dinner – My Blog

Gnocchi with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

There’s not a lot to say about this recipe other than that whenever we have gnocchi in the freezer, this is usually the sauce we pair it with. From start to finish, this sauce is ready in about 10 minutes. We’ve made it countless times for ourselves, and several times for company. One time, we even had someone inform us that they could drink the sauce straight; so if you want a little insight into how good this recipe is, think about that. But, please, just think about it.

If you’re cooking this for more than just yourself, resist the temptation to make more than one batch of this recipe at a time. Once you’ve got your water boiling and your pan hot enough, you’ll be able to knock out all the servings super quick, I promise. Plus, who wants to count gnocchi individually for a large group of people and extract them from a pan filled with sauce? That’s just annoying. And portioning a sauce this good by eyeballing? Forget it. That just leads to animosity and possible passive aggressive behavior if someone gets less sauce than someone else. It’s a great way to lose friends.

Don’t do it.

Side note: if you’re serving your gnocchi with some kind of protein (like seared chicken breast, for instance) we highly recommend that you begin the cooking process by deglazing with the leftover drippings in the pan. The sauce is already pretty deep in flavor, but this little step just pushes it over the edge. You’re also welcome to add a little bit of chicken broth, or even the leftover water from boiling the gnocchi, to the sauce to lengthen it out if it starts to get too thick. If you’re purposefully making this vegetarian and you wanna use a stock, I’d swap out chicken stock for a hearty mushroom stock if you have it; go full-on umami bomb, you know you want to.

Gnocchi with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce:

¼ cup dry cooking sherry
¼ cup whipping cream
1 oz. gorgonzola, creamy preferred, but pre-crumbled works just fine
Leftover gnocchi water or broth of choice, as needed
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
200 g of fresh or frozen Everyday Gnocchi

Bring water to a boil in a pot large enough to hold all your gnocchi. Heat a medium sized skillet to medium heat and keep them on standby until all your ingredients are ready to be used rapidly in succession. The water should be a rolling boil (especially if you’re using frozen gnocchi) and the pan should be able to sizzle away a little bit of water instantly. If you’ve seared off protein for this meal in advance in your skillet, please please please do not clean it before making the sauce. Use all that goodness for your gnocchi.

When you’re good to go, throw your gnocchi into the boiling water. If you’re using freshly made gnocchi, they should be done cooking in a couple of minutes. If you’re using frozen, they’ll take a bit longer, maybe five or so. Just keep an eye on your gnocchs; a tell-tale sign that they’re done is when they float to the surface of the water. Don’t freak out if they’re done before it’s time to transfer them to your skillet. Gnocchi are pretty forgiving, so you can let them hang out in the water for a bit longer until you’re ready for them. At the same moment when you start boiling your gnocchs, add the sherry to your pre-heated skillet. The sherry should reduce by half-ish in 10-15 seconds, and if you’re deglazing, be sure to scrape off all the tasty bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the cream and gorgonzola to the skillet and move them around to push the sherry and cream together, as well as encourage the cheese to melt.

The sauce will reduce a little and darken slightly, and once the cheese is melted, give it a little taste to check for salt. It shouldn’t need much, if at all, since the cheese is salty on it’s own, but it’s good to check. Your gnocchi should be ready around this time. Fish them out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and add them to your sauce. Depending on how much your sauce has reduced, you might want to add a little bit of gnocchi water or broth to lengthen out your sauce because the addition of all this starch is going to make your sauce seize up. Toss the gnocchi in the sauce and weigh in to see what it needs for your own desired texture. We like our sauce to cling to the gnocchi, but we also like to have some leftover sauce in the pan since it thickens as it cools. Plus, it’s nice to have a little extra sauce in your bowl to mop up while you’re eating. Once you’ve got your sauce where you want it, remove the skillet from the heat and grind some black pepper over your gnocchi. We are, ah, liberal with our pepper; we like the floral quality it adds to the dish, but you ought to make that call for yourself. Serve in a bowl with protein or just on it’s own; you’re done!

Serves one. Maybe.

September 4, 2017

Everyday Gnocchi

Gnocchi is one of those recipes that mystifies me when I find out that someone thinks that it’s difficult to make, because not only is it really easy (and cheap) to produce, it’s also easy to produce a lot of it; and that’s exactly what we do. It’s common for me to whip out about four batches at a time of this recipe (a standard mixer should be able to hold two at once) then freeze the lot on a sheet tray and store these little guys in a large plastic bag. It’s such a satisfying meal for us, and the knowledge that we can put in minimal effort for it makes it all the more alluring after a long day of work where you just want something delicious and quick. Just pick your sauce, pop these kids out of the freezer and boil ’em in water till they float, and you’re set.

Side note: yes, the gnocchi in this recipe are pressed onto a gnocchi board. Do you need to do that? No, no you don’t. Do grooves hold more sauce? Yeah, they do. Will your dinner be any less delicious if your gnocchs are just little grooveless potato lumps that you cut off from your giant slab of dough? Nope, it’ll be awesome.

Did we press these onto a groove board just for this post so our gnocchi will look awesome even though we almost never do it in real life?

You bet your ass we did.

