Chef’s Shrimp “Caprese”

Shrimp "Caprese" Posting this particular recipe not only highlights one of the tastiest entrees ever to emerge strictly by accident from my kitchen, but also provides pretext for calling attention to one of the most widely-spoken mispronunciations in all recorded history.

As soon as this post spreads world-wide people will no longer mispronounce the name of one of Italy’s most charming, romantic and utterly beautiful getaways within its territory. Italians call it the “Isola di Capri” and the accent for both words is on the first syllable. The Island of Capri. It is not “caPREE.”

All right so much for the obnoxious language lesson.

It so happens that many dishes are named after the famous island situated a few miles out into the Bay of Naples and hence sport the adjective “caprese” in the name. “Insalata Caprese” is a probably one of the more well-known examples. Somehow anything concocted with fresh tomato and basil among other ingredients has earned the right to be designated a “caprese.” Historically no one really knows how this came about.

In any case I have adopted the “caprese” modifier for this particular shrimp dish, which includes the obligatory fresh tomato and basil.

But, to be perfectly honest the inspiration came from a close and dear friend from the Maryland Eastern Shore who one night executed, dare I say, the “original” Shrimp Caprese, not exactly the same as the one below but close.

In any case, as a tribute to the Island of Capri try this:

Chef’s Shrimp “Caprese”

For 4 persons:

1/2 cup finely diced celery
2 tbsp. chopped scallion
1 small onion finely diced
2 medium garlic cloves minced
1/2 cup diced fresh ripe tomato
Olive oil as needed
White wine for deglazing (approx. 1 cup)
1 cup very thinly sliced or finely chopped small red and yellow peppers pre-softened in a saute pan
1 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
1/2 cup or so chicken broth
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1 lb. large (21-25 per pound) uncooked shrimp shells removed
Salt & pepper to taste

Have oven ready at 350 degrees.

Gratuitous advice: One, this dish cooks up best when made in a large cast iron skillet. Two, the most annoying task is peeling fresh shrimp, but substituting pre-cooked supermarket shrimp simply does not work!

Saute the celery, onion, scallion and garlic in olive oil until well softened. In a separate pan heat the thinly sliced peppers in olive oil until softened. When all is ready merge the peppers with the other ingredients and heat under medium heat and then add the white wine. Heat until all the alcohol is evaporated. Sprinkle a teaspoon of Old Bay. Add the fresh tomatoes, basil and chicken broth and toss. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Finally add the peeled shrimp, toss well, and bake everything in the oven for 25 minutes or until the shrimp has turned pink.

Optional: to expand the calorie count serve over linguine. That’s what I do.

April 21, 2013April 26, 2015

Eggplant Parmesan – Case & Controversy

How is it that the eggplant, a vegetable grown since before recorded history and consumed today around the clock like pasta and pizza, still fires up controversy? You’d think we all would be on the same page by now. Or maybe I’m the only one off the page with the rest of the world. I’ll explain.

It’s time to nerdle over two questions that come up from time to time. Number one, should you peel the eggplant before cooking, and two, should you salt the slices and lay them in a colander under a large can of tomatoes sitting on a dinner plate to get rid of the alleged noxious bitter flavor from the ugly brown juices?

As to the first question my answer is the typical legal sidestep: It depends on how you want the presentation to look. Some eggplant dishes need the skin to provide color contrast, some don’t. I happen to be an enthusiastic peeler.

As to the second my answer is a resounding never!

To defend these viewpoints I first enlisted the help of the International Society for the Advancement of Eggplant Cuisine based in Tangier, Morocco. Turns out they never considered the questions and weren’t interested. So much for those people. Thus I turned to the usual suspect sources, i.e. the internet and in particular Wikipedia, not to exclude my standby web-based experts from Italy.

First as to peeling off the skin my reason for doing so is that in many cases the cooked skin tends to separate from the flesh by itself as you consume the course, leaving an unsightly tangle of loose black skin, edible as it may be, hanging around in the dish waiting for you to suck it up. No thanks. Try ordering Pasta alla Norma sometime and watch what happens when you start poking at the unskinned eggplant chunks.

