Fresh/Stuffed Pasta & Gnocchi--Cook-Off 13

[Smithy]

del Conte mentions that the pasta sheets are more common, but the potato dough is method that her mother prefered. I have stumpy fingers, so I prefer the pasta dough.

Cooking in a cloth is easy, once you master the technique............

←

*Groan* you mean there's a technique to this? Here I was, all set to try something 'foolproof'. Care to share the secrets ahead of time, or do we have to find all the pitfalls the hard way?

[Adam Balic]

del Conte mentions that the pasta sheets are more common, but the potato dough is method that her mother prefered. I have stumpy fingers, so I prefer the pasta dough.

Cooking in a cloth is easy, once you master the technique............

←

*Groan* you mean there's a technique to this? Here I was, all set to try something 'foolproof'. Care to share the secrets ahead of time, or do we have to find all the pitfalls the hard way?

←

Nah, it is easy. I have put a demo of pudding cloth cooking on the end of this thread.

[daniellewiley]

OK, last night was my first attempt. I wanted to do ricotta gnocchi, but I decided to vary it a bit. I was looking through the NYT cookbook, and just above the traditional gnocchi recipes was a recipe for spinach ricotta dumplings. So, that's what I tried.

The NYT cookbook suggested serving them with just melted butter and grated Parmigiano on top, but since I'm doing Weight Watchers to get rid of this baby weight, I instead sauteed some fresh, chopped tomato with a bit of garlic in some EVOO.

The recipe is basically the same as Sam's ricotta gnocchi recipe except chopped spinach is added, and the flour is not mixed into the dough. Instead, the ricotta mixture is dropped by spoon into the flour and then shaped into a ball. This resulted in a dumpling that had a sort of shell around it.

Next time, I want to try it with the flour mixed in - I think they would be more substantial. These were delicious, but a little too delicate for my taste. They also needed more salt.

I will also omit the spinach next time. Though I thought it was delicious, almost four-year-old Dylan wouldn't eat them (she loves spinach, but only when it's hidden because she thinks she doesn't like it), and that annoyed me.

I served these with a yummy acorn squash puree to which I added freshly ground nutmeg, a touch of butter and S&P. As you can see, the plate looks a bit spare. Please excuse the interesting napkin formation. That's what you get when you tell a preschooler to fold the napkins and place the silverware on top.

[Mottmott]

Today I made some ravioli filled with proscuitto/ricotta/minced parmigiano. I had a few and will freeze the rest. I don't think I'll repeat this as I found them a bit too dominated by the prosciutto flavor. If you're wild for prosciutto it might do. I prefer cheese with a strong flavored sauce or mushroom with a delicate butter or oil dressing. I'm thinking my next batch will be beets as I have some in the fridge and I may add a touch of mustard oil to the olive oil as I recently had a great beet salad with mustard oil in the dressing.

I was thinking of adding some fresh herbs, but chickened out because I worried whether that would work when freezing rather than using fresh.

Any experience with this out there for me to draw on?

[Chufi]

I'm thinking my next batch will be beets as I have some in the fridge and I may add a touch of mustard oil to the olive oil as I recently had a great beet salad with mustard oil in the dressing.

←

if you do a beet stuffing, try serving them with a gorgonzola sauce (just some gorgonzola melted in a bit of cream).

Absolutely delicious.

[Chris Amirault]

I made ravioli based on MobyP's recipe (400 g '00' flour, 4 eggs, 1 yolk, 1 T EVOO, salt) and documented the non-traditional process bc I was using my KA mixer to get the dough together. It was very simple and took maybe five minutes of work to get it wrapped for the fridge resting.

The flour with Moby's great course on the screen:

The ingredients in the KA bowl ready to go (had to plug the amazing eggs):

Using the paddle with the mixer the lowest setting:

Put on the dough hook for kneading when it looked like this:

After several minutes with the dough hook:

Sixty seconds of hand-kneading on the marble and perfection is attained:

The dough was an amazing consistency, and though I was a bit terrified of going all the way to "8" on the KA, it held together perfectly. I then made some ravioli stuffed with shiitake, wilted arugula, parm reg, shallots, white pepper, nutmeg, a few other things. I was freaking out to get dinner on the table, so I didn't get snaps, but I think that I confirmed a tip from my trials: when filling and cutting ravioli, use a well-floured kitchen towel on which to work. It made the filling a lot easier and utterly transformed the cutting into a doable process; in addition, it's easy to slide them off the towel onto the cookie sheet for the simmering.

