Potato Gnocchi with Simple Tomato Sauce

  

Todd, who is The Daring Kitchen’s AWESOME webmaster and an amazing cook, is our September Daring Cooks’ host! Todd challenged us to make light and fluffy potato Gnocchi and encouraged us to flavor the lil pillows of goodness and go wild with a sauce to top them with!

I never thought I’d make homemade potato gnocchi. Made properly, gnocchi are soft and pillowy, light as air. But I’d eaten enough gummy, heavy, dense, leaden gnocchi in restaurants to know how bad gnocchi can be.

I’d also heard — from cooking shows, food magazines, even Mario Batali — that homemade gnocchi was not for the faint of heart. Choose the right potatoes! Don’t add to much flour! Don’t overhandle the dough! I figured this was something best left to Italian nonnas.

And then Daring Cooks came and threw down the challenge. Game on.

It turns out gnocchi aren’t all that hard to make. It might have been beginner’s luck. Or that the recipe provided by this month’s Daring Cooks’ host was foolproof.

In any case, the gnocchi turned out light and pillowy. I topped them with a simple, homemade tomato sauce and thinly sliced mozzarella, then threw the mixture under a broiler. I’m no Italian grandma, but I’m pretty sure the word “delizioso” escaped my lips when I took my first bite.

Bake two starchy potatoes until tender, then scoop out the flesh.

Pass through a ricer or food mill.

Place the potatoes on a floured surface. Add flour and egg.

Gently knead the flour and egg into the potato until a dough just comes together.

Take part of the dough and roll it into a 1/2 inch thick rope.

Cut the rope into small pieces. Score the gnocchi with a fork or gnocchi board if you have one.

Put the gnocchi on a parchment-lined baking sheet while you prepare the rest of the gnocchi.

Place a few gnocchi at a time into boiling water. When they're cooked, they'll rise to the top (give them an extra minute after the come to the top).

Remove gnocchi from the water and place in a bowl until all the gnocchi are cooked.

Now the sauce, which is quick, easy and tasty. Place unpeeled, whole tomatoes in a blender or food processor.

Puree until they reach a consistency you like.

Heat olive oil. Add garlic and cook until light golden brown.

Add pureed tomatoes, salt and sugar. I still have some basil growing in my backyard, so I added a few basil leaves too. Simmer until flavors meld and sauce thickens slightly.

Once the sauce is ready and the gnocchi are cooked, place some gnocchi in an individual serving bowl. Top with sauce.

And mozzarella cheese.

Pop under the broiler for a minute or two until the cheese melts.

Enjoy!

Potato Gnocchi with Simple Tomato Sauce

Potato Gnocchi:

Recipe from A Cooking Dad

1½ pounds starchy potatoes (Russet or Idaho work well)
Salt

Pepper
½ to ¾ cup all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 large egg (optional)

1.    Heat the oven to 400°F and bake potatoes until tender, about an hour (mine took 1 1/2 hours to get tender). You can also boil the potatoes with their skins on. When potatoes are cooked split the potatoes open to allow steam to escape. When potatoes are cool enough to handle, scoop out their flesh.

2.    Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

3.    Pass the potatoes through a ricer or food mill, on a medium setting. If you do not have a ricer or mill you can use a masher but try not to “work” the potatoes too much as this will cause the gnocchi to be tougher.

4.    Place the potatoes on a well-floured surface and form a well in the potatoes. Put ¼ cup flour and the egg (if using) in the potatoes. Gently knead the potato, adding the additional flour if needed, just until the dough comes together.

5.    Pinch off a small piece of the dough and try cooking it in the boiling water to see if it holds together. If it does not add a little more flour and try again.

6.    Roll some of the dough into a ½ inch thick rope, then cut the rope into ½ inch pieces.

7.    Score each piece with a fork or gnocchi board.

8.    Put the pieces onto a parchment lined baking sheet until ready to cook.

9.    Add the gnocchi to the boiling water in small batches. After they rise to the surface let them cook another 60 seconds and remove them with a slotted spoon.

