Mar 12, 2011

February KTC event: Gnocchi-palooza by Meg and Anne!

Whew! It feels like I just published January’s update, and March’s KTC event is already this afternoon!!

So let’s see…We Kissers met in February at Meg’s house, where Meg and Anne were hosting the ”Gnot Your Gnormal KTC” event. The theme of the evening would be, as you may have surmised already, gnocchi.

We arrived in the afternoon, and