Genuine Food
Yesterday I was looking for something on the NPR website when I saw their list of the best cookbooks of 2012. The article is called “Recipe Rebellion: A Year of Contrarian Cookbooks.” Ok, whatever, so I started reading through their choices and notice the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. I’m familiar with the blog, though I don’t follow it. But anyway, that’s not what caught my eye. When I read this, I think that my eyes crossed:
At the heart of Smitten Kitchen‘s success (both as book and blog) is a paradox: Deb Perelman is fussy about making good things simply. Be careful to get the right consistency in the dough, but don’t bother making ridges on the gnocchi.
Wow. Really?
I’m all about the advancement of food and making things easier. But the ridges are gnochhi aren’t there for the aesthetics. Ridges on gnocchi are there to hold the sauce, which is the flavor of a gnocchi dish. Shortcuts only work when they provide you with an easier way to maintain the same quality and the same result. This is just laziness. If you’re going to take the time to make a gnocchi dough, roll it out, and cut it up, then take the extra few minutes and put deep ridges in your gnocchi by using the back of a fork or a grater, as well as a groove from your thumb.
There’s a reason why pasta comes in hundreds of shapes – the shapes match certain sauces. To paraphrase Marcel Hazan, you can make perfect pasta and an excellent sauce, but if the two don’t match, what’s the point? It’s no good. Think about the shape, form, and texture of the pasta when considering the sauce. Thin sauces work with thin pastas. Thicker sauces work with thicker pastas. Chunky sauces or meat sauces work with pastas that have hollow tubes or shells to hold it.
Gnocchi are made with flour and potato (sometimes cheese, but Smitten Kitchen is using the more common potato version). They are pudgy little balls of dough. They pair well with a pesto sauce, but without the ridges, you will have a plate of dough balls sitting in a pool of pesto. I don’t know, I think that if you wanted any sauce, you’d have to take your fork and try to slide the gnocchi around, get it coated, and deliver it to your mouth before the sauce slid off. The ridges catch the sauce.
I like foodie blogs, but I’m rarely moved to take their advice or try any of their recipes. It’s more of a nosy thing, I want to see what they are up to, or maybe I want ideas. But when I want to learn about food, to learn about cooking, or to try new recipes, I look to someone who actually knows more than I do. That’s not always a professional!
I’ve been following Mimmo (Domenico) Corcione on YouTube for a year or so. Look, he’s not a professional chef, he’s just an Italian pensioner who is really, really passionate about food. There is nothing tidy about his kitchen and he’s definitely not obsessed with catching the perfect angle of the food so he can post the pictures on Instagram. He’s pretty sloppy. But oh, he has character. And his dishes look so delicious. Mimmo’s wife films him cooking in their tiny home kitchen and he’s periodically interrupted by the ringing of church bells. His mustache is distracting. But he cooks home style food from different regions of Italy. I don’t think that you need to speak Italian to understand the recipes because they are so simple, for the most part. Here’s his most recent video on how to make Risotto with Castelmagno cheese.
Castelmagno cheese is from Cuneo, which is in the Piemonte region. It’s semi hard, made from cow’s milk, and I love the way that Mimmo brings your attention to appreciate the texture of the cheese. Smitten Kitchen. Puh.
I don’t have the Smitten Kitchen book, but I searched her blog for a gnocchi recipe and I found this entry, where she frets for five paragraphs about not using a ricer for the potatoes. (I personally use a ricer, but it’s not a big deal. You can microwave the potatoes and mash them with a fork. It’s fine. It’s all good.)
If you want to try a really good gnocchi dish, try one of Mimmo’s. He’s got a few gnocchi videos. I like this one because he also shows you how to make spinach gnocchi (drain the spinach really well!). Notice that he uses a grater and his thumb to make the ridges. No big deal, as long as there are ridges and a thumb groove! Enjoy the captions during the video.
Yes. The suggestion that gnocchi should not have ridges moves me. Maybe I’m as passionate as Mimmo when it comes to food? That would be a complement.
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