To execute the peeling process I use a standard dollar eighty-eight vegetable peeler. Takes a little practice. It’s better than hacking away at the eggplant with a 10-inch chef knife, which takes out half the pulp along the way. I watched Rachel Ray do this once. I wanted to cry. Actually I did cry – briefly.

Second as to salting and draining, it seems that cultivation and cross breeding over the centuries has had the effect of reducing the bitterness of the seeds and ugly brown juice surrounding them. Leaving out the step saves more than an hour of prep time for my eggplant parmesan, which is a time consuming enough of a dish as it is.

All that said I also discovered through my usual thorough research that the foregoing opinions are at variance with just about everybody in the cooking world, even the Sicilians, who claim eggplant as their national vegetable.

I was particularly devastated to watch a video on an Italian website that I consider reliable, wherein Sonia, the nice young lady chef coolly sliced up the unpeeled eggplant lengthwise and then proceeded with the tedious dehydration process, with heavy can of tomatoes sitting on top of the serving plate, sitting on top of the eggplant, sitting in the colander, sitting on a plate to catch the liquid. You know the drill.

If I’m not mistaken Mario Batali may be the only chef around who agrees with me about skipping the salt ritual. Or is it vice versa?

Baked eggplant parmesan Now the challenge. I propose to make eggplant parmesan with the same recipe except for one variation, one with the salting business and one without. I then propose to seat my committee of Sicilians at the table and defy them to identify which version was salted and drained and which was not. One Thousand Euro to the team if they get it right. Any Sicilians in the audience wanna step up?

All of which mercifully brings us to the actual recipe, knowing full well that there are as many variations as stars in the sky. But my theory is that somewhere in the dim past an unknown chef stumbled onto what eventually became accepted as the “original.” As usual I entered the Italian sites and looked around for a recipe version that more or less incorporates as many consensus features as possible, yielding as close to the elusive original as one can create.

To make it interesting I set up a comparison sheet showing my preferred style compared with two others, one from my reconstruction of typical Italian recipes from the web and another from Chef Alex Guarnischelli whose variation can be found on the Food Network site.

Melanzana alla Parmigiana – Three Ways

Chef L	Italy	Chef Guarnischelli

2 large or 3 medium eggplants skin removed	2 large or 3 medium eggplants	2 medium eggplants
1 cup all purpose flour for dredging	no flour	1/2 cup all purpose flour
fine salt, preferably popcorn salt	table salt	table salt
freshly ground black pepper	no pepper	freshly ground black pepper
no eggs	no eggs	five large eggs
no milk	no milk	3 tbsp. whole milk
no breadcrumbs	no breadcrumbs	4 cups breadcrumbs
dried thyme, dried oregano, fresh basil	fresh basil only	dried thyme, dried oregano, fresh basil
mozzarella cheese	no mozzarella	mozzarella cheese
parmesan cheese	parmesan cheese	parmesan cheese
no provolone	caciocavallo or “provola”	1 lb. provolone cheese grated
tomato sauce NO SUGAR	tomato sauce NO SUGAR	tomato sauce w/sugar added

So here are the differences:

First, the recipe with the fewest ingredients is the Italian. This contrasts with the Italian-American chefs tendency to load up a recipe – any recipe for that matter. It’s like the more ingredients the better it must be. Certainly that is my tendency unfortunately, and apparently the same for Alex Guarnischelli. At least I ditch the eggs and breadcrumbs.

Second all three sauces are no doubt different BUT NOTE — the Guarnischelli recipe adds sugar to the tomato sauce, a practice which I condemn as grounds for excommunication! In Ms. Alex’s defense I am well aware that hundreds of professional and home chefs in Italy do the same, which does not excuse the offense. You don’t need the extra carbs.

Lastly, all three recipes ultimately call for lightly frying the eggplant slices, whether dredged in only flour, flour, egg, milk and crumbs, or plain naked, draining on paper towels and then alternately layering the sauce, cheese and eggplant in a baking dish in the typical fashion. Baking temp is around 375 degrees for 30 minutes or so.

It’s all a matter of taste to repeat the cliche’ but nonetheless if you’re a cardiologist you will quickly choose either my version or the one from Italy and skip Alex’s. In any case please also skip the salting ritual. If you can’t, I suggest counseling.