Serves 3

Quick Pomodoro Sauce:

Recipe slightly adapted from Bon Appetit

1 28 ounce can whole peeled tomatoes

1/2 cup olive oil (This was way too much. Next time I will only use 1/4 cup.)

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1/4 tsp sugar

Kosher salt

Fresh basil leaves (optional)

1.    Pulse tomatoes with juices in a blender or food processor to form a coarse puree.

2.    Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring often, until beginning to brown, about 2 minutes.

3.    Add tomato puree and sugar and basil (if using). Season with salt and basil. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer gently until sauce is slightly thickened, 10 to 15 minutes.

Makes 3 cups.

Shrimp Biryani

Grace, one of our talented non-blogging Daring Kitchen members, was our Daring Cooks' August hostess who shared with us some of her family's tried and true Bengali Biryani recipes -- all of them delicious and all of them prepared fresh from our own kitchens!

I've said it before. Rice strikes the fear of God in me. I know the formula: one part rice to two parts water. But I've had enough undercooked and overcooked rice (not to mention two destroyed rice cookers) to know that that formula is by no means foolproof. 

So you can imagine my apprehension when I saw that this month's Daring Cooks' Challenge was biryani. I grew up eating biryani. It's an Indian dish of rice, layered with a tasty meat or vegetable mixture, strewn with fried onions and potatoes.

It's a special occasion dish. It takes time. And effort. And skill. Because you don't just cook everything and layer it. No. You cook the rice partway through. Then you layer it with your meat or veggies. Then you cover it tightly and steam it until the rice is just cooked through and the flavors of the curry permeate the entire dish.

Done right it's a sight to behold and a pleasure to eat. Done wrong, it's a travesty. 

Due to my (aforementioned) fear of rice, I'd never attempted biryani. Good thing Daring Cooks is around to kick my butt.

As expected, the most difficult part — for me — was the rice. The recipe called for the rice to be boiled until it was three-quarters of the way cooked. What? How are you supposed to judge that? Not to mention, I'd mistakenly thought I had basmati rice in my pantry. I was wrong. I substituted a different long grain rice. But that meant I couldn't even fall back on the recipe for guidance on cooking time.

In the end, the biryani was a bit of a miss, but mostly a hit. In an effort not to undercook the rice, I steamed the final, layered mixture for too long. That left me with a hard, dry layer of rice on the bottom and part way up the sides of my pan. But when we scooped around the hardened crust, what remained was a flavorful mixture of tangy, spicy shrimp, mixed with fragrant rice and bits of fried onion and potato scattered throughout.

Marinate shrimp in turmeric, chili powder, ginger garlic paste and lemon juice. Refrigerate for a few hours or up to overnight.

Soak rice in cold water .

And start heating the water for cooking the rice. Adding salt, bay leaf, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon to the boiling water results in wonderfully fragrant rice.

Now prepare the shrimp masala. Start by sauteeing cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and bay leaf in hot oil until fragrant.

Add onions and cook down until deep golden brown. Add ginger garlic paste and saute for a minute.

Add tomatoes and cook until completely cooked down and disintegrated. Mix in salt, chili powder and turmeric.

Add shrimp and saute until just cooked through. Sprinkle in lemon juice. Turn off heat and set aside.

Prepare the garnishes. Start by cooking sliced onion in oil until crisp and golden brown.

In the same oil, cook potatoes until crisp and golden brown.

Drain soaked rice.

Slowly add rice to boiling water.

Boil for about 7 minutes, until about 3/4 cooked. Drain and remove whole spices.

Now it's time to layer the biryani! Spread a bit of oil on the bottom of a large pot. Add 1/3 of the rice and spread over the bottom of the pot.

Top with half of the shrimp mixture. If you have some extra fried onion and potatoes, sprinkle a bit of those on top of the shrimp. Repeat with another 1/3 of the rice, then the remaining shrimp, then the remaining rice. Sprinkle onion and potato garnish over top.

