwise everything has to wait a bit on the onions.

Now the bread cubes and cut-up veggies get tossed together with the dressing and bell pepper and some freshly ground black pepper. And there you have it, a delicious summery salad.

The half recipe I made served the two of us amply, so I think Hazan's projected 4-6 servings for the full recipe is on target. (This book does seem to have problems with the servings.) As I was mixing the salad I keep thinking that some chopped basil would be a nice addition. I've noted this in my book for the next time.

Shredded Carrot Salad

Cooking Italy Assignment Shredded Carrot Salad, p549

It surprises me to find this recipe in an Italian cooking book, since I discovered shredded carrots with a simple lemon vinagrette sort of sauce in French cooking books many years ago. What's there it say about it? It's simple to make and tasty and goes with lots of meals. It can be dressed up as a proper starter or served as part of the main course, as we did tonight.

Halibut or Other Fish Steaks Sauced with White Wine and Anchovies

Cooking Italy Assignment Halibut or Other Fish Steaks Sauced with White Wine and Anchovies, p300

It's decidedly not halibut season in this part of the world, so I decided to do this with skate fillets from the freezer, reducing the cooking time somewhat because they weren't as thick as the recipe asked. The flour-and-fry technique is fairly normal for thinner fillets, but seems a bit unusual on a thick cut as specified, but why not? At any rate, the fillets worked fine. Using two fillets totaling about 300g, I made half the sauce.

The recipe is quite simple. While you're sautéing the fish, you make a sauce of lots of chopped onions, parsley, white wine, and minced anchovies. (For anchovy-phobes, these completely disappear.) Once the fish is thoroughly browned, you add the sauce to the sauté pan and simmer for a bit, basting the fish. If you've got the room, you can push the fish to around and deglaze the pan a bit with the sauce. Plop the cooked fish on the plate, top with the sauce, and you're done. With thinner fillets like I used, the sauce should be started before the fish so that the onions are suitably soft. With the thicker, longer cooking steaks, it's probably sufficient to start them in parallel.

Not the most colorful of dishes, but it was quite tasty. I'll definitely consider doing this again, especially when halibut re-appears in the markets.

Grilled Chicken alla Diavola, Roman Style

Cooking Italy Assignment Grilled Chicken alla Diavola, Roman Style, p336

Being enamored of roasting or grilling chickens that have been butterflied (aka spatchlocked), I first tried this recipe last fall, grilling it in the oven. This time, we grilled it on the bbq. I find spatchlocking a great way to treat a bird that will be grilled or roasted. For a small amount of effort there are several of advantages. The cooking time is shorter and the meat cooks more evenly, i.e., the legs and breast are done at the same time.

Hazan's description of the butterflying process seems to me to be over-complicated. Since I do this quite frequently I largely ignored her instructions. It's actually quite simple to do with a good pair of kitchen shears. You cut along one side of the backbone (I usually start from the tail end). You can use a knife, but the scissors seems easier to me. When you get to the hip joint, you kind of feel around so you can cut between the spine and the thighbone. (Of course you can cut right through whatever bone you happen upon, but this takes a lot more strength.) You can cut the backbone out entirely or you can leave it attached. I guess I'm fairly inconsistent about this; this time it stayed on. (I recently saw instructions that used the cut-out backbone to make a jus, really a bit of stock, while the chickie was roasting. If I run across this again, I'll try to remember to add a link here, since that was a good idea, I thought.)

With the backbone separated or removed, turn the chicken over, opening it out as best you can, and flatten the bird by pressing hard on the breastbone with the heel of your hand. You'll hear bones and cartilage snapping when you do this. Now you can tidy it up a bit, tuck the last wing joint behind the bird and be sure the legs are laying nice and flat.

Since my shears aren't very good with skin, I find it handy to have a small, sharp knife available for cutting any little bits that need cutting.

This recipe called for a tablespoon of black peppercorns to be crushed and spread over the skin of the bird. I put about half of this amount under the skin, directly on the breast, thigh, and leg meat. (This is a good way to get any seasoning close to the flesh. At the top of each breast half, there's a membrane that holds the skin to the meat. Gently break this and you can carefully get your fingers under the skin. Work your way down to the the leg, where you might need to break through another membrane. Distribute whatever herbs and seasonings you have as evenly as possible.) Here we are a-marinating with pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil:

After the chick marinated a good while, Ed grilled it on the barbecue.

On the right you can see the start of the flames that resulted from the oil content of the marinade. (On the left is a packet of sliced potatoes and onions, mixed with a strong lemon vinaigrette.) We didn't watch the clock, but I'd guess it took about 25 minutes to grill the chick (and the potatoes). The skin was quite burned from the flaring flame, but the flesh was delicious, tender and juicy.

This is definitely a do-again recipe, but I think I'll stick with grilling in the oven, since the oil content of the marinade is a bit difficult to control on the barbecue.