Ah, the simmering.... My little lovelies didn't fall apart, but they sure did get waterlogged. Any tips for drying them off before service?

Oh, service: sage butter, more parm reg, grind of white pepper and some salt.

[little ms foodie]

great pictures Chris!!

We made the ricotta gnocchi recipe out of Mario's new book but I served it with sauteed leeks and chanterelles and a brown butter sauce instead of sausage and red sauce.

They are good and very rich, I would also call them dumplings vs. gnocchi.

[snowangel]

I have a mess of ground venison in the freezer. I am hot to do a stuffed pasta. Need ideas. For the two together, please.

[Chris Amirault]

Thoughts on the next cook-off, folks? Here's the list I've been compiling from suggestions people have made; I've placed in bold the ones that I'm particularly interested in:

• tapas (Spanish)
  chili (Tex-Mex)
  bibimbap (Korean)
  carnitas, tamales (Mexican)
  jerk (Carribean)
  pho (Vietnamese)
  crepes (French)
  paella (Spanish)
  sushi (Japanese)
  barbeque (chopped) pork (you pick the state)
  kasha varnishkes (Jewish)
  kung pao chicken (Chinese-American?)
  osso bucco (Italian)
  potato pancakes (various)
  sukiyaki (Japanese)
  satay/kebabs (various)
  preserves and canning
  beans, beans, the musical fruit (just checking if you're reading the whole list)
  whole fish
  pancakes/waffles
  omelettes
  (cold) soups
  

New ideas? Support for those here?

[Mottmott]

I'm thinking my next batch will be beets as I have some in the fridge and I may add a touch of mustard oil to the olive oil as I recently had a great beet salad with mustard oil in the dressing.

←

if you do a beet stuffing, try serving them with a gorgonzola sauce (just some gorgonzola melted in a bit of cream).

Absolutely delicious.

←

Thanks, I'll try that next time. Tonight I had another serving with a simple drizzle of oil and lemon (& zest). The oil/lemon complemented the beets much better than the butter/poppy.

[Jason Perlow]

I'm thinking we need to do something with pork, and get that out of our system, just prior to Rosh Hashanah, where we can do the Kasha Varnishkes and any number of other yiddishe treats.

I think satay would satisfy that, especially if a number of us made pork satay.

But Carnitas... now thats a thought.

[MobyP]

The flour with Moby's great course on the screen:

←

NO NO NO!!! I specifically said put the flour ON your computer, make a well, and pour in the other ingredients until soft and squishy!

[Anna N]

My vote is for tapas.

[Adam Balic]

Last night I made Ligurian Pansotti "Stuffed bellies". These are a large ravioli type, with a large filling to pasta ratio (hence the name). The traditional filling is lots of local greens (including beet greens, borage, chicory) and a special type of sour curd used in much of the local cooking (or was). These are not delicate tid-bits, they are great big butch man pasta.

In Edinburgh, we lack exotic greens, so I use a mixture of swiss chard, spinach, rocket and fenugreek. The latter is not traditional, but adds a nice flavour. When this lot is blanched and drained, it makes a small handfull of greens. Enough for two.

Lacking special Ligurian soured curds I used a mixture of quark and ricotta, this gives the right sort of sourness, but is obviously not traditional. Large blobs are layed out and then covered into another sheet of pasta. The Screwpull gives you an idea of there size.

The cooked pasta a tradionally served with a creamy walnut sauce, the richness of the sauce is cut by the bitter greens. It is a great combination.

Edited September 20, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[Pan]

Fun pics as usual from you! But what is quark?

[Adam Balic]

"Quark" is German for "Curd", but in this instance it refers to the fresh cheese that is sold under that name. It is very smooth (like cream cheese), but has a sort of lemony sourness which is nice. Sort of like a cross between yogurt and fromage frais or almost like texture and flavour of drained yogurt "cheese".

[kanljung]

Thoughts on the next cook-off, folks? Here's the list I've been compiling from suggestions people have made; I've placed in bold the ones that I'm particularly interested in:

• tapas (Spanish)
  chili (Tex-Mex)
  bibimbap (Korean)
  carnitas, tamales (Mexican)
  jerk (Carribean)
  pho (Vietnamese)
  crepes (French)
  paella (Spanish)
  sushi (Japanese)
  barbeque (chopped) pork (you pick the state)
  kasha varnishkes (Jewish)
  kung pao chicken (Chinese-American?)
  osso bucco (Italian)
  potato pancakes (various)
  sukiyaki (Japanese)
  satay/kebabs (various)
  preserves and canning
  beans, beans, the musical fruit (just checking if you're reading the whole list)
  whole fish
  pancakes/waffles
  omelettes
  (cold) soups
  

New ideas? Support for those here?