Cover the pot tightly with aluminum foil. Then place a cover on top. Steam over medium-low flame for about 30 minutes. It's best to put a flat pan on top of the flame, then put the pot on top of that. (I didn't do that and ended up with a hard bottom crust of rice.)

Remove cover and aluminum foil and behold!

Dig in carefully, straight through to the bottom and admire your carefully layered biryani.

Enjoy!

Shrimp Biryani

Adapted from Kitchen Secrets and Snippets 

Shrimp Marinade:

1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 tsp ginger garlic paste

1 tsp red chilli powder (or to taste)

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp lemon juice

Shrimp Masala:

1 1-inch piece cinnamon stick

2 cardamom pods

2 whole cloves

1 bay leaf

3 Tbsp canola oil

2 onions, chopped

1 tsp ginger garlic paste

2 tomatoes, chopped

1/2 tsp red chili powder

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp salt

marinated shrimp

1 tsp lemon juice

Rice:

2 1/2 cups long grain rice

1 tsp oil

1 tsp salt

2 cloves

2 cardamom pods

1 1-inch piece cinnamon stick

1 bay leaf

Garnishes:

1 onion, sliced thin

1 potato, sliced into thin rectangles

Marinate shrimp:

1.    Marinate shrimp with ginger garlic paste, chili powder, turmeric and lemon juice for a few hours or up to overnight.

Prepare the shrimp masala:

1.    Heat oil in a saute pan. Add the cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and fry for a few minutes until fragrant.

2.    Add the onion and cook until they are dark golden brown.

3.    Add ginger garlic paste and saute well.

4.    Add tomatoes and cook down until all of the moisture is gone and the tomatoes have disintegrated.

5.    Add the turmeric, chili powder and salt.

6.    Add the shrimp and saute until the shrimp are just cooked through. Add the lemon juice and mix.

7.    Turn off the heat and set aside.

Prepare the rice:

1.    Soak the rice in a bowl filled with plenty of cold water for 30 minutes.

2.    Fill a large pot 3/4 full with water. Add oil, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, bay leaf and salt. Bring to a boil.

3.    Drain rice, then add it slowly to the boiling water. Cook for about 7 minutes, until it is 3/4 cooked.

4.    Drain the rice. Remove the whole spices.

Garnishes:

1.    Shallow- or deep-fry onion until golden brown and crispy. Remove to a paper-towel covered plate. Sprinkle with salt.

2.    Repeat for potato.

Layer and steam biryani:

1.    Take a large (preferably nonstick) pot. Spread a tiny bit of oil on the bottom. Add 1/3 of the rice and spread it evening across the bottom of the pot.

2.    Top with half of the shrimp and tomato/onion mixture. If you have enough fried onions and potatoes, you can scatter a bit of those on top of the shrimp.

3.    Top with another layer of rice and then shrimp. Then top with the final layer of rice.

4.    Sprinkle the remaining fried onions and potatoes on top.

5.    Cover the top of the pot with a piece of aluminum foil. Tightly seal the edges so that no steam escapes. Put a cover on top of the foil.

6.    Place a flat pan on top of the stove, then put your pot on top of the pan (this helps prevent the rice from crisping).

7.    Heat over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes.

  

Serves 6

Gyro Meatballs

The June Daring Cooks’ challenge sure kept us rolling – meatballs, that is! Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from TheCrafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

When I was growing up, my town had an indoor flea market. On Saturdays and Sundays, the market would fill with vendors selling everything from live goldfish to scarves, stickers, jewelry and cassette tapes. I loved walking through the market, seeing how far I could stretch the few dollars I'd earned from mowing the lawn or babysitting my little sister.

