doctortim

Tried gnocchi again with (1) Tipo 00 flour; (2) Plain flour; and (3) 1/2 Plain, 1/2 self-raising flour. I had a friend around, and we both sampled (without knowing which was which until after) the gnocchi. In order of goodness, we both ranked them (1) 00; (2) Plain; (3) Half-half. I thought there wasn't much in it between (1) and (2), but he did. The difference between (1), (2) and (3) was enough that when we mixed the three batches together for lunch we could tell when we were eating a (3) compared to a (1) or (2). As a staunch supporter of evidence-based gnocchi, I hope that this inspires her to give plain flour another shot. And then I hope she lets me try some. (By the way, slkinsey is totally spot on. His tomato sauce here is perfect for gnocchi)

Thanks everyone for the positive comments! Good point. I used what was in the cupboard . And how about with Italian "tipo 00" flour? ← I was planning on making gnocchi tomorrow, so hey, why not. Stay tuned..

I have too much time on my hands, so this afternoon I decided to answer a question that no one else asked . Since I was doing it, I thought I might as well post the results and at the same time highlight a way of making gnocchi that has always worked for me... Background One of the researchers at work is a lovely Italian woman who I often talk to about cooking. She's a wonderful cook and I love exchanging recipes and ideas with her. She tells me about her baked trout with olives and potatoes, and I tell her about my steamed flathead with Thai chilli sauce and snow pea salad. She tells me about her risotto Milanese with roasted bone marrow and I tell her about my seared tuna steak with rosemary and baby potato and capsicum salad. She tells me about her zucchini flowers stuffed with Brie, prosciutto, and deep fried and I... drop my jaw in awe. The other day I was telling her about some gnocchi I made and she told me that she always uses self-raising flour. The idea is that it helps fluff up the gnocchi and makes an even lighter dumpling despite the same amount of flour. The idea was intriguing, and I wanted to try it. Not long ago I was chatting with a family friend about the perfect potato gnocchi, and he disagreed, vehemently declaring, "No! It's plain flour without a doubt". Fast forward to now. I've got 3 weeks off, while my girlfriend and all of my friends are at their busiest time of the year. Even with sleep and the world cup, there's still a lot of time left in the day. I finished all of my PS2 games. I love gnocchi, so I decided to put both experts' advice to the test. Because I'm a huge nerd first and a lover of cooking second, a controlled trial was in order to test the hypothesis: that self-raising flour produces fluffier potato gnocchi. Methods The ingredients used were: 1 large red skin potato (~225g) ~25g plain flour ~25g self-raising flour Salt The plan was to boil the potato, mash it and then halve the mixture, with half combined with self-raising and half with plain flour. In general when making potato gnocchi I use 1/4x grams of flour for every x grams of potato, plus a bit of salt. Marcella Hazan doesn't use eggs, and that's good enough for me! I’ve found that gnocchi made with eggs can be too heavy, and requires more flour to come together into a good dough. Also, why complicate things? First I boiled the potato (skin on!). How about this for an exciting photo? When the potato was done, I peeled it and mashed it with some salt. Ideally you'd want to put the potato through a ricer or food mill, but since I'd lent mine out to someone this had to do. It wasn't a big deal, just make sure you don’t mash the hell out of it or it'll become too starchy and sticky. I halved the mashed potato and set to making the gnocchi. First with plain flour. Rolled out, then chopped up. Time to shape them. I've seen Italian grandmothers and mere mortals with good manual dexterity who can shape them in one bewilderingly-fast and fluid motion, but I've never known how to do it. My technique is simply to squash them on the bench top with a fork. Then roll them. One batch done. For the self raising flour it was the same deal. Done! Closest are the plain flour (PF) gnocchi, and furthest are the self-raising flour (SRF) gnocchi. Time to cook them. Boiling salted water. Realisation that with all of this spare time I should have cleaned my stovetop. I put the SRF gnocchi in first, and now the PF gnocchi. You can see that the SRF gnocchi are starting to rise. I took the SRF gnocchi out. Although the rule of thumb is to take gnocchi out of the water as soon as they rise to the surface of the water, these ones rose really quickly, before they were done. Possibly an effect of the carbon dioxide released by the self-raising flour? I let them simmer for maybe an extra minute before taking them out. The PF gnocchi on the other hand, were done as soon as they rose to the surface. Gnocchi: cooked (SRF on left, PF on right). Results Now the best part! I tossed them in some fresh pesto and topped with tomatoes sautéed with a splash of balsamic (SRF on left, PF on right). Both gnocchi were robust enough to not get damaged when I tossed them with the pesto, so they passed the first test. Both gnocchi tasted the same. The difference was where it was always going to be: the texture. I tried to help illustrate the texture difference with Daniel-esque "bite" shots. Kudos to Daniel, bite shots are damn tricky to get in focus. The SRF gnocchi was like a puff of mashed potato that by some miracle had managed to hold together into a coherent dumpling. It was a wraith of a gnocchi, so soft and fluffy it was barely there at all. I tore one in half to give an impression of the texture inside. You can see that the edge is quite rough – compare it to the shot of the PF gnocchi. While they were strong enough to hold together, they didn't stand up very well to gentle pressure under a fork. The PF gnocchi were soft enough that they didn't yield to the teeth, but firm enough that they kept their shape with gentle pressure under a fork. I was still able to tear it in half, only this time the break was much cleaner. I thought the difference might be that the SRF gnocchi were either under or overcooked, but I cooked some more for different times and that was not the case. Conclusions I have too much free time. Also, I preferred the PF gnocchi. The SRF gnocchi were lighter and fluffier, but there's such a thing as too fluffy. In my opinion gnocchi need to have some bite and some presence, but the SRF did not have that. Also, that they rose before they were done made them harder to cook. At best the gnocchi made with self-raising flour weren't better, and at worst they were noticeably worse. Data were pooled, covered, and refrigerated for dinner.

