Daring Cooks: Gnocchi

Wow - this is exciting.  This months Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by ME!  I think a lot of people that host a challenge try to pick some kind of specialty, or a dish that they have a special version of, or at least something connected with their ethnic heritage or something.  Well not me.  I like gnocchi but I haven't actually eaten it too much and I have never made it in my life.

I chose to do a potato gnocchi as the challenge and I started with a lot of research.  Gnocchi is a very simple thing usually having only a few ingredients.  It turns out there are many theories on what makes gnocchi good or bad.  You want your potatoes dry - some people say to bake them - others say boiling is ok - and another theory even said to use old shriveled potatoes (I didn't try that last idea).  Some recipes say to use an egg to hold it together and others say the egg will make it heavy.

Well I kind of chose to focus on the recipes in this NY Time article by Mark Bittman with Mario Batali.  Even the article can not agree because in the video Mario uses an egg and he boils the potatoes, but then the recipe bakes the potatoes and does not use an egg.  I can't really tell you which way is best since I made all of mine with the egg and boiling the potato (if it is good enough for Mario - it is good enough for me).  I can tell you that I definitely don't think the egg made it too heavy.

I ended up making several different kinds of gnocchi.  The first I made was a very traditional gnocchi with a Brown butter sage sauce.  This was good but not my favorite, did like the crispy sage though.  I also had definitely not perfected the gnocchi yet and it was almost too tender and started to fall apart in the water while cooking.

The second gnocchi was the gnocchi with butternut squash that Mario makes in the video.  This was probably my favorite of the sauces I made.  Delicious sauce and loved the fried squash.  I still had a little trouble with the gnocchi falling apart to I needed to get to the bottom of that.

Well for my last gnocchi I made a spinach gnocchi and just topped it with a little olive oil and Parmesan cheese.  I think in my first two tries I was way to scared of adding too much flour since everything said too much flour would make them tough.  Well for this version I added a bit more (the recipe did say it would need more because of the moisture of
the spinach) - my test batch was still falling apart more than I would like so I added more flour and that was it - they came out perfect.  They looked great and didn't fall apart at all.  They were also not tough at all either.  They were probably still more tender than any restaurant gnocchi I have ever had.

I can say the challenge was fun for me and I hope it was fun for everyone else that participated.  As usual people are coming up with some very creative twists on this.  If you would like to check out the full challenge you can find it on the Daring Kitchen recipe archives.

Daring Cooks: Cannelloni

Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes!

The first thing Manu did in this months challenge was to set up straight on what cannelloni is and what manicotti is.  In Italy Manu had never even heard of manicotti.  Wikipedia says : “Cannelloni is often erroneously referred to as manicotti (Italian: sleeves) (English pronunciation: /ˌmænɨˈkɒtiː/), which is actually a filled Italian dinner crepe, as opposed to pre-rolled pasta.[1] While manicotti and cannelloni are sometimes used interchangeably in preparing non-traditional versions of some dishes, in traditional Italian cooking cannelloni are made with pasta and manicotti with a specialized crepe pan, and the two have particular uses. Although both terms are plural nouns in Italian, the English term is often construed as singular, particularly when used as the name of the dish.”.  So I guess this means I have probably never made or even had manicotti but I have had cannelloni.

Now that that is straight, I have made cannelloni in the past, but I made it with store bought noodles.  This challenge would give me a chance to make the whole thing from scratch.  I went for the simple "Cannelloni di carne" because that is what I knew my family would like.  The recipe had a bunch of parts but they were all easy to put together.  You have to make the filling, two sauces, and the pasta itself.  The parts were all very simple with only a few ingredients in each.  I think this is the first Italian recipe I have made that did not even require any garlic - not sure how I feel about that.

I do have a pasta machine and I think that probably does make things easier - or at least allow the pasta to be thinner.  The noodles are very thin, much thinner than a store-bought noodle.  They cook in just a minute. You would think they would be delicate being so thin but I had no issues at all working with them - they held a lot of the meat filling without tearing at all.

The results were fantastic.  I don't often make my own pasta but every time I do I think I should do it more often.  The cannelloni noodle was so thin and was almost crepe like.  The filling was just what you would from a real Italian recipe - not too fancy - just good stuff and lots of it.