The back of the market was where the food vendors set up. Decades later, I still remember the mouthwatering smells coming from the Greek stall. It was the gyros, in particular, that I ordered time after time. I loved the combination of fragrant, spit roasted meat, sliced thin and tossed onto a pillowy pita, topped with lettuce, tomato, onions, and garlicky tzatziki. That's the flavor I tried to recreate for this months' Daring Cooks' Challenge, which asked us to create an international meatball. 

I searched online for a gyro recipe, to see what spices give gyros their distinctive flavor. The recipe I found called for Greek seasoning, which I didn't have. According to a note in the recipe, Greek seasoning is a combination of "coarse flake salt, granulated garlic powder, Tellicherry black pepper, onion powder, Greek fancy oregano and powdered lemon peel." I pulled together most of those ingredients and substituted as best I could for things I didn't have. 

The resulting meatballs were good. They were moist and flavorful and satisfying wrapped in naan and topped with the traditional gyro accompaniments. But they didn't quite capture the flavor I was looking for. That indoor flea market shut its doors years ago. So I guess I'll have to keep searching for a gyro that lives up to the one in my memories.

Finely chop onion in food processor.

Add seasonings.

Pulse until onions and seasonings are well combined.

Using your hands, combine onion mixture with ground beef.

Roll into golf ball sized meatballs.

Working in batches, cook meatballs in skillet until browned on all sides, but not cooked through.

When browned, transfer meatballs to a baking sheet.

Bake until meatballs are cooked through.

Serve on pita bread or naan, with tzaziki, lettuce, tomato and onion.

Gyro Meatballs

Adapted from recipes by Kalyn’s Kitchen and allrecipes.com

1 small onion, cut into chunks

1 pound ground beef (or a combination of beef and lamb)

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp dried marjoram

1 tsp ground dried rosemary

1 tsp ground dried thyme

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 Tbsp Greek seasoning (or use a combination of garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, dried Greek oregano and powdered lemon peel)

For serving: soft pita or naan, tzaziki, lettuce, tomato, onion

1.    Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.    Put onion in food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add all seasonings to onion. Pulse until onion and seasonings are well blended.

3.    Place the ground beef into a large bowl. Add the onion mixture. Mix together with your hands until well combined. Roll into golf ball size meatballs.

4.    Heat canola oil in a large frying pan. Working in batches, cook meatballs until browned on all sides, but not cooked through. Transfer meatballs to a sheet pan.

5.    When all the meatballs are browned, place the sheet pan in the oven. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through but still moist.

6.    To serve, put meatballs on pita bread. Top with tzaziki, lettuce, tomato and onion.

Makes about 20 meatballs.

Ballotine of Chicken

For the April Daring Cooks Challenge, Lisa from Parsley,Sage and Sweet has challenged us to debone a whole chicken, using this video by Jacques Pepin as our guide; then stuff it, tie it and roast it, to create a Chicken Ballotine.

I'm a list maker. I have a to do list, of course. And a list of recipes to try, restaurants to sample, books to read, clothes to buy, vacations to take, things to pack, and gifts to give. You get the idea. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed I calm myself down by making a list of lists I need to make. Yes, really.

So maybe it's no surprise that I have a list of cooking techniques to master. Or at least try.

That list looks something like this:

• Break down a whole chicken into 8 pieces
• Filet a fish
• Make a tender pie crust
• Make mayonnaise from scratch
• Make a loaf of bread
• Debone a chicken

So I was excited when I read this month's Daring Cook's challenge -- deboning, stuffing, tying and roasting a whole chicken! If you're not a list maker, you may not understand. But there is something immensely satisfying about crossing something off a to do list.

Most Daring Cook's Challenges involve one or more recipes and then photos illustrating the technique. But this one took more than photos. It required a video. And not just any video. A video featuring cooking legend Jacques Pepin. (If you're interested in watching the video, you can view it here.)

He made it look so easy. I watched the video a couple of times and felt ready to go. I gathered my knives, cutting board and kitchen towels. I had my laptop, video cued up, at the ready. And off I went.