February 14, 2011December 19, 2021

Sea Shells By The Seashore

As a Rhode Island native I was drawn into the usual saltwater pastimes like fishing, boating and swimming. After all Rhode Island is officially called the Ocean State, don’t you know, even though it has about 1/100th the ocean shoreline as Florida.

For me the most rewarding saltwater time killer was capturing sedentary and helpless bivalves on Narragansett Bay that had no way of escaping once I got hold of them with primitive tools such as a clam rake or oyster tongs. I got to be pretty good at it and I carried this dubious skill with me when I moved to Washington D.C. and eventually the Eastern Shore of Maryland on retirement. I have the rubber chest waders and clam rake up in the attic to testify as to the truth of all this. Notice I said “up in the attic.”

In the world of shellfish knowledge of the proper nomenclature is important if you are not motivated for clam digging and have to truck on down to the fish market to buy your shellfish. You need to know what to ask for.

There are dozens of varieties of hardshell clams but the most familiar goes by the redundant official name Mercinaria mercenaria. Within that category there are differences based on size. The largest hardshells have two names depending on whether you are a Rhode Islander or someone less fortunate. If a Rhode Islander you will be acquiring “quahogs,” the Algonquian Indian name given to fist-sized chowder clams. They are only good ground up for soups, stews, stuffing and fried clam cakes – the latter being an item sold exclusively in Rhode Island and nowhere else. A mystery because they are delicious and deserve national attention.

Next down the line we have top necks and cherrystones. Since clams have no necks I don’t know how this word crept into the description. In any case either one can be used for raw clams on the half-shell or baked Clams Casino.

Lastly we get down to the small ones, i.e. the little necks and countnecks. These are the ones best for classic spaghetti alle vongole or spaghetti with clam sauce – a popular dish throughout Italy and the coastal U.S. as well. Supermarkets sometimes offer a variety of small brown colored clams from Asiatic waters called mahogany clams (maybe Phillipine mahogany??) a distant relative of the U.S. hardshell but good enough for all the spaghetti recipes.

Drilling down even further, if you order spaghetti alle vongole in Genoa or Naples you will notice the hardshell clams in your dish are about the size of your thumbnail. Have to say that sauces made with these sweet “mini-necks” have no equal, but they are nowhere to be found in the U.S. as far as I can tell.

Incidentally people claim that here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland – a region known for its more or less southern conservative outlook on life – there exists another hard clam subspecies. They’re called Red Necks. Haven’t found any yet but I know they’re out there somewhere on the waters of Assawoman Bay. (Yes, Assawoman Bay – no joke – it’s an actual place name and it’s right outside my back door).

The other shellfish varieties relatively easy to catch on a hot summer day in the saltwater shallows are mussels and oysters. Here again we confront a nomenclature issue. It has to do with the oyster. Around the world the oyster is an oyster, but on the Maryland Eastern Shore it is an “orshter.” This is important because if you approach an Eastern Shore fishmonger and ask for oysters you will get a blank stare. They only sell orshters. Two dozen orshters please.

For now we are leaving oysters, scallops, soft-shell clams aside to zero in on clams and mussels.

To do that let’s now switch over to a resort and fishing port suburb of Rome, Italy, called Fiumicino – known more for the big international airport nearby (code name FCO) than anything else. On a recent visit, instead of heading directly for Rome, I cabbed on over to the Fiumicino beach front and at the cabbie’s suggestion got dropped off at a restaurant called Il Veliero – The Sailing Ship. Here for lunch and in glorious weather I had the good fortune to select – entirely at random – their version of shellfish soup containing strictly clams and mussels in a light tomato broth.

