If you’re like me, there are certain cooking and baking techniques that you just connect with, and some you really just don’t. I don’t have a happy knack for making macarons, for instance, but I have an affinity for making choux pastry or pate à choux. I don’t think there’s something innate in me that made choux pastry more comprehensible- I think I just had a really good teacher show me how to make it at cookery school. I think I was hungover for the day we made macarons. Also they are harder to make.
It’s also been a self-fulfilling prophecy that I enter into making this dough with confidence, and so I am more inclined to cook it whenever I can. I have that faith that it is going to work out. These opportunities arise not very often but not totally infrequently, as the dough has savory and sweet applications.
Last week we were a little short on something for dinner but without time to venture out to the grocery store. I had taken some meat out of the freezer earlier in the day, so there was that. A piece of bavette steak, a thin piece that needed something more to complete the meal, more like a side of steak. We had some kind of limp greens but enough to make a salad. We didn’t have any potatoes. We had rice the night before. I was searching for something.
Most days we have on hand flour, eggs and some sort of aged cheese. I remembered how this steakhouse my family went to for special occasions growing up had parmesan gnocchi as a side, it was the seared, non-potato kind, called parisian gnocchi or gnocchi parisienne. I consider eggs and aged cheese cold pantry items, and I felt really good that I would make something with hot water and staples.
I’m not sure what the historical connection with the potato gnocchi of Italy is, apart from being a somewhat similar shape (although as you’ll see I went a different way with these). Parisian gnocchi is easier to make than potato gnocchi. Making the choux pastry for these little pastas is even a little easier than how you would make the dough for a sweet application.
It’s hard for me to organize all my thoughts on these brilliant floury gnocchis. To start, J Kenji Lopez Alt on Serious Eats explains it very well, “Parisian gnocchi are somewhat of an oddity in the Western repertoire, in that they're made with a hot water dough—much like Chinese-style dumpling or stretched noodle dough. With most Western breads and pastries, cold or room temperature liquid is added to flour before kneading it.” Indeed when I first made this dough, it felt really strange beating this moush of eggs water and flour. I find it so satisfying how it comes together and resolves into a smooth dough as you beat it.
You boil the dough like a pasta, and then pan fry or bake it. When you pan fry them you get a little seared edge on all sides, it gives a nice crispiness. I’d actually never baked it before, and was really happy with the result - they puff up even more than when you fry them. This way they are kind of little somewhere between gougeres and pasta.
The thing about this recipe is that while there are many steps, you can break them up without cost to the end result. I was on a zoom training when I made these over 5 minute breaks. I made the dough in five minutes. I boiled the dumplings in 5 minutes, and I baked them at the next 5 minute break. They were ready for dinner when the training was over.
The most novel thing about this recipe is the shape. Normally when you put the sticky dough into a pastry bag, hold the bag over a pot of boiling water, and use a knife to cut underneath the tip at intervals, so that you are cutting little pieces. If you’ve made spaetzle before (another unsung steak house side) you may have used this cutting technique.
I’ve never really mastered that technique. It is a fun thing to do with another set of hands, if that sounds fun to you, it’s a nice way to collaborate in the kitchen.
I kind of had this vision of ricotta gnudi I had once, and also of matzo balls, and also of dumplings like in chicken and dumplings. So instead of cutting in I used an ice cream scooper to make rough rocky edged shaped dumplings. This is also less time consuming than using a pastry bag and making the small cut pieces. You can also use larger two spoons in place of the ice cream scoop. I also kind of like how the scoop makes them look like ice cream.
As I made and remade this new recipe, I found such comfort in this shape. I thought of the puffballs called "le manine" - the pollen (? it's never fully explained) that floats through the air in the intro and outro to Federico Fellini's 1973 film Amarcord. Amarcord means 'I remember,' this film is his ode to Fellini's childhood. It takes place in a small Northern Italian coastal town, Rimini, his own hometown, in the late 1930s. It is beautiful and stirring, and I love so many scenes from it. Le Manine are the harbingers of spring that come in late winter, a celebration for the town.
We hear a couple sing: "When the puffballs come, then winter is almost gone." Children chant, "When the puffballs soar, then winter is no more." They try to catch the biggest ones and head to the seashore. And a local character explains, "In our town, the puffballs arrive hand in hand with spring. These are the sort of puffballs that drift around, soaring over the cemetary, where all rest in peace, soaring the beachfront and the Germans, newly arrived, who don't feel the cold. Drifting, drifting, swirling...swirling...drifting, drifting, drifting!
These puffballs do drift and float and puff. The 'drifting' here is translated from the Italian, "Vagano!" which can also be read as "They wander!"
What really completed the dinner was the wine, which was as odd and novel feeling as these shaggy dumplings, as fantastical as the film too. It’s a new wine we got in from Podere Pradarolo, Libens, made entirely from the Croatina grape. Pecorino is a very sharp cheese that can be bracing with another tangy wine. The Libens offered umami to match the cheese, but also a rich and slightly sweet fresh and fried fruit depth, plum/prune and amarena cherries. Can't think of anything more appropriate for an Amarcord tribute.
This is just one of many new wines in store, including several from Italy. Check out the shop and as always please email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or dm rainbow_wines anytime! Cheers!
Gnocchi Buns
Adapted from Jacques Pepin in Food & Wine
1 c water
3 tablespoons salted butter
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp black pepper
1 c all purpose flour
½ tsp smooth dijon mustard
3 eggs
1 c grated pecorino romano, plus ½ grated for sprinkling before baking
A little olive oil for a drizzle
Tip ~
Prepare to be working your mixing arm, and use a wooden spoon. You want to work pretty quickly in each little section of assembling the dough.
Put a pot of water on to boil. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees and place a small cast-iron skillet in the oven. Put water, butter, salt, nutmeg and pepper in a saucepan and bring to a boil. As soon as the water is boiling, shoot in the flour all at once. Vigorously stir the mixture on medium heat for 1 minute, this brings the dough together and also cooks out a little of the flour flavor right away. Turn your dough out into a bowl and let it cool for 3 - 5 minutes. Add one egg and beat in until incorporated. Add half the first cup of cheese and another egg and beat again until incorporated. Repeat with the final egg and remaining half cup of cheese, as well as the mustard.
Prepare an ice bath (a bowl of water with equal parts ice and cold water). Once the pot of water is boiling, add a large handful of salt. Take an ice cream scoop and drop one ball at a time into the water. There should be enough for about 5 balls with a standard scoop. The scoop to use is the kind with the metal ring that slides around the inside of the cup to clear out the dough.
Boil until the dumplings start to flour to the surface, about 5 minutes. Transfer them immediately to the cold water bath, and let cool there for about 2 minutes. Remove them from the water to a plate to drain a little.
Take your heated skillet from the oven. Swirl around a bit of olive oil in the skillet. Arrange the dumplings, then top them with the remaining grated cheese, allowing some to fall onto the skillet around the dumplings. This will make a nice crispy frico. Grate some black pepper on top as well.
Bake for about 30 minutes. Before serving, drizzle with more olive oil.
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