doctortim

kellytree, that looks unbelievable! What ingredients went into the tomato sauce?

Is this it? http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/ful...od_potato.shtml

Simply adding more flour would be a good way to ensure that your gnocchi stay together (to a point). However the more flour you add, the more flour you'll get in each mouthful and worse the gnocchi will taste, both in flavour and in texture. Hopefully my tips and the other tips in the thread will help you handle the dough in such a way that a good result can be achieved with a standard amount of flour (which I've found is never more than 1/4 of the cooked weight of the potatoes). I'm not really sure about the science of starch and what happens chemically when someone overworks mashed potato. But from practice I've found that 2 things make a gnocchi dough more watery and gloopy: one is overworking the dough, and the other is leaving the dough sitting around. Perhaps as the starch breaks down it releases moisture? Best of luck!

You're obviously dedicated to creating great gnocchi, so perhaps set an afternoon aside and try this: Set a pot of water to boil, and make your dough however you normally would. Cut off a little bit of the dough and shape it (one gnoccho worth), then put that in the water and see how it goes. Too delicate? Incorporate a bit more flour into the next pinch of dough. Too dense? Add a very small bit of water or milk. Make these changes only to the bits you pinch off, or you'll find that by the 5th modification you'll have overworked your original dough to the point where it's useless. Keep doing this and noting the feel of the dough each time. Note how damp it is on the outside, and how sturdy it is when you're shaping it. As russ said, it's a lot like making pastry in that you go by feel. When I make gnocchi I still roughly weigh out the flour depending on the amount of potatoes I have but it's just a guide: if it doesn't feel right I'll go by that. Some general considerations in technique that can affect the finished product: - Baking the potatoes has always worked for me. If I'm making gnocchi on a weeknight and want to speed up the process, I zap the potatoes in the microwave for 8 minutes and then put them in the over to speed up the process. Since there's no added moisture, in theory it should reduce the overall flour requirements. - I use a potato ricer, with holes that are about 0.75 mm diameter. When I use a potato masher, I find I have to overwork the potatoes in order to ensure I've evenly broken them all up. That equals gluey potatoes. - Spread the riced potato on your bench in a fairly thin layer. That way when you sprinkle your flour, salt, and egg, it'll require less work to evenly combine. - Make your dough when the potatoes are still hot. - Don't overwork the dough! If you overwork a perfect dough, it'll become sticky and you'll have to add more flour. Work to combine the ingredients, but no more.\ - Once you've make the gnocchi, freeze them or use them. Don't leave them sitting there on the bench while you boil the water and make the sauce. And finally, here's my rough recipe for gnocchi (1 person's large portion or 2 people's normal-sized meal): - 2 large floury potatoes, baked skin-on until they're completely tender inside (I've tried all the varieties on offer here and find Sebagoes the best). - All-purpose flour. After the potatoes are baked, I weigh them, divide that by 4, and that's how much flour I weigh out. So 250g flour for 1kg of baked potatoes. I never use more than this amount of flour, and most of the time it takes about 80% of that flour before I'm happy with the dough's consistency. - 1 egg, whisked to combine. For this amount of potatoes I'd only use about 1/2 to 3/4 of the whisked egg mixture. I used to not use egg, but I find that with egg it's much easier to achieve a texture that is slightly firm to the bite (and importantly, doesn't fall apart when mixing with the sauce), but still melts in the mouth. - Salt. I don't measure this, just use as much as you'd use to season the potatoes as if you were going to eat them straight. Scoop out the potato flesh and rice it onto a bench. Evenly salt the riced potato. As evenly as you can, distribute the whisked egg over the potatoes. Evenly sprinkle about 60-70% of the flour over the potatoes. From the outside in, push it all together and start working it to combine. It'll be a mess at first of parts that are too dry and parts that are too wet, but eventually it'll come together. Dust as much as you like of the remaining flour over the dough when it becomes a bit sticky. The final dough should be slightly damp but not sticky. If in doubt, for the first few tries err towards a drier dough than a damper one. Sure they might be a bit heavy, but it's better than gnocchi soup. If you've used all your weighed-out flour and it's still sticky, you're probably overworking the dough. When this is ready, cut the dough into three even parts and roll them out to long tubes, about the thickness you'd like your final gnocchi. It'll become a bit more sticky so feel free to dust with flour to make it more manageable. Chop these into gnocchi-sized pieces, shape, and boil until they rise. This has become ridiculously long, but I hope it helps you!

