Gnocchi di patate (Potatoes dumplings)

Let's start by the correct pronunciation: ñokki. The first consonant sounds like the nasal in the Spanish words piñata or niña. The closest sound in English is the central consonant in the word canyon
Gnocchi are a very simple dish coming from Northern Italy. In the basic version you combined boiled potatoes, flour and eggs. As in every Italian (and French) recipes, the solid ingredients are given in weight units and not in capacity units. Also, I will be using the metrical system.
In the recipes I will post in this blog I will not make the conversion between grams and cups: it would be highly inaccurate and time-consuming. When I first arrived in Wisconsin from Italy I bought myself a cheap kitchen scale at Walmart. It is definitely a must-have in a well equipped kitchen.


Her majesty the potato

Now, the main ingredient: the potatoes. There are potatoes and potatoes... Although anyone can have his/her own preferences the different content in starch implies pretty different applications.

From the cooking point of view, potatoes can be usefully classified based on of their content in starch and moisture. There are starchy potatoes (like Russet and Idaho), rich in starch and low in moisture, waxy potatoes (like red potatoes) low in starch and rich in moisture, and intermediate, all purpose potatoes (like purple and Yukon gold) halfway between the former two types.

If you are planning to boil them, to prepare a salad or a casserole, then you will go with the waxy, that will keep their consistency and shape after cooking. If you are rather preparing mashed potatoes or gnocchi, you will pick the starchy ones.

In the preparation of gnocchi a wise choice of the potatoes will make the difference between a big success or a disaster, so ... pick the right one!

Potatoes storage

A lot of people keep the potatoes in the fridge. Besides being a waste of precious storage room, it is not just the right place! Fridge is a humid environment and potatoes should be rather kept in a dry, cool and dark place, like a cabinet in your garage or basement. The same works for onions and garlic. Darkness is particularly important to avoid accumulation of a toxic alkaloid, solanin, under the skin of the potatoes.

Potatoes belong to the Solanaceae family, like tomatoes, peppers, tobacco, deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) and some ornamental plants (petunia and datura). All this plant share the presence of very toxic alkaloids. In the potato plant, solanin is normally produced only in the aerial parts, with the purpose to protect the plant from pests.

The edible part of the potatoes, the tuber, is not a root, as one could assume, but rather a modification of the stem. As a stem, it retains the capability to produce sprouts (from the so-called eyes) and chlorophyll when exposed to the light. Chlorophyll production is the reason why potatoes stored in the light become greenish. Unfortunately, light also triggers the production of solanin. To some extent, you can relay on the green color to know if your potatoes has been exposed too much to light and you may want to peel away the surface of the tuber until you can see the normal color.


POTATOES GNOCCHI

Ingredients:
300 grams of all-purpose flour
1 Kg Idaho potatoes
1 egg
1/2 cup of grounded Parmesan
1 tbs of fresh grounded nutmeg

(The last two ingredients are optional, but they are there in my grandma original recipe)

Boiled the potatoes: wash them and, without peeling, put them in cold water. My grandma rule was to boil in cold water all the vegetables growing underground and to throw in boiling water everything that grows outside.

Reach the boiling and wait until potatoes are fully cooked (when tested with a fork, it should go all the way trough without finding resistance).

Peel and mash the potatoes. Mashing potatoes is way easier when they are worm, although the peeling can be ... burning! Before mixing them with flour you have to wait until they are cooled down, though. This is a critical step since, if warm, they will continue to incorporate flour forever.

Arrange the flour and the mashed potatoes on a wood surface forming a fontana (fountain), meaning to make a circle with a hole in the middle, like a small volcano. The space in the middle will host the egg. Add the Parmesan and the nutmeg and start working it with you hands like if you were making pasta. The final dough should be homogeneous, solid but elastic, only moderately sticky. Of course you can use a food processor but it will not be as much fun. Also, the food processor tend to warm up the mixture, making it too sticky.

