Gnocchi alla romana
"It's delicate, delicious, cheap and quick to put together" Jamie Oliver
Last night I snatched a half hour or so to watch The Cook and the Chef on the television. I was fasting and David was eating his salad dinner. Maggie and Simon were cooking with semolina and Maggie Beer made some semolina gnocchi - or Gnocchi alla Romana as they are more usually known. It took me back to those early days of cooking for my man and my one go at this dish. I don't know why I have never made it again, because it was indeed "delicate, delicious, cheap and quick to put together", as Maggi Beer so capably demonstrated on The Cook and the Chef.
On that program she served them with a walnut pesto - you can find lots of recipes for this on the net - which she placed in the middle of the plate with the gnocchi arranged in a circle around it. You can find the whole video on SBS on Demand. Although you can't find the recipe on her own website the recipe for Baked gnocchi with walnut sauce can be found on one of her fan's websites called Bite Me. (Note to self to do a post on blog titles at some time.). But I later found that Maggie has another serving suggestion on the net called Semolina gnocchi with capers and curd which I have to say, looked rather tempting, although not crispy and crunchy.
So what are Gnocchi alla Romana? Well they are not at all like the usual gnocchi made either with cheese or potatoes as their base. You do not cook them in boiling water before baking them in the oven. Well, that said, I think one of the other recipes I found suggested doing this. I suspect this would not be a good idea and may well lead to disintegration on a large scale.
No - you make a sort of dough in a saucepan with milk and semolina and cheese. Chill the dough, roll it out, cut it out and then bake. Obviously the traditional shape is a circle. Virtually every recipe I found - and I have to say there was not much variation in the traditional recipe itself - went for circles. But I did find one blogger who, not really knowing what to do with the leftover bits from cutting out the circle (a bit stupid I thought - I mean you just bring it all together and roll it out again, surely - like scones) - muttered that next time she would cut them into more wastage limiting squares, rectangles or diamonds. Sure - why not? In fact I vaguely remember seeing one recipe that baked the whole chunk of dough in one piece and then cut it up - but this wouldn't give you all those yummy crispy and cheese edges.
I think the recipe I used way back in my youth would have come from Elizabeth David or Robert Carrier. Most likely Elizabeth David when I was exploring her Italian Food. And they probably looked much like these - which are from my Italy the Beautiful Cookbook.
The picture at the top of the page though is from Yotam Ottolenghi. One forgets that Yotam Ottolenghi is actually half Italian. We tend to assume that he is all Middle-Eastern of some kind. Not true, and with this recipe he is reaching into his childhood.
"Comfort food doesn’t get more comforting than this. My paternal grandmother used to make these, and they were for years one of the few childhood food experiences that I could never quite recreate." Yotam Ottolenghi
I suspect that it is not quite true - he credits a new friend's version as being almost the same as his grandmother's. But I really can't quite believe that a chef cannot reproduce something he remembers from the past. Me - yes. I am most conscious of this when trying to reproduce dishes made by the Provençale cook I have told you about. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to recreate her beef stew with black olives and carrots with no success at all. Well they tasted alright but not the same.
But that's an aside. What else can you do with Gnocchi alla Romana - those crispy, cheesy delights? Probably not that good for you - too much cheese and butter, but hey comfort food is often not that healthy. And actually you probably should not mess with them too much. They are one of those simple foods that should remain simple - even Yotam Ottolenghi who tends to add something different to 'traditional' recipes, does not mess with this one. If you drown them in a sauce then you lose the crispy, crunchy bit. You could do like Maggie Beer though and put a thick sauce - more like a dip or a slash - in the middle and dip into it.
Nevertheless I did find two somewhat different ideas. The first makes use of the crunchiness and turns them into a sort of canapé. They are called Semolina Gnocchi Saltimbocca and are from Jeremy and Jane Strode.
And then there is a version with a sauce which is from Peter Morgan-Jones who, interestingly, is proposing his Semolina Gnocchi with Tomato Olive Stew as food for the aged!
And I just found this idea too, in which you layer your gnocchi with tomato and mozzarella before finishing in the oven. Simple and not too much sauce. I believe it comes from Jamie's Italian friends Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carlucci. It's from a site called From James to Jamie. There's another blog title on which to reflect some time! And looking at it you could layer the gnocchi with other things too couldn't you? Bacon, fennel, different cheese - but always cheese I think.
But if you like sauces, don't despair because there is a related dish called Chnéffléné from a different part of the country - Val d'Aosta - on Italy's northern border with France and Switzerland in the Alps. It's a very weird name and I have no idea how you pronounce it. Jamie Oliver features them in his Jamie Cooks Italy book. (A great book by the way.) He calls them Semolina Teardrop Dumplings and I suppose, if I'm honest, the only thing they have in common with Gnocchi alla Romana is the semolina that they are made from. But the method is quite different, and they are cooked in boiling water. In truth they are most like those German/Austrian knödeln You make more of a batter than a dough and then force it through a colander into boiling water. From there you scoop them out and serve with a sauce. Much easier than traditional gnocchi which can fall apart in the boiling water. Jamie is obviously enamoured of them as he gives four different suggestions for how to serve them: Fonduta, Roasted red onion and bacon, Garlic Mushroom and Pesto and Ricotta. I cannot find recipes for the last two online but a look at the pictures will give you the idea or buy Jamie Cooks Italy.
Jamie Oliver is as we all know a huge fan of Italian food, and actually I think the picture of his Gnocchi alla Romano is the best of the lot. And look he has tucked the odd bit of tomato in there - bacon too - well pancetta of course. This is the tenth first century after all. The recipe is not online though. You will just have to buy the book.