The uninspiring name for it on the menu is “Soup with Clams and Mussels”. No shrimp, calamari, crab or anything. It was served up with crusty bread slices. The dish exceeded all expectations. When it was time to go I confronted the chef on the way out and under duress he agreed to reveal the recipe after promising him I would keep it a secret at all cost. It is as follows:

Zuppa di Cozze e Vongole “Il Veliero”

For 4 persons:

2 doz. top neck or 2 1/2 doz. littleneck clams scrubbed clean
2 dozen or so mussels scrubbed clean and beards removed if any
1 28 oz. can tomato sauce or puree
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp. chopped fresh dill weed
2 large cloves garlic (more if you’re a garlic lover)
2 cups dry white wine
2 cups fish or vegetable bouillon (try to resist the temptation to use chicken)
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon crushed fennel seeds
2 tbsp. fresh celery leaves finely chopped
1/4 cup or so extra virgin olive oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
Toasted French bread slices

In a large soup pot or dutch oven soften garlic in hot olive oil. Do not brown the garlic! Remove it from the pan, chop finely and set aside. Place the clams in the pot on medium high heat. Add wine, lemon juice, parsley and dill. When clams just start to open add the mussels. Stir and continue cooking until all shellfish is fully opened up. With tongs remove everything from the pot and set aside. Let the wine broth reduce slightly then add the boullion and tomato puree to the pot along with fennel seeds, celery, lemon juice and reserved garlic. Heat thoroughly then return all shellfish to the pot and continue cooking on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Serve with the toasted french bread although the customary alternative choice for the starch accompaniment in this recipe would be linguine. Try both.

Finally, just to get you properly oriented geographically here’s a partially obstructed shot of the Tyrrhenian Sea near Rome taken from the restaurant’s oceanfront terrace:

January 27, 2011May 23, 2020

Extreme Lasagne

There are a few dishes than I can make with eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Lasagne is not one of them. My approach to this classic pasta dish requires two hands, blood, sweat and tears.

The features that make my version laborious and time-consuming are these: (1) the pasta sheets are home made with spinach added for color and authenticity. (2) In addition to the regular meat sauce I make a classic Bechamel sauce to add between pasta layers again out of respect for the original dish from Bologna, Italy, and (3) I am usually making a supply sufficient to feed 25 people. Twenty five is the average number of people attending our various family holiday dinners – Christmas, New Year, Easter, my saint’s Feast Day (December 15th), Arbor Day and so on.

For those of you who from time to time volunteer to serve up an eye-popping pasta course for the entire clan at Uncle Gino’s house on the Feast of San Gennaro this information is for you. I was the volunteer on duty for the 2010 Christmas dinner featuring the usual two main dishes. They are Beef Wellington and Lasagne Bolognese. The lasagne first course over the years has escalated in richness and complexity in an effort to produce something a little different each time while sticking to the original features. Calorie concerns go out the window especially when we take into account the premium French and Italian wines selected for the table by my wine-collecting brother-in-law Count Eduardo Krause Von Furstenburg.

First, though, here you see the table setting ready to receive my signature pasta dish as a first course. Presiding over the event on the left is my sister the Countess Mariana Krause Von Furstenberg, last living heir to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and her daughter – my niece – the Princess Karabella. In the background is an oversize painting of our maternal grandmother Marietta and her daughter – i.e. our mom – Theodolinda, both of whom were no slouches when it came to making lasagne.

Getting down to business the dish is known in Italy by it’s official name, i.e. “Lasagne al Forno” which translates into “sheets of pasta baked in the oven.” In the U.S. and Italy thousands of variations abound whether in the cookbooks or the TV shows. However I claim that very few of them come close to the item served up in a Bolognese family dining room on major occasions. Doesn’t mean they don’t taste great. It only means they are departures from the original.

By the way spelling is to be noted. The proper spelling is lasagne with an “e” at the end, not lasagna which is what appears on 90 percent of menus in Italian-themed restaurants in the U.S. Lasagne is plural for pasta sheets which of course constitue the main ingredient.

If you’re interested the original it’s worth a try. The Italian Academy of Cuisine claims to have certified the true version and filed the recipe with the Bologna city government. My version adheres to the official Bolognese recipe downloaded from the Italian websites as closely as possible, but inevitably there are a few deviations of my own creation.

On this particular occasion one departure from the original was making the Bechamel sauce with truffle butter, an idea tossed out by my sister after watching Ina Garten do a pasta dish with it. The second was using a blend of three cheeses as part of the filling rather than just Parmesan as called for in the official Bolognese formula. The appearance of mozzarella and ricotta cheese in the thousands of other recipes floating around the world is a result of infiltration by Southern Italian cooks and their distant U.S. cousins all of whom are far more used to cooking baked pasta with those two cheese varieties as well as the Parmesan.