←

There are lot of good ones in this list, but if I should choose one, it got to be satay/kebabs. If we choose to include both satay and kebabs, we probably could look forward to many interesting variations from different regions. I've got both a thai satay recipe and a egyptian fish kebab recipe that are on my "pending list".

Another idea is something north-african, maybe a moroccan tagine.

[kanljung]

"Quark" is German for "Curd", but in this instance it refers to the fresh cheese that is sold under that name. It is very smooth (like cream cheese), but has a sort of lemony sourness which is nice. Sort of like a cross between yogurt and fromage frais or almost like texture and flavour of drained yogurt "cheese".

←

We have this product here in sweden too, where it is called "kvarg". I've used it to substitute ricotta when filling pasta. At that time I thought the result lacked something compared to ricotta filled pasta. It probably is better when mixed with ricotta.

[Adam Balic]

There is a texture differrence tp be sure. In some quark tends to break down more during cooking the ricotta, so it all depends on the effect you want.

[kanljung]

Yep, there was something about the mouth-feel and the overall consistency of the filling in the cooked ravioli.

[MobyP]

Adam, how about the recipe to that walnut sauce?

[Adam Balic]

Moby - with this sauce it is really really important to have good fresh nuts. Normally, this means moving to Savoie, but at the moment Sainsburys have these "Taste the difference" Chillian walnuts that are really good, nice and buttery without being bitter.

Blanch nuts and peel of skins (or not), grind finely with a touch of marjoram. Add prescinseua (Ligurian soured curds) or equivalent too loosen the mixture. Adjust with salt and pepper. Colman Andrews' recipe uses 1/4 toasted pinenuts which is a nice.

[Eden]

New ideas? Support for those here?

←

while I love tapas they don't seem to me to be a unified enough idea for a cook-off, maybe if you defined it as bread based tapas/bruschette?

I'm all for canning/preserves - it meets the interesting technique requirement for me.

Or else trying paella (though mine would be scandalously seafood free )

since we're entering that lovely season, what about fall/winter soups (squash/pumpkin if you want to be more specific?),

or timbales/timballi ?

so many cook-offs so little time

[Smithy]

I have a mess of ground venison in the freezer.  I am hot to do a stuffed pasta.  Need ideas.  For the two together, please.

←

Don't let's let this get lost in the shuffle. I'll start brainstorming, and someone with a better idea can chime in. As I write this, I'm thinking it's pretty weak...but I got pretty good results brainstorming like this with a ground pork stuffing.

Soften (I started to say saute, but not quite that hot) onions, then garlic in the pan, then add venison to brown. Season with, uhm, what sounds good to you. I'd go with something like fennel seed, thyme and sage, but I'd taste as I went and add things as they seemed appropriate - and somebody else no doubt has better ideas. Drain. Grind up in food processor or blender until the chunks are fairly small. Bind with tomato paste? or a cheese of some sort? or a mustard/cheese blend? (Obviously, these are wildly different directions.) Make that into the stuffing for ravioli.

The sauce, depending on your stuffing, could be a cream sauce, a mustard sauce, or (what I keep ending up with because I run out of time) butter with chopped herbs.

Here's a totally different idea: make the stuffing as above(?!) with tomato paste and perhaps a touch of Worcestershire sauce, mix with mozzarella, roll all into little wrapped rolls (are those canneloni?), layer bechamel and tomato sauce over the lot in a baking dish, and bake. Parmesan and chopped blanched sage leaves on top. The advantage of this is that you only have to take the fresh pasta to the rolling-out stage, not the folding-and-crimping stage.

Wow, this IS weak, but I'll post it anyway. Sometimes I find the best way to develop an idea is to throw out something, anything, and then kick it around.

Edited to add: I forgot the nuts. I love nuts in the stuffing, or the sauce. Toasted walnuts would be good, or pine nuts, or pecans if the other seasonings matched up. I think walnuts and tomatoes go well together, for instance, but I'm none too sure about pecans and tomato sauce. Pecans and mustard sauce, however...or pecans in the meat stuffing with a creamy herb sauce, now...

Edited September 20, 2005 by Smithy (log)

[Adam Balic]

re: Venison. It is quite dry, so it will need something to counter this. Maybe 1/3 ground pork belly I would think.