The other day I bought way too much pancetta so since then I've had to use it up by including it in as many meals as I can. Forced to eat lots of pancetta, I know, life is hard Last night was rigatoni all'amatriciana, and lunch today it was a quick pancetta and spinach risotto. I'm still pretty new to risotto, and this was the first time I didn't make the careless mistake of cooking off almost every drop of liquid and ending up with sticky rice. Next time I think I'll make the pancetta even crispier. Nonetheless, warm and perfect for this overcast day!

How <i>should</i> my oven be behaving? Should it be heating just as well in the middle as it does at the sides? The same at the top as the bottom? How can I tell if I'm working with shoddy tools or simply a poor technique? I'm reasonably new to cooking, particularly using my oven. I have an electric fan-forced oven that was not taken care of my the house's previous owners. I've lived here for 2 years now, but shy away from using it since all of my attempts have been unsuccessful. I even managed to mess up a supermarket-bought apple pie -- the crust was black while the middle was cold, despite following the instructions. I would have thought those things were idiot-proof! So I've decided to put my oven through some controlled trials. The 'controlled' part of these trials means that they won't rely on the strength of my oven acumen, which at my level of experience is wildly variable at best! If anyone can recommend ways to 'test' the oven, no matter how creative, I'd love some suggestions.

A good friend's 21st birthday is coming up, and after much deliberation I've finally decided what gift to get him. He loves great wine and great food, although he isn't a snob about it (at 21 it's too expensive to be a snob). I've narrowed it down to some cool ingredients (e.g. truffle oil), something that's great without necessarily going into a recipe (e.g. fantastic local cheese), some useful kitchen tool, or really anything related. The problem is that apart from those examples I gave, I'm stumped for variety. The plan is to buy something he wouldn't typically buy for himself that can either be eaten by itself (or with minimal other ingredients, such as the cheese) or incorporated into other recipes without requiring the culinary acumen of a master chef. He'll eat anything -- obscure isn't a problem, as long as it's tasty! Or to phrase it another way, what food should every self-respecting food lover enjoy at least once in their life?

A guy is on a business trip abroad, and one night he decides to visit the local pub for a drink. When he walks in, he looks around and the first thing he notices are two pieces of meat stuck to the ceiling. Confused, he asks the bartender, "Hey, what's the deal with that meat stuck to the ceiling?". "Ah, that", the bartender replies. "That's a little competition we've got running here at the pub. If you can get them off the roof without touching them, I'll give you $200. But, if you try to get them off and you fail, then you've gotta give me $200. You wanna give it a shot?" The man thinks about it for a while, and ends up deciding not to do it. "Oh, come on, two hundred dollars!" says the bartender, "$200 just to get two measly pieces of meat off the ceiling!" The man thinks it over some more, unable to make up his mind. After a while he finally decides, and says to the bartender, "Look, I just can't do it. It's tempting, but the steaks are too high".