Piquant Green Sauce—Salsa Verde

Cooking Italy Assignment Piquant Green Sauce—Salsa Verde, p42

This assignment is for a general-purpose, savory sauce that's as simple to make as it could be. Put all the ingredients in the pot:

buzz, and—voila!—there's your sauce:

Hazan uses a food processor to zap the salsa, but for small amounts like this I've been using my staff mixer. The narrow beaker makes it easier to blend thoroughly and the clean-up is much simpler too. (Staff mixers probably didn't exist when this book was published.)

I made a half recipe of the salsa and served it with broiled salmon filets for two, then froze the rest for another dinner. I'd guess 6-8 is a better serving estimate that the 4-6 Hazan suggests, since we served two generously and have about the same amount left.

Even though I'm really not an anchovy fan, I included these in the salsa. Anchovies are definitely not something I want on a pizza, but they do seem to add a good flavor to sauces. This sauce was quite tasty with the salmon and we both thought that it would be good on a steak.

La Frittedda—Smothered Artichokes, Fava Beans, and Peas with Fennel, Palermo Style

Cooking Italy Assignment La Frittedda—Smothered Artichokes, Fava Beans, and Peas with Fennel, Palermo Style, p454

La frittedda is a dish of fresh, young spring vegetables. Of course one can compromise with some frozen ones, but fresh would be best. I made about a half recipe with one globe artichoke, about 700g of fava beans, frozen peas, and wild fennel, which I realized that we have growing on the South Forty (still with last year's seed stalks).

Most of the work in this recipe comes in the preparation of the vegetables. I love favas but they are a lot of trouble. Peeling a batch is fairly pleasant when you can sit outside and enjoy the sun. Not today, though. Once that's done, you get to quickly parboil and then peel the beans, one by one, so that each bean has had your undivided attention. But they sure taste good. Hazan doesn't have you parboil and peel the fava beans, and I find this recommended in most places, except when you have very young, just-picked favas. Which I didn't.

I got carried away popping off the leaves of the artichoke, and we ended up with just the artichoke bottom, which I cut into eighths pieces. First the onions are sautéed in some olive oil. Then the artichokes and fennel are added and cooked till the chokes are almost done. Most of the way through, I checked the chokes and thought they were not cooking as quickly as I'd like, so I halved my eight pieces. Lastly the prepared favas and (frozen, defrosted) peas are added and cooked briefly.

Quite a pretty spring-green dish, and very tasty, too. We didn't much like the wild fennel to eat, and it's not all that attractive, lying stringy there in the dish. However, it did lend a nice flavor to the rest of the dish. If I should happen to find some smaller artichokes before long, I might try this again.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

Cooking Italy Assignment Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi, p262

Last fall I made some leaden spinach gnocchi from a recipe I collected years and years ago, so I wasn't especially looking forward to this assignment. But, based on other folks' positive comments, I pushed ahead with this assignment, if a bit late.

These gnocchi are quite easy to make. It takes a bit of clock time, but the work isn't difficult. The night before I moved some spinach, proscuitto, and ricotta from the freezer to the fridge. Hazan recommends using leaf spinach, if frozen, but you end up chopping it yourself, so I'm not sure why you couldn't use frozen chopped spinach instead. Also, when using frozen spinach in lasagna, for example, I don't bother to cook it; frozen veggies have been parboiled and that's quite enough for something as quick-cooking as spinach. Next time I won't bother with cooking the spinach first.

After sautéing a bit of onion and proscuitto, the cooked-then-chopped spinach is added. When this has cooled, you stir in ricotta and flour, then a pair of egg yolks, a haystack of grated Parmesan, and a dab of nutmeg, resulting in a sticky dough.

This is rolled into lots of little balls, as small as you can make them. I had to flour my hands several times to keep things going.

From a whole recipe, I ended up 56 gnocchi. I froze half and used the rest for dinner. Originally I planned to use the sage-butter sauce (since half of us can't eat the Tomato Sauce with Heavy Cream as assigned), but I didn't feel like dashing through the rain to pick the sage, so I decided to do the Gratinéed Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi (p264) instead. Hazan has you do the gratin in oven, but the oven took forever and ever to heat up. I finally realized that the gas was running out. (The old stove was pretty clear when the gas was getting low; the new one does it's best to keep going, but this ends up being confusing since there was flame, but nothing getting very hot.) By the time we changed to the new cylinder, I decided to heat up the broiler, rather than waiting for the oven, so we fairly quickly had dinner after that.

And a yummy dinner it was! The individual dishes that I used were really a bit too big, but that doesn't really affect the taste. We thought this might make a nice starter, with smaller individual dishes, but it made a quite nice dinner as it was, followed by a salad. For company, the gnocchi could be prepared in the morning and left to dry a bit. It takes just a few minutes to boil them, even though they have to be done in batches (unless you have an e-normous pot so they don't get crowded).