I don't have any advice about the menu, others will help you out with that. As for the logistics of the thing, a few points: - You'll need help in the kitchen - You won't have time to be eating with your friends - 1.5 weeks is a very short amount of time considering you haven't even pinned down the menu yet - If I asked you to make any one of these dishes, and regardless of which one I chose you could successfully make it without having to refer back to a recipe, that's promising. If not, you'll need to be at that level in a week! - Prepare as much ahead as you possibly can. If you haven't done many of these sorts of dinners before, consider planning even the timing of things -- what you can prepare long ahead, medium-ahead, and what has to be done at the last minute. I apologise for being so negative, but without knowing how much experience you have it's hard to tell what I should say. If you read this advice and think, "duh, obviously" that's a good sign and hopefully you'll be able to pull off a wonderful dinner for your friends!

David, I can't wait to try cooking that tomato soup! Tonight: Potato gnocchi with bacon, tomato, and avocado.

This looks really good! I make these once in a while. Never thought about cracking an egg on top. Could you share your pastry recipe? I always use a store bought puff pastry ← Thanks! The pastry making up the shell was basically a short crust pastry, made from this recipe (where I got the idea to make a pie in the first place), but on top was just some store-bought puff pastry. I'm still very much a pastry novice, a shortcrust was enough for one day

Steak & vegetable pie for dinner tonight. Since it was the first pie I've made I focused on the pastry and was conservative with the filling, but it turned out so well I'm looking forward to messing around with different fillings next time. The most interesting (and one of the tastiest) pie fillings I've seen was a regular steak and bacon pie with an egg cracked onto it before putting the lid on. As the pie was cooked, the egg just set. One of these days I plan to give it a shot myself!

Peter Green, I really want to grab a big hunk of fresh bread and dip it into the juices pooled on that plate! How did you make the potato dumplings? How did they compare in taste and texture to potato gnocchi?

This recipe for Murgh Makhani (Butter Chicken) is what I've used in the past, and really enjoyed it. The first time I made it I followed the recipe and used the marinade, which was tasty. But since then if I'm in more of a hurry I just use a jarred tandoori paste plus some yoghurt to marinate the chicken, which in my opinion is just as good. You could probably replace some or all of the cream with yoghurt, too. One thing I wouldn't change is the sprinkling of garam masala and ground cumin at the end -- it really adds a lot.

I hate washing up, so the less utensils dirtied the better. To that end, I only measure certain ingredients as a way to portion them (e.g. 100g dried pasta or 1/3 cup risotto rice = one meal's worth). Everything else is based on experience and tasting as I go.

Tonight, meat and potatoes. A sirloin steak, roasted potatoes, and a red wine and thyme jus. Not the greatest photo since I was in such a hurry to eat this! The other night, bucatini all'amatriciana.

I posted a another topic asking for advice on how to store guanciale so that it doesn't go bad before I have time to cook it all. Having now tried some, I don't think that using it up will be a problem. Last night I made spaghetti carbonara, and tonight I made bucatini all'amatriciana. The carbonara was wonderful. The amatriciana was excellent flavour-wise, but next time I think I will cut the guanciale a little thicker so I can get that crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside texture. I'm so looking forward to tomorrow though. I'm visiting my parents in the country, who happen to live just outside of a town whose major produce is pork. Every weekend they run a wholesale pork market that anyone can go along to. Now that I might finally have somewhere to buy a pig's head, I think I'll give curing my own guanciale a try.

Having read a lot about guanciale (cured pork jowl), yesterday I finally bought some. There's one cheek, currently sitting in the fridge, vacuum sealed as it came. I'm planning to crack it open tomorrow night for carbonara, but I'll have a fair bit left over. Any suggestions on how best to store it, and for how long?