If you find yourself with the hands trapped in a sticky mass you will have too add more flour. Be careful: too much flower and your gnocchi will be as tough as rocks. Better to prevent: the dough can be too sticky if you started from the wrong potatoes or if you mixed them with the flour when they were still warm.

Take a small amount of the dough and roll it in you hands to make a long cylinder, about 1/2 an inch thick. Cut it in 1/2 inch pieces. Roll the pieces on the points of a fork, using your thumb. You should be delicate but firm. The final gnocco (one gnocco, many gnocchi) will have a dimple on the back and parallel strips on the front.

Store them temporarily on a floured surface until you are ready for cooking.

Bring abundant salted water to boil. Be generous with the water. As when you cook pasta, you do need a lot of water and a big pot: for 4 servings use a 12 inches high 8 inches wide aluminum pot, filled with water for 3/4. The aluminum will slow down the boiling time

As soon as the gnocchi will appear at the surface floating, they will be ready. Serve them with your favorite sauce.

Sauces for gnocchi
Traditional gnocchi would be served with a basic tomatoes sauce. My grandpa, who was from Polesine, south to Venice, used to have them with sugar and cinnamon.

Although it is not a traditional pairing, gnocchi works really great with pesto sauce. Maybe next post?

Asparagus

Asparagus officinalis is a flowering plant that can be both cultivated or wild.

The word asparagus comes from Greek and Persian aspharagos, that means sprout. In English we use the Latin-like spelling, as opposed to the Middle English sparage or, more commonly, sperage, that was shorter and easier to pronounce (in my dialect, for example, is sparz). Once again in the 1600s the word was shortened to ‘sparagus, turning in sparrowgrass by folk etymology.

Asparagus is a herbaceous perennial, with an underground net of rhizomes (modified stems) from which, in spring, new sprouts pop out. These young shoots are what we eat and, as long as you will cut them, the plant will produce new ones.

There are two main varieties of Asparagus: the white one, particularly appreciated in the north of Italy, and the green one, more common in the center-south of the country.
The color white of the first one is the result of cultivation in the absence of light, thus preventing the plant from producing chlorophyll. White asparagus are particularly appreciated in Northern Europe and they need to be peeled. This is not necessary with the green ones.

Romans Emperors were fond of asparagus and a recipe for cooking them can be found in the oldest recipe book that arrived to us, Apicius's De re coquinaria. In the XV century they became popular in France and from there they arrived in England.

Asparagus have been known since antiquity for their diuretic effect. They are rich of asparagine (an amino acid), folic acid, rutin (a flavonoid glycoside with antioxidant and capillary protective properties),fibers, manganese, and potassium.

Some of the substances present in this vegetables are eliminated through urine, giving it a peculiar smell. Proust reported that asparagus had the power of "... changer mon pot de chambre en un vase de parfum..." (Du côté de chez Swann, Gallimard, 1988). I guess a poet has the gift to see beauty everywhere.

When you buy them, the stem should be tough and flexible, not mushy. The tip should be closed and the base should not be dry. If you are planning to use them in a couple of days, put them vertical in a bowl with some water, as if they were flowers, and change the water often.

Cooking
Typically, asparagus are boiled in salted water, after cutting the last and toughest part of the stem. Cook them for no more than 10-15 minutes. They can be served as they are, with just few olive oil, salt and black pepper on their tips, or accompanied with different sauces (see hereafter).

The tips are delicate and tend to cook faster than the stem. In alternative, you may tie them up with a string and have only the bottom part submerged in the boiling water. By covering the pot with the lid you will cook the tips with steam. Actually there are specific pots for this purpose. They are made in aluminum, so that the water will boil faster, and they are very tall and narrow, so that you can accomodate the vegetables vertically: you may not necessarily want to invest money and storing space in a pot with such a limited use.

You can also cook asparagus by steaming them in a pressure cooker, putting them in the basket with one inch of water underneath. Two or three minutes from the start of the whistling will be sufficient.