Before you embark on a project like this be aware that the trick is to cook the pasta sheets until just before they qualify as al dente, a step that requires a bit of practice since they will be cooked further in the oven. If you’re using the no-bake lasagne sheets from a box you don’t need to be concerned about that, but the result will be not what you expect. If you are using the regular commercial dry lasagne sheets with the annoying curly edges you will get a better result but still light years away from the recipes that call for freshly made pasta.

Grab your kitchen tools, grab the Pino Grigio and start on the journey that will lead you to a polite round of applause at the dinner table, if only for making the attempt. Fortunately a number of steps can be done ahead.

Extreme Lasagne

For 20-25 persons: (invite the neighbors if your family is not that big)

34 6×10 inch sheets home made or store-bought fresh spinach pasta (the actual dimensions are not critical)
1/2 gallon Bolognese meat sauce (see recipe at “Bolognese Sauce – Fact or Fiction?)
1 quart Bechamel sauce made with truffle butter (recipe below)
1 lb. shredded mozzarella (my family are a bunch of Southern Italians)
1/2 lb. shredded sharp provolone cheese (instead of ricotta for a far more richer flavor)
1/2 lb. grated imported Parmigiano Reggiano (not the stuff in the green can)

For the Bechamel:

3 oz. truffle butter (igourmet.com sells a 3 oz. container)
5 heaping tbsp. all purpose flour
pinch freshly grated nutmeg
6 cups or more warm milk
salt & pepper to taste

Melt the truffle butter in a sauce pan. Add the flour gradually while stirring to incorporate. Let cook for a minute or so until the flour is completely dissolved. Add the warm milk slowly while stirring constantly. This requires the dexterity of a professional magician. The milk tends to splatter all over the place. Add the nutmeg, salt and pepper and keep stirring at medium high heat until the mixture starts to thicken and bubble up. Lower heat to medium low. When the desired consistency is reached remove from the heat and place a sheet of plastic wrap over the mixture tucking it in so in comes in contact with the sauce. If you don’t do this the sauce will form an annoying skin on top thus requiring you to run the whole thing through a sieve or chinois. I hate that but it happens.

Check to see whether your local Italian deli has ready-made refrigerated spinach pasta. Some do. If so that’s a real time saver. Otherwise the pasta sheets can be done well ahead at home and preserved in gallon zip locks as long as they are not too damp and not longer than 10 inches so they’ll fit in the bag. Rub flour and cornmeal on both sides of each sheet before inserting into the bag, overlapping each sheet inside the bag like a deck of cards spread out over the poker table. Watch out for dog ears. Lie sheets nice and flat on the refrigerator shelf. They can be held for days.

The meat sauce can also be made ahead. It should be meaty and thick. If too thin it’s best to reduce it and then cool down before using it in the lasagne filling. The Bechamel can also be made in advance however in this case you want a relative thin consistency. On removing it from the refrigerator allow to reach room temperature and thin out with a little milk if necessary. If it looks and feels like pancake batter give yourself a high five.

The 3-cheese blend can also be done days ahead and refrigerated.

Preparation: Start with a Yoga session to steel your nerves and build confidence. Next have ready two 9×13 baking dishes. Bring 5 quarts water to a boil in a large pot. Meanwhile have all ingredients, meat sauce, Bechamel and cheeses standing by. Prepare an ice bath next to the pasta pot using another wide baking dish or oven pan filled halfway with water and kept cold with an ice brick (the kind you use in the picnic cooler).

When the water reaches a boil add 2 tbsp. salt and stir. Working with no more than 3 or 4 sheets at a time drop them in the boiling water and stir gently to prevent sticking. No need to add oil. It has no effect on sticking whatsoever despite the claims. After about 2 1/2 minutes, more if the sheets are very dry to start, remove them and drop them into the ice bath. Better to undercook than overcook. Shake off excess water and place them on a kitchen towel to drain before starting the layers in the baking dishes. Cover the bottom of the first baking dish first with meat sauce then start adding cooked pasta sheets to form the first layer. Top with Bechamel, cheese and additional sauce and repeat the process until the dish is nearly topped off. Do the same with the second baking dish making sure the top layer has sauce – just sauce and cheese, leaving out the bechamel.