Now that I have said how easy this was I must confess there was one part that made this a very difficult challenge.  Take a thin floppy long noodle and fill it as full as you can get it with meat and cheese.  Then top with a tomato sauce and on top of that put a white sauce.  It looks beautiful - right?  Now how do you take some of those out and put them on a plate and have them still look beautiful - sauce and cheese everywhere.

Thanks for the challenge Manu and thanks for sharing the family recipes.  If you would like to check out this and the other fillings she recommends you can find them on the Daring Kitchen recipe archive.

Barefoot Bloggers: Real Spaghetti and Meatballs

After my last cooking disaster it was good to see a recipe in Barefoot Bloggers this month for Spaghetti and Meatballs - a nice easy recipe that wouldn't be too easy to mess up.  The recipe actually looked pretty close to my standard spaghetti recipe.  I think the sauce is exactly the same except that my normal recipe does not use the red wine.

So does anyone else have trouble finding ground veal in supermarkets?  I do have some places I can find it but with the kid I don't always want to go running around for ingredients.  None of my standard supermarkets carry it.  I think I just need to stock up on some for the freezer since any of my meatball and meatloaf recipes call for this 1 lb ground beef to 1/2 lb ground pork to 1/2 lb ground veal.  Well I didn't manage to buy any before I made the recipe so I just used extra ground beef.  I don't think it makes a lot of difference - I think the ground veal just makes the meat a little more tender.

The recipe went off without a hitch and was delicious.  I haven't decided if I like this version better than my normal recipe without the wine - I think I would need to taste them next to each other.  I think the non-wine recipe has a "fresher" taste and the wine version is a little deeper.  Both good in their own way.  

The meatballs were very tasty.  I didn't have any seasoned bread crumbs so I just added a little oregano and thyme for seasoning.  My only complaint is that I don't think the recipe made the proper ratio of meatballs to sauce.  I got thirteen good size meatballs and probably only enough sauce for 4-5 servings of spaghetti.  That is OK though - I think I will just put together a nice meatball hoagie for lunch tomorrow.

Thanks to Rebecca at Ezra Pound Cake for this recipe.    I think I might need to try out her recipe for Huli-Huli chicken - it looks mighty good in her picture.

Real Meatballs and Spaghetti

(Source: Barefoot Contessa Family Style, page 103)

Serves 6

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

• 1/2 pound ground veal
  
• 1/2 pound ground pork
  
• 1 pound ground beef
  
• 1 cup fresh white bread crumbs (4 slices, crusts removed)
  
• 1/4 cup seasoned dry bread crumbs
  
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  
• 1 extra-large egg, beaten
  
• Vegetable oil
  
• Olive oil
  

For the sauce:

• 1 tablespoon good olive oil
  
• 1 cup chopped yellow onion (1 onion)
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
  
• 1/2 cup good red wine, such as Chianti
  
• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, or plum tomatoes in puree, chopped
  
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
  
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  

For serving:

• 1 1/2 pounds spaghetti, cooked according to package directions
  
• Freshly grated Parmesan
  

Directions:

1. Place the ground meats, both bread crumbs, parsley, Parmesan, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg, and 3/4 cup warm water in a bowl. Combine very lightly with a fork. Using your hands, lightly form the mixture into 2-inch meatballs. You will have 14 to 16 meatballs.
   
2. Pour equal amounts of vegetable oil and olive oil into a large (12-inch) skillet to a depth of 1/4-inch. Heat the oil. Very carefully, in batches, place the meatballs in the oil and brown them well on all sides over medium-low heat, turning carefully with a spatula or a fork. This should take about 10 minutes for each batch. Don't crowd the meatballs. Remove the meatballs to a plate covered with paper towels. Discard the oil but don't clean the pan.
   
3. For the sauce, heat the olive oil in the same pan. Add the onion and saute over medium heat until translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the wine and cook on high heat, scraping up all the brown bits in the pan, until almost all the liquid evaporates, about 3 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, parsley, salt, and pepper.
   
4. Return the meatballs to the sauce, cover, and simmer on the lowest heat for 25 to 30 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through. Serve hot on cooked spaghetti and pass the grated Parmesan.