Well done on the perfect tres leches, it sounds great! As for the salad, the possibilities are endless and bound to be tasty if you use fresh, good quality ingredients. Most green grocers and supermarkets sell mixed salad greens, which provide a good base for a quick salad. Just make sure the greens aren't at all slimy when you buy them. Add to that some halved cherry tomatoes, a bit of crumbled feta, and you're good to go. Perhaps some toasted pine nuts too? An easy dressing for this could be a mixture of olive oil and balsamic glaze (mix together some balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, and very slowly reduce it until it's a bit more syrupy). As with this and all salad dressings, go with what tastes good to you. Dip lettuce leaves into the dressing and taste as you go to get an idea of how the salad dressing will taste when done. Adjust accordingly. Here's the recipe for Thomas Keller's Bouchon house vinaigrette, which he serves with a salad of bibb lettuce and fresh herbs: 1 part dijon mustard, 2 parts red wine vinegar, 6 parts canola oil. It would no doubt go with most simple salads. A slightly heartier salad that my family loves is: baby spinach, roasted cubes of sweet potato, toasted walnuts, castello cheese, and a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, crushed garlic, a little sugar, salt, and pepper. (Oh, you probably know this, but don't dress the salad until just before you serve it or the acid will wilt the greens) All the best with the dinner! Preparation is key. It can be quite daunting the first time you cook for a lot of people, but there's nothing more satisfying than cooking for close friends and family.

While it's always good to try out new dishes, experience has taught me that if you want the meal to be a success, never make it then for the first time. If you're using any new techniques, cooking an ingredient in a new way or cooking a new ingredient at all, try it all out before the main event. And may I suggest braises (e.g. ossobuco, ribs, etc), curries, stews, and soups as ideal dishes for this kind of dinner. You can still wow them with great flavours, but you get the added advantage of being able to cook most of the meal ahead of time, and spend the evening hanging out and eating with your brother rather than fussing around in the kitchen.

It's a great sandwich, but as others have pointed out already it's hardly an original. Hell, even I've been making almost this exact sandwich since I was hungry at home one weekend in grade 11 (I subbed whatever was in the fridge for monterey jack or went without cheese, and added a bit of dijon mustard). But it's good to know that great tasting food -- the kind of food Thomas Keller would eat for lunch -- isn't out of reach to those without years of experience running a world-regarded kitchen, and access to the best produce suppliers in the country.

Whether at a simmer or a rolling boil, the temperature is still the same. As far as I understand it, Hiroyuki's right, it's about convection. The higher the temperature of the heat source at the bottom of the pot, the faster the convection currents. That is, the water is moving around more quickly. In the context of a stock, you want to simmer on a cooler heat source so the water isn't rushing around and brushing off meat and vegetable particles and stirring them up into your stock. In the context of a meat ragu, you want the ingredients hot and releasing flavours for a longer period of time in order to develop all of the flavours and disperse them throughout the sauce. If it's at a rolling boil the water will be circulating much more quickly and will boil away quicker. Since clarity doesn't matter, conceivably you could keep the sauce at a rolling boil and just be sure to frequently top up the water as it boils away. But your stove would be covered in flecks of ragu, and why do that when you can leave it at a simmer and walk away for 6 hours? With cooking pasta, as soon as you add the pasta to the water, the pasta is a cooler temperature than the water so the water transfers its heat to the pasta and in the process it cools down. You want to transfer heat as quickly as possible back into the water to bring it back to cooking temperature, so for all other things the same you want the heat source to be at a high temperature. A rolling boil before you add the pasta is a reflection of a high temperature heat source that you want. It's been a while since I've learned about these things, but I think these are the principles.

Pizza for lunch. I've already gone on about it enough in the "Why can't I make pizza" thread, so I'll just say this was a very tasty pizza.