At this point the baking dishes can be refrigerated. For serving, at around 2 hours ahead remove the baking dishes from the refrigerator and allow them to reach room temperature. Then place the dishes in the oven preheated to 350 degrees. Cook for 40 – 45 minutes or until the top layer just begins to bubble up and the cheese is starting to brown. Covering with a sheet of aluminum foil during cooking is ok as long as the foil does not touch the sauce and cheese top layer. For the final 10 minutes the foil should be uncovered. Remove from the oven and let everything cool till just warm to the touch.

Serve with additional sauce and grated Parmesan cheese on the side (the Italians don’t do any such thing but so what!) . Take a bow.

January 21, 2011February 23, 2013

Rhymes With Milwaukee

gnocchi I know there are hundreds, maybe thousands of high profile dishes around the world whose correct pronunciation is possible only for native speakers of a language. However because “nokeys” seem to have become such a recurring featured item on the cooking shows and websites lately someone should blow the whistle.

The spotlight of course is on the potato, and specifically an iteration that combines it with flour and other ingredients to yield a tender, elegant combination of flavors and texture that can stand alone as an appetizer, a main starch course or a side accompaniment for just about any meat, fish or fowl one can imagine.

We are talking about a multi-purpose vegetable that, like the tomato is a centuries-old export from South America thanks to our good friends the Conquistadores. The potato has since been embraced by cooks all over the world as if it were part of their cuisine and culture from time immemorial.

Now for the language lesson. The pronunciation is NEE-YAWKEY. Rhymes with Milwaukee, not “Okey Dokey. ” Actually you need to pause on the “k” before going on to the “ey.” The translation from Italian is “dumplings.” Generically in whatever language the term applies to a variety of pasta-like items that are steamed, boiled or even fried with or without potatoes in the formula. Chinese pot stickers or steamed dumplings come to mind for example. Hungarian spaetzle is another. Gnocchi di patate, the subject of this dissertation, to which you are now riveted since you’ve come this far, is a popular variety of potato dumpling most widely found in the cuisine of the provinces of Abbruzzi and Lazio in central Italy.

Watching the TV chefs make “nokey” would lead you to believe that this dish is a snap. And so it is. A dish that will snap your nerves to be precise. Friends, this is one of those delicacies that has a very low tolerance for error. They don’t tell you that on the TV shows. In the pharmaceutical business whence I came we would have called such examples “critical dose products.” That means too little of ingredient “x” results in no medical benefit and too much kills the patient. To make it worse the margin between too little and too much is tiny. In the case of nokeys the “x” factor is flour.

Let’s just say that after umpteen attempts I have settled on a formula that seems to work every time for me. It is actually one that appears in Lidia Bastianich’s outstanding volume entitled Lidia’s Italian Table (William Morrow & Co., New York, 1998, p. 175). This recipe specifies 3 large Idaho potatoes per 2 cups flour “or as needed.” I like that qualifier because invariably more flour is needed than specified in the recipes to render the dough manageable!

Now for some controvesy.

First there is the claim that the potatoes should be boiled skin-on until tender and then immediately peeled while hot with the aid of asbestos oven mitts and a paring knife. The Italian grandmas will testify under oath that this step is critical and cannot be compromised in any way. Both my grandmas followed this protocol burning their fingers from time to time in the process. Willing to be branded as a heretic I say the potatoes should be very, very warm when peeled but not necessarily scorching hot.

Second, the question is whether to mash the cooked and peeled potatoes with a food mill vs. a potato ricer. Again the Italian grandmas will opt for the potato ricer, known to them as a “schiacciapatate,” pictured on the left, because it breaks down the potato more evenly and smoothly than the ham-handed food mill. Having done it both ways I proudly side with the grandmoms even if the proof of a difference is lacking. The food mill is really a clumsy tool for this application anyway. Next, I find that mixing the flour and potatoes after the riced potatoes reach room temperature is a better choice, having tried the recipe with cold riced potatoes and being disappointed with the result. TV chef Anne Burrell recommends exactly the opposite, claiming that chilled riced potatoes absorb less flour and result in a tenderer dumpling. The logic escapes me. The more water that evaporates out of the potatoes the less flour that can be absorbed. Chilling the stuff actually retards evaporation and keeps the unwanted moisture in place.