Thanks for your suggestions. I played around with this a bit over the weekend, with some success. Toasting the walnuts first was definitely an improvement. I had made a half-hearted attempt the first time, but I was hungry and didn't allow enough time for them to toast properly. After toasting I crushed them large enough for a bit of bite (gotta love biting in and releasing of all of that toasty goodness), but small enough to distribute pretty well through the pasta. I was careless and let the cream reduce too much, but a bit of pasta water straightened that out. Off heat I grated some parmensan into it, and added the salmon, then tossed it all together. Having made it three times now I can say that overcooking the salmon was to blame for the problems with the first incarnation, rather than the walnuts as I initially thought. The dish is now fit for public consumption

What a great article! I've always managed to mess up risotto in the past, but maybe it's about time I give it another shot.

The pasta making is coming along well (thanks guys!), to the point where I'm now able to both make pasta and make a decent sauce simultaneously without botching one or the other too badly. Tonight's was fettucini in a creamy smoked salmon and walnut sauce. It wasn't terrible, but it was quite dry (the walnuts didn't help this) and felt like it was lacking something. Does anyone have a recipe for making an incarnation of this dish that will blow me away? Or tips that will set me in the right direction. I still have plenty of salmon and walnuts leftover, and I'm game to try again. [For what it's worth, here's what I did tonight: sautéed some garlic in butter, then added the walnuts and salmon for the 10 seconds it took me to get the cream and pour it in. Seasoned with salt, pepper, and a bit of fresh parsley, and let it simmer until it reduced a little, then tossed with the fettucini. Then came on eGullet to complain about it ]

From-scratch macaroni cheese was the first thing I learned to cook after graduating from that dark pit of instant noodles. I love the stuff. Usually when I'm in a hurry, I make the old faithful pasta+cheese sauce that John Thorne comes down on so harshly. After reading that same John Thorne quote somewhere else, I decided to try his recipe... It just didn't do it for me. It was just too rich, and rather that experiencing that glowing fullness feeling you get after a good meal, this left me feeling almost a little off. It's not the worst macaroni cheese in the world (one night I was so tired I forgot to add the cheese. Mmm, macaroni milk), but just not worth the extra effort. I'll be trying that Martha Stewart recipe tonight, we'll see how it goes!

Boil macaroni, drain and return to pan, stir through half a jar of Kraft Cheese Spread (is this the Australian equivalent of Velveeta? I've never seen Velveeta on the shelves here). Consume until unable to move. That's my childhood, right there.

Thanks for all of your tips so far! Is the critical thing here, the thing that discourages the use of water, the prevention of rust? If I am sure to dry it quickly, is that the most important? Or is there something about its contact with water, whether I dry it or not, that will damage the machine?

Having read the eGCI article on making fresh pasta, I was charged up and looking to buy a pasta machine. Being a stingy student, I saw how much they cost and put it on my Christmas wishlist instead. Then today, I was in the supermarket and they had a table selling the various props that they used to have in their recently-renovated Deli area. You know, the stuff they put up to project the image of a cosy little Italian shop, but never actually sell -- there were a few giant jars of olives, some long long <i>long</i> stale bread rolls, some Italian-looking crockery, and then in amongst the clutter, an Atlas Marcato pasta Maker. I'd heard that these models are very high quality and can last a lifetime, and since this had no obvious structural problems and all of the pieces were there, I bought it for the very reduced price of $11. As stingy as I am, $11 for a $60 Pasta Maker seemed worth the risk. The only problem is that it is extremely filthy. I don't think it's ever actually been used -- the parts that come into contact with the pasta dough are reasonably clean -- but the rest of it is grease central. There is no rust or corrosion, just a consistent coating of sticky horrible grease. Most of it feels like when a price sticker has been pulled off leaving behind a gummy sticky patch. Did I waste $11, or can this thing be salvaged? I though I would ask here first since <a href="http://fantes.com/marcato.htm">I've read</a> that these machines shouldn't be cleaned with water. I don't mind if it takes me days to restore this thing (Uni holidays, I have a lot of time on my hands), but I want to do it right. Any tips? (First post by the way -- hi! -- apologies if it's overly long-winded)