It was a bit of a mess. I had to keep returning to the video for guidance and stopping to take pictures — not an easy task when you're working with raw chicken. I washed and dried my hands over and over so I could pick up my camera and hit rewind on my laptop without contaminating the entire kitchen.

At one point in the video Jacques looks up at the camera and says (with a straight face!) "It should not take you much more than a minute to bone out a chicken." Maybe if you're a classically trained French chef who regularly cooked alongside Julia Child. It probably took me closer to 45.

It wasn't pretty. And it wasn't as easy as Jacques made it look. There were a few little bones that didn't want to leave their cozy, chicken home. At these points, I admit, Jacques' finesse and technique gave way to my brute force. But in the end, the chicken was deboned. And I was able to pick up my pencil and do this:

• Debone a chicken

I started with this whole chicken. 

First, I cut off the wings and what I believed fervently hoped to be the wish bone (it wasn't).

I put the chicken breast-side down, and cut a slit down the back.

Now it was time for the main event, pulling out the carcass. Doing that, according to Jacques, barely involved the knife. In fact, the knife would only be used to cut through four joints — the two shoulder joints and the two hip joints. And you don't need a lot of force, either. When you find that sweet spot, the knife slides right into the joint and separates it away. Once the joints are dealt with, it's more a matter of peeling the meat off the carcass than cutting anything away. 

Here's what it looked like once the carcass was out.

The hardest part was probably removing the bone from the leg and thigh. Let's just say it involved a lot of scraping. It wasn't pretty. Not while I was doing it. Or, really, even once I was finished. I'll spare you that picture and just show you what the chicken looked like when all the bones were out.

The bones!

Finally, it was time to stuff the bird. The stuffing was a simple mixture of spinach, garlic, cheese, and cubed bread. I spread the stuffing over the chicken and down into the leg/thigh area.

Then rolled the chicken up, slightly overlapping the sides so the stuffing couldn't escape.

All tied up with kitchen string.

Glazed with melted butter, salt and pepper. Then into the oven she went.

Only to emerge an hour later, beautifully golden and perfectly cooked.

Sliced. And ready to serve.

Ballotine of Chicken

1 whole chicken (about 3-3/4 pounds), boned
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Spinach, Cheese, and Bread Stuffing (see recipe below)

Sauce:

1/3 cup water
1/2 cup dry red
1 celery stalk, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 small onion, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 tsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1 Tbsp dark soy sauce
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1.    Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2.    Lay the chicken skin side down on the work surface and sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Spread the cool spinach, bread and cheese mixture evenly over the chicken, stuffing the legs too.

3.    Roll the chicken up, tie it with kitchen string, and place it in a roasting pan.

4.    Roast the ballotine for about 1 hour or until the temperature is 160-165 degrees F in the center of the ballotine. Lift it from the pan and place it on a platter.

For the sauce:

5.    Skim off and discard most of the fat from the drippings in the pan. Add the water and wine to the drippings to deglaze the pan, and heat over medium heat, stirring to loosen and melt the solidified juices.

6.    Strain the juices into a saucepan. Add the celery, onion, and carrot and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and boil gently for 5 minutes. Stir in the dissolved cornstarch and soy sauce and bring the mixture back to a boil, stirring, to thicken it. Remove from the heat.

7.    Transfer the ballotine to a cutting board and remove the string. Cut half of it into 4 or 5 slices. Return the uncut half of the ballotine to the serving platter and arrange the cut slices in front of it. Serve with sauce. Cut additional slices of ballotine as needed at the table.

Spinach, Cheese, and Bread Stuffing

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp finely chopped garlic
5 ounces baby spinach leaves
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (grated Gruyère or mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 cups cubed bread

1.    Heat the oil in a large saucepan or skillet. Add the garlic, spinach, salt, and pepper and cook for 1 minute to soften the garlic and wilt the spinach.

2.    Transfer to a bowl and let cool to room temperature.

3.    Stir in the cheese and cubed bread.

Serves 4 to 6