Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Chestnuts and Sage Butter

 

This was my second time making gnocchi.  Oddly enough, the last time I made gnocchi, I made it with butternut squash, which means I must only be up to making gnocchi when it contains a non-traditional ingredient.  Sometime I should try making plain gnocchi--gnocchi, after all, is a delicious and cost-effective dish that deserves to be made in its most plain state anytime!

I picked this particular recipe because it is so fall-like.  I baked sweet and regular baking potatoes in the oven until they were tender, peeled the potatoes, and then blended them with a bit of egg, flour, cheese, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Every time I watch someone making gnocchi on TV, I hear that it's so hard to make and so easy to mess up.   That's not necessarily true--my gnocchi came out perfectly pillowy and delicious.  I just think the preparation requires a couple of hints.  I think it's important not to overmix the dough mixture after the flour has been added.  This just makes scientific sense--mixing the dough forms strings of gluten and renders the gnocchi chewy and rubbery.  I think it's also important to know how to form the dough--if you don't know, and are endlessly fooling with the dough to get it into its proper shape, it's also going to get overworked and chewy.  But these are the basic things you need to know.  It's not impossible to make decent gnocchi at home.

Some recipes, such as the one I used, will instruct you to simply press a fork into a piece of cut gnocchi dough.  This is not the way to do it.  Texturizing the gnocchi is a good idea, since more surface area means more space to which delicious sauce can cling.  But just pressing a fork into the dough and leaving it at that will yield a flatly shaped gnocchi.  Rather, you have to use your thumb to not only impress the fork upon the gnocchi, but to roll it up slightly from the fork into an oval shape.  It takes a little bit of practice, but becomes easy after you've done ten or so.

To cook the gnocchi, you slide them into boiling, salted water, and cook until they rise to the top of the cooking liquid.  Then you transfer them to a pan of whatever kind of good sauce you have waiting.  I have had excellent gnocchi in plain marinara sauce, in bleu cheese-tomato sauce, in wild mushroom sauce, and more, but this time the recipe called for a sage-brown butter sauce.  Basically, I cooked some olive oil and butter with sage until the butter was browned, then tossed the gnocchi and some chopped chestnuts in it.  It was very delicious and seasonal dish.

Salt and Pepper Shakers: Georg's Gift to Me on our 5th Anniversary

For the fifth anniversary of Georg's and my fated meeting, Georg gave me these cute, loving salt and pepper shakers (among other things).  They are awfully cute hugging, but can also be posed in lots of other adorable positions.  I love them!  Thanks Georgie!

A Moment in Life

Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad with Lemon Tahini Dressing

When the weather starts getting cold, I find myself wanting to eat winter squashes all the time.  It just seems like the right thing to do.  I like spaghetti squash with herbs and butter, acorn squash with butter and a bit of maple syrup (and a splash of pumpkin seed oil if I have it), and butternut squash, roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, and a bit of spice.

This recipe takes spiced, roasted butternut squash (I used cinnamon and cumin) and combines it with chickpeas, onions, garlic, cilantro, and a lemony, nutty dressing.  I thought it was an interesting, new preparation for my beloved winter squash.

The salad is delicious warm, and though I ate it for lunch yesterday by itself, I could imagine it being very good and very beautiful on a bed of arugula.  I loved the dressing--the tart lemon and rich tahini are perfect for each other.  The raw garlic and onion in the dressing was a bit intense.  If I did it again, I'd roast the onions and garlic along with the squash to mellow them out a bit.

This preparation of butternut squash has traveled quite extensively throughout the food blogosphere; you can find the recipe here and here. 

Pastry Cutouts

This is kind of a fun thing for pies--pastry cutouts!  Instead of throwing away extra dough you might have, you can create a design for the top.  I wish I'd had some leaf cutters, leaves would have looked much more at home on a pumpkin pie, but hearts are cute too.

Beef Rouladen

A few days ago, Georg was requesting a dish from childhood: Rouladen, a dish with its origins in the German-speaking world. I had no clue how to make them and it was fun to learn!

I found this recipe on Food Network Canada, which seemed pretty reliable. You take thin beef steaks, smear them with dijon mustard, and roll them up with bacon, pickles, and onion (I used some garlic instead to accommodate Georg). Then you sear them, deglaze the pan with red wine, add some beef stock, and simmer the Rouladen for a couple of hours. After the meat is really tender, you remove it and thicken the cooking liquid with a cornstarch and water mixture.

The Rouladen were delicious. The meat was tender, the resulting gravy was richly flavored, and the bacon, pickles, and other fillings were an interesting addition. I have to admit that I felt odd about rolling pickles up in beef. In fact, as I was doing it, I was talking on the phone to my sister. I was explaining the process, expressing that I found the pickles odd, and she said, "just sounds like the ingredients in a really good hamburger!" That rationalization of the ingredients made me feel better.

Kraft's Vegemite iSnack 2.0

While in Australia, I saw a familiar jar in the grocery store. The label had the look of Vegemite spread, but when I looked closely, it said, "Name me!"

I soon learned that this was a new spread conceived by Kraft made creamer and tangier than the original Vegemite by the introduction of cream cheese. It was launched in July 2009 with no name because to drum up publicity for the product, Kraft held a nationwide contest in Australia to find a name for this "deliciously different Vegemite experience."

When I arrived in Australia, the new name had just been picked and announced. They named it iSnack 2.0. I don't believe there was any voting involved--I think the crowd just submitted names and the executives at Kraft picked one they felt best suited the product.

Simon Talbot from Kraft Foods said: "The name Vegemite iSnack2.0 was chosen based on its personal call to action, relevance to snacking and clear identification of a new and different Vegemite to the original. We believe these three components completely encapsulate the new brand."

That's an interesting viewpoint, but the public hated the name, absolutely hated it, and it's easy to see why--Vegemite is a nearly hundred-old, beloved Australian food product, and just because it's been mixed with some cream cheese doesn't mean it needs to be completely severed from its origins with a name like iSnack 2.0. I mean, iPod... iTunes...these refer to new, trendy technologies, not classic food products, and for iSnack 2.0 to refer to a Vegemite variant is just really odd and completely irrelevant. Besides, the whole ieverything thing is tired, boring, and is starting to get annoying.

So it's funny that the Kraft executives chose the name. But the Kraft executives can't be stupid; I'm sure they had a team of marketing experts carefully analyzing which name would be the right one to represent the product. Instead, they seem to have picked the name that would most outrageously misrepresent the product, inspiring public rage.

Smart! You should have seen all the newspaper articles and people on TV talking about how terrible the name iSnack 2.0 is. People talked about it much more than they would have talked about a nice name. The marketing team at Kraft must have known it would have been much more sensational to pick the wrong name for their beloved Vegemite than the right one.

Kraft let the drama fester for a short while, and then decided to dump the name. I haven't heard what the new one is. Meanwhile, the new Vegemite spread has sold more than 3 million jars in Australia, which is impressive for a country with a population of only about 20 million.

Anyway, I like the spread--the jar I brought back from Australia has lasted me less than a month. It's creamy and savory and a bit cheesy, and I really like a thin layer on a bagel in the morning.

Oh, and here's a fun website dedicated to iSnack 2.0 that I believe truly exhibits the level of public interest surrounding this whole ordeal:
http://isnack2.com/