Since my last post I'd only made pizza once. It was following a pretty standard recipe and although it spread out easily and cooked without any of the problems I'd originally been having, it was very dense and really didn't taste all that great. Last night, on a whim, I decided to make some pizza dough based on what I'd read at the Jeff Varasano site. I didn't follow his amounts per se, but worked from the principles: autolyse, combine and knead well, and form quite a wet dough. I did however use dry yeast rather than a homemade starter. Mine wasn't quite as wet as his since my oven only goes to 550, but it was wet enough to make handling it a real pain at first! So anyway, I put it in the fridge overnight, brought it out and rested it on the bench for an hour while the oven heated up, then spread it out and topped it simply with canned tomatoes and some cheese. Damn it was good. I can't recall a time when I've been as happy with a meal as this. Part of the happiness was probably due to the surprise of it all. The crust was crisp without being tough, while inside it was light as air and tasty as all hell, without being cake-y. There was no sogginess in sight. This was unlike any pizza I've ever had, but from what I've read and seen of traditional pizza, this was that kind of pizza. I'm probably a little over-excited here, but given that I started the topic due to my failure to make a good pizza, I though it was worth an progress update.

Another vote for drained canned tomatoes, blended quickly in a food processor with some salt. The tomatoes have to be good quality though -- I'm not one to blindly go out and buy fancy ingredients for the sake of it, but canned tomatoes are one of those areas where good quality makes a huge difference. And for what it's worth, good quality tomatoes aren't expensive. Here in South Australia, the imported Italian tomatoes are cost less at an Italian deli (less again if you buy a whole slab) than the supermarket brand tomatoes cost at the supermarket.

Last night, a ricotta, spinach, and walnut roll (surely there's a better name for this rather than 'roll'). I made 6 of these and froze 5 for later, and kicked myself today when I realised I had a sweet potato to use up -- some sweet potato would have been a perfect addition. And tonight, fettucini carbonara. Ever since I've got my pasta making routine down with the food processor I've been making it a lot, and carbonara's probably my favourite simple way to treat fresh pasta.

Olive tapenade.

Bueno, those potatoes look great. Is the red colour simply from being rubbed with tomato paste before cooking, or something more involved? Tonight was something special. Since I'm on holidays I went back to the family home for the first time in a while and cooked a big dinner. First: Toasted baguette slices with various toppings: 1. garlic butter; 2. olive tapenade; 3. pecorino, tomato confit, and basil. These were a real hit. Even my sister who normally won't eat olives loved the tapenade. Second: Pumpkin soup with nutmeg sour cream. This was a slightly modified Bouchon recipe. I used to add nutmeg to the pot of pumpkin soup, but combining it with the sour cream really brings it out as a distinct complementary flavour rather than just a background flavour. Salad: Just a garden salad, with lettuce, baby rocket, red & yellow cherry tomatoes, and a nice vinaigrette made from basil oil and balsamic. Main course: Ossobuco and gremolata served with risotto milanese. The ossobuco was good but unfortunately not as flavoursome as I would have liked. The risotto however turned out brilliantly. At my place I cook risotto in an aluminium pot on an electric stove. Cooking it in a proper wide, rounded pot over a gas stove makes it effortless to prepare well. Dessert: Soft-centered chocolate puddings with walnut-flavoured custard and vanilla ice cream. Pretty damn tasty. Each element was delicious on its own (even the supermarket-brand ice cream!), but together they worked perfectly. If you look closely you can see the top-left pudding is a little collapsed. It stuck and dropped to the side when I was turning it out of its ramekin, and without thinking I reflexively caught it.I gave my left hand an impressive sear, but saved the pudding. It was worth it.

Comfort food for a cold evening: Lasagne. Peter, this is a bit overdue, but you asked the other day about a chicken I roasted. I can't remember the exact weight, but it was a huge bird raised somewhere here in South Australia. I roasted it as simply as possible -- rinsed and dried thoroughly, then the outside and inside dusted with salt and pepper. It cooked for about an hour, basically until the temperature inside the thighs was 155F. Towards the end of the cooking I sprinkled some thyme over the breasts. (edited to correct a typo)