Red and Green

I've been sitting here all weekend waiting for "Daisy" to strike with her mountains of snow - a snow to end all snows - to stop all traffic, be it land or sea or air, to send millions to the markets to stock up on non-perishables for the weeks-long wait for the snow to slowly disappear and life to return to normal. Still waiting. We have only gotten a drizzly sleet that is coating everything with a treacherous layer of ice. Daisy, you are late - no dinner for you!

And to further reject the white beast who did not bother to visit us in Munich, I made some lovely spinach and ricotta gnocci with a tomato sauce for dinner last night. It was a Marcella Hazan recipe rather than my tried-and-true Suzanne Goin. And I gotta say...Marcella whooped Suzanne's butt. Compared to the gnocci with wild mushrooms I made some months back from my ever-favorite "Sunday Suppers at Lucques," (which at the time I thought were divine) the spinach and ricotta gnocci were much lighter and tastier. On the other hand...they were also a bit harder to handle. The dough was barely a dough - there was no rolling out and cutting it into 3/4 inch lengths. It was more of a sticky gooey process of tentative shaping and hoping that it would all be ok in the end. But it was. They were lovely - little pillows of cheesy green covered with a bright tomato sauce. Looking forward to making them again. Total time to make? About 1 hour start to finish.

As usual, the photos do not do justice. Ranjith commented on Friday..."hey, Julie, I need to give you a photography lesson...your New Year's food looked great, but the close-ups were terrible." But if I got serious about the photography I guess I would have to transform this into an only-food blog rather than a technology and food blog and that...would be really strange! Because OBVIOUSLY technology should be paired with food.

Anyway, here's Marcella's gnocci recipe - gotta share this one. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
1 lb fresh spinach or 1 10-ounce package frozen leaf spinach, thawed (Euro readers, 10 ounces = 283 grams, I used frozen and it was just fine)
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon onion chopped very fine
2 Tablespoons chopped prosciutto or boiled unsmoked ham (I left this out - and didn't miss it.)
Salt
3/4 cup fresh ricotta cheese
2/3 cup all-purpose flour (I think i ended up using over a cup - I kept adding - just to get it to a reasonably solid consistency...)
2 egg yolks
1 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Whole nutmeg (I cheated - put in a pinch of pre-ground)

1) Cook the spinach in a covered pan with salt (VERY IMPORTANT) for about 5 minutes (I did about 3...) Drain it and squeeze all the moisure out of it, chop it coarsely (here's where i messed up - I didn't squeeze out enough water...but just resulted in adding more flour, so ok in the end...)

2) Saute the butter and onion in a small skillet until it is pale gold, then add the chopped ham. Cook for a few seconds. Add the chopped spinach and some salt and cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Take off the heat and let cool.

3) In a bowl, combine the spinach mixture, the flour and ricotta and stir. Add the egg yolks, grated Parmesan, and a grating of nutmeg (about 1/8 teaspoon) and mix with a spoon. Taste and correct for salt.

4) Make small pellets of the mixture, shaping them quickly by rolling them in the palm of your hand. Ideally they should be no bigger than 1/2 inch across, but if you find it troublesome to make them that small, you can try for 3/4 inch. If the mixture sticks to your palms (IT DOES), dust your hands lightly with flour. (I tried the flour, but that did not help. So instead, I wet my hands with water and then rolled them - and THAT WORKED).

5) Drop the gnocci, a few at a time (about a dozen or so) into boiling SALTED water. Cook them for about 3 minutes - or for about a minute or two after they return to the surface of the water. Remove with a slotted spoon.

Serve on a platter covered with your sauce of choice and sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese.

Yum.