Green Asparagus can be saltati in padella (pan fryed) alla parmigiana, by cooking them briefly in a frying pan with some butter and grounded parmisan.

In Alto Adige-South Tyrol boiled white asparagus are served with Salsa Bolzanina (Bozen Sauce), made by 2 finely chopped hard boiled eggs melted with 2 tbs of wine vinaigrette, 1 tbs of mustard, and 3 tbs of olive oil.

In France and Germany, boiled white asparagus are typically accompanied by Hollandaise Sauce, sort of a Mayonnaise in which butter substitutes for olive oil.

With asparagus you can also make delicious soups and risotti.

Morels and asparagus

We found them! So here a recipe.

Morels, Morchella, an unmistakable sponge-like mushroom, have a meaty, delicious taste, that reminds me of the Chanterelles (Cantarellus cibarius) I used to hunt on the Alps, back in Italy.

According to the holy cooking texts, you are not supposed to wash fresh wild mushrooms, not to spoil their bouquet. You should rather brush them delicately, to remove all the soil.
Still, I refuse to eat something with soil on it without properly washing it. Besides, the peculiar shape of morels makes particularly tricky to clean them thoroughly and any eventual residual of soil would creak unpleasantly under your teeth!

Morels with asparagus and taleggio pie
(Spugnole con tortino di asparagi e taleggio)

Ingredients for two persons
10 fresh morels
6 asparagus
polenta (pre-made organic from Trader Joe's works great)
couple of slices of Taleggio (or Gruyere if you cannot find it)
butter

Preparation
Start by cleaning the morels: cut them in halves top-bottom and double check for 'guests' who can be inside (little black bugs, typically). Rinse them carefully under running water. Let the mushrooms stay for half an hour in cold water with salt, to be sure to get rid of all the bugs.

Meanwhile, grease a frying pan with butter and roast on both sides two slices of polenta about 1/2 inch thick. The surface of the polenta should be golden and crispy.

Boil in salted water the tips of the asparagus (you may want to keep the stems for a soup) for about 10 minutes.

Melt two table spoons of salted butter in a frying pan and add the morels. Cook them for about 15 minutes, until all the water they will release is gone.

Arrange the slices of polenta in an oven pan. Put three asparagus tips on the top of each polenta's slice, cover with the cheese, and broil until the cheese starts to melt, no more than that. Sprinkle with black pepper.

Set each dish with the polenta pie and the mushrooms and serve with Pinot noir.

Asparagus soup

Last weekend we had a wonderful time at my husband family's farm.
We were hunting for morels, We were not very lucky with that but ... we brought home some delicious asparagus!
We had the smaller and more tender just boiled and dressed with olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper. Some were just too old and tough for this use and we decided to made a soup of them.

Asparagus soup
Zuppa di asparagi

Ingredients
about 20-25 asparagus
1 pt half and half
3 small shallots
2 tbs of salted butter
2 tbs of extra virgin olive oil
4 cup of water
black pepper

Preparation
Wash the asparagus and cut the last two inches of their tips. Set them aside. Chop the rest of the stems. There is no need to be too accurate here since, at some point, they will go in the food processor. Nevertheless starting from food that is homogeneous in size will help you having a final product that is evenly cooked.

In a pot melt the butter with the oil and add the chopped shallots. Let them get some color ('get blond', imbiondire), meaning they have to became softer and golden but NOT brown. Add the asparagus tips and let them flavor for 5 minutes. Take the points away with a straining ladle and set them aside.
Keep the fondo di cottura (what is left at the bottom of the pot) in the pot and add the chopped stem of the asparagus with 4 cups of water. Add salt and pepper at taste and cook 10 minutes. Put the asparagus stems with all their cooking liquid in a food processor (or use an immersion blender directly in the pot) and blend everything until smooth, adding the half and half a bit at a time.
Add back the asparagus points and cook further for 5 minutes.
Garnish with a sprinkle of black pepper and finely chopped parsley.

Next time, maybe, a morels recipe! ;-)