Nona gnocchi

Sarvelicious recently returned home in raptures about a lamb gnocchi dish she sampled in Melbourne. 

 

So, we decided to have a Surprise Chef night to produce our own version.  “Choklit Chun” came along for the fun too, and photos appear courtesy of S’s Apple-ringring-thang. 

 

The recipe began by reading Greg Malouf’s “Moorish” on a striped deck chair in the sun, sipping peach nectar and ginger beer. 

I made a lazy version of his taklia recipe and browned it off in a pan.  I then dredged the lamb shanks (hooray for Ralph the butcher at The Mezz) through flour (with paprika and ground ginger), browned them off and tipped them into a warm casserole dish while I prepared a braise (the usual suspects went in:  red onion, two sticks of celery, two diced carrots and cream of balsamic). 

I added the taklia, two tins of whole tomatoes, juice of one lemon (the preserved stuff won’t be ready for another four weeks), lots of salt, some stock, a cinnamon quill and squidges of honey. 

Popped the lot in the oven at around 150C and wandered online for a few hours, returning every 40 minutes to turn the shanks and slosh the cooking liquid about.  Total oven time…4pm till 8pm?

Around 6, I put a kilo of white potatoes into the oven in a single layer. 

Around 7, Sarvelicious arrived with some cinnamon King Island Diary yoghurt, Swiss chocolate wafers, luscious Medjool dates, shiny water and a big busty Shiraz. 

We poked the spuds but they were going very slowly, so we nibbled at blue cheese, smoked cheddar (hooray KI diary again) and fig / fennel paste (we love Maggie Beer).   

Choklit Chun arrived soon after armed with half a dozen bottles of wine, some Japanese red bean paste sweets (logs?) and bags of enoki mushrooms.  Surprise!! 

We ate more cheese while the spuds cooled, peeled them, moaned about the lack of a passatutto and then grated them up, alternating a fine and coarse grate.  The recipes I’ve read say you’re allowed to mash them but abhor the use of a food processor.  We’re not sure if that includes the grating attachment too. 

Mix in two egg yolks, about two tablespoons of grana padano (or more, if you’re cooking with us…) and double the recommended “150 to 185g” doppio floor. 

You’re supposed to knead the dough, divide it into six equal portions, work each portion into a 1.5cm snake and then cut off 1.5cm segments with a flexible knife.  This sort of happened.  All three architects fought over having a go at kneading making snakes.  It was a Bill Busfield 1^st year studio with paper clay all over again!!  Whee!!  Hubby just stood back and topped up our wine glasses every so often.  He has had little success with gnocchi in the past and we suspect an ancestor had been cursed.  “May your gnocchi always collapse into the cooking water” is pretty potent, we think. 

We got creative with the fork tines and finger indents, then Sarvelicious and Choklit Chun carefully cooked the gnocchi (“is that floating…err it sank again!”) while hubby prepared the sauce. 

We shredded the lamb off the bone (with a spoon :P), blended the veggies up and reduced the stock to a sauce.  The enokis got sautéed in some butter, lots of salt and some cream. 

I nipped out for some parsley when Choklit wandered out to his car for more wine, and we sat down to an amazingly good winter meal!  Sarvelicious topped the dish off with…more cheese! 

 

Upon plating up, we concluded we’d made enough gnocchi to feed the whole village but would probably get scolded by the neighborly nonas for being so deviantly un-Italian! 

Also, the dish was renamed nonocchi during the night, because one rogue gnocchi was so big it was dubbed the nono of all gnocchis…which is hard to say repeatedly when you’ve guzzled abit of wine. 

 

Sarvelicious had ‘nuff energy to hop up to make the Surprise Chef dessert:  yoghurt, slices of red bean thingy and dates, topped with a wafer and dusted with cinnamon.  It was probably a historical moment, we don’t think this particular Japanese / Chinese sweet has ever been served with yoghurt.  Also, I’m not sure how an Italian dish started in the pan with middle eastern spice mixes…however, given that the dinner collective comprised a mix of cultures, we thought it was appropriate to allow “fusion” cooking to run wild.  Cultures present:  Australian, Dutch, Filipino, Malaysian Chinese and Persian.  Some Spanish and mainland Chinese too, if you’re that far back along our ancestries, and don’t forget the general Malouf-inspired Lebanese presence in our kitchen! 

 

Anyway…we’ve never made gnocchi from scratch before but it was deliriously messy, fun and yum, and we’d do it again.   We’d still like to do a lychee duck extravaganza…coming soon to a kitchen near you!

 

Now, during the evening, discussing all things Italian, Sarvelicious told us about a friend, who, as a 12 year old, had asked his nona to petsit his bunny.  Upon return from holidays, he found she’d cooked and eaten it, but he commented that he understood, and asked “do you know any vegetarian Italians?”   Hmm good point…so, Jameliche-ites, do you??

 

Happy Monday!