Finally, there is the question of added ingredients. After consulting the Italian websites I can report that Lidia’s recipe, surprisingly, is not duplicated in the Italian references. The main discrepancies are nutmeg and parmesan cheese, both of which are included in Lidia’s recipe but neither of which, as far as I can tell, can be found in the Italian sources. Curiously Lidia’s web site recipe for gnocchi dough, unlike her book version, also fails to mention nutmeg or cheese.

My grandmother, the late Marietta DiDomenico, a card-carrying Abbruzzese, always included nutmeg but not the cheese in her recipe. I would say the matter is settled.

And so at last as a reward for your rapidly dwindling patience here the road-tested candidate for the winning recipe for “nokeys:”

Gnocchi di Patate

For 4 persons as a main dish or 6 as an appetizer or side:

Three large Idaho potatoes rinsed and scrubbed clean
1 or 2 large eggs (2 is my preference)
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 generous pinch grated whole nutmeg
1/4 cup imported parmesan cheese (not the item in the green can please)
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour or “as needed” (thanks Lidia!)

Prep time: most of the morning or afternoon

Boil potatoes starting with cold water for about 35 minutes or bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 40 minutes. Stab the potatoes with a fork to evaluate doneness. Then remove potatoes and begin peeling. Lidia says “the hotter the potatoes are when they are peeled and riced the lighter the gnocchi will be.” As I said I’m not totally convinced. But certainly the warmer the better. Run peeled potatoes through a ricer. Lidia says the ricer makes for “fluffier potatoes.” Once again the ricer is best merely because it is easier to use. There is no evidence on the planet to back up the “fluffiness” claim.

Spread riced potatoes over the work surface and let cool. You want to give the potatoes some time to lose moisture by evaporation and also to avoid cooking the eggs when you add them. Gather potatoes into a mound and form a well in the center. Pour the eggs, nutmeg, salt and pepper into the well and mix with a fork. Then knead the potatoes, the flour and egg mixture and parmesan cheese together by hand and don’t be concerned if everything becomes sticky. (I however become concerned at this point and reach for a glass of Montepulciano d”Abbruzzo to steady my nerves).

After gathering the dough on the work surface set it aside and scrape the board clean. Then add a little additional flour and work the dough into a uniform round ball that is still a bit sticky but holds together. Cut off maybe one sixth of the dough and set the rest aside covered with a damp towel. With floured hands take the cut portion onto the work surface. Now begin your fearless attempt to roll it into a snake by moving your hands deftly from the center to the outside while rolling back and forth at the same time. If you wind up with what looks like a 1/2 or 3/4 inch diameter garden snake you’re on the right track! This is where I celebrate with a second glass of Montepulciano!

The rest is easy, sort of. Cut the snake into 1/2 or 3/4 inch lengths (I use a pastry scraper for this step). Make sure all pieces are lightly floured and not sticking together. Then you have two choices: You can simply move the pieces to a sheet pan dusted with corn meal to prevent sticking, and not touching one another, thus calling it quits or you can put on your Abbruzzese baseball cap and form authentic old world “nokeys!”

You will do this by running the pieces over the tines of a fork with generously floured fingers thus forming the characteristic grooves you often find in the store-bought product. Or you can use a gnocchi board like the one pictured, thus forming not only grooves but a curled sea shell shape guaranteed to hold whatever sauce you put on it.

The gnocchi can be frozen on a flat baking sheet that fits in the freezer and then once hardened, transferred to a zip lock for future use.

For serving boil gnocchi in salted water, and once they float to the top drain in a colander. If previously frozen there is no need to defrost before coooking. Serve immediately with marinara tomato sauce, meat sauce, parmesan cream sauce, bechamel or whatever other sauce you like with pasta dishes.

When all is done, if you get this right, you will never regret having run the gnocchi gauntlet!

After which you are entitled to yet another glass of Montepulciano.