Everyday Gnocchi:

1 cup of cooked skinless russet potato flesh, thoroughly mashed with as few clumps as possible.
- Side note: When I do big batches of gnocchi, I will often add my cooked potato to a food processor and blend it until it’s very smooth, along with the olive oil. This changes the texture of the potato dramatically, making it much smoother (almost like a potato cake batter, and makes a much stickier dough after you add the flour to it. I’d recommend doing this, but if you’re tired and just wanna mash the potatoes by hand, your gnocchi won’t be any less delicious.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large egg
a big three-finger pinch of good salt
2 cups flour

Mix the mashed potato, egg, olive oil, and salt until thoroughly combined. Add the flour all at once and mix (your hands are the best tool for this if you don’t have a mixer) until all the flour is integrated. Continue to knead the dough until it becomes firmer and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. The dough should be smooth, not unlike bread dough but much less springy. If you’re using a mixer, you’ll need to use the paddle at first to blend the flour into the wet ingredients, then switch to the dough hook once the it all begins to come together. Knead it for a minute or two until it becomes a tight dough. Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes in a bowl with a cloth over it before proceeding to shaping.

Transfer the rested dough to a lightly floured table or counter and begin to roll it into a long snake-like shape; it should be a little less than an inch in circumference when you’re finished. The dough will be quite tough and glutinous, so I’ve found that letting gravity stretch it a bit by pulling it and letting it hang in the air (as well as giving a few good thwacks on the table) works quite well to elongate it. Once you’ve got it rolled, take a knife or dough cutter and cut the dough into little nubs. The ideal size of a single gnocch for us is about the size of your thumb pad, so when you’re done, your table might look like it’s covered in a bunch of little floury thumbs (not to be grotesque, but hey, it’s an image you won’t forget).

Your gnocchi are ready. They’re good to boil in the moment, or just place them on a sheet tray lined with baking parchment and freeze them for later. They keep for…well, we don’t actually know how long they really keep for; we’ve never let them sit around for too long. Oh, well…

Optional: After cutting the dough, you’re welcome to press your little gnocs onto a gnocchi board to get their groove on. Simply take a gnocch and press it with your thumb onto a floured board, almost like a thumb print cookie, then remove it and fold it into itself so it returns it’s round shape once again with the grooves facing outward (duh). I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a tedious process, but they do look lovely when they’re finished and they really do hold more sauce. I’d recommend this method if you’re tossing them in a tomato sauce.

Yields about 65-70 gnocchi, roughly 4 servings.

September 2, 2017

Braised Pork in Lazy Cherry Ancho Mole

I’m going to be completely honest here; I’m not the biggest fan of cherries.

It’s not that I have anything against them, they’re just not really my steeze. But this blog is supposed to be a challenge, and that means transforming whatever is in season, whether I like it or not, into something unique and delicious.

Doing research for cherry flavor profiles ended up giving us the key for what we would do with them. While cherries aren’t toward the top of my list, there are a multitude of flavors that I do love that have an affinity for them: chocolate, nuts, coffee, dried fruit or chiles, vanilla, and other spices like cinnamon to name a few. I had trouble picking a direction until I realized that I didn’t have to, after browsing through a Mark Miller cookbook. There’s already something out there that uses most of these things and that I was certain would welcome the presence of cherries: mole.

Sometimes containing upwards of 60 ingredients and often demanding an entire day to make, mole is definitely an undertaking. While all the work is certainly worth it, sometimes I’m just not up to it. Sometimes I just feel like being lazy while something braises in the oven for hours while I troll my way through an RPG or a good book. I’ve made so many damn lazy moles in my day, and while they aren’t as complex as they could be, I still find that they hit the spot; plus they’re really fun to make and easy to experiment with. Never under-estimate the amount of joy I can derive from dumping a bunch of shit in a food processor, blending it together, and seeing what happens. I certainly had a lot of fun fooling around with this recipe.

Lazy Cherry Ancho Mole:

1½ ounces ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed
1 pound of fresh dark cherries (we like Bings), pitted and halved
½ small onion, roughly chopped
1 cup of brewed strong coffee, hot
2 chipotles in adobo sauce
¼ cup whole almonds, toasted
1 ounce chocolate (over 60%, please, none of that milk chocolate nonsense), finely chopped
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon of cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon of allspice
A pinch of clove
A few grates of fresh nutmeg

Rehydrate the chiles by submerging them in water and microwaving for 2–3 minutes. They should be soft and have changed in color, becoming more red. Remove from the water and set aside. Discard the water.

In a food processor, combine all of the ingredients for the mole except for the coffee and the vinegar. Pulse repeatedly, scraping the sides until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it. Combine the coffee and vinegar together and pour through the top of the food processor while the blade is running. The mole should loosen up and blend until completely smooth. The quick mole is ready to use, but can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week before using.

Braised Pork in Lazy Cherry Ancho Mole:

4 pounds lean pork shoulder, cut into 2-3 inch cubes
1 batch of Lazy Cherry Ancho Mole

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a casserole dish (or dutch oven), pour in the mole and place the pieces of pork on top. If using a dutch oven, simply place all the pork inside and give it a quick stir. Cover in aluminum foil or lid and braise for about 3 hours or until the meat becomes tender and falls apart. After braising, remove the meat from the mole, allowing it to rest and be shredded later. Remove the excess fat and, if you like, use an immersion blender to make sure the mole has a really smooth texture.

Shred the meat with forks and serve after cooling with sauce on the side. Accompaniments can include corn tortillas, rice and beans, or just eat it out of the pan over the stove.

June 26, 2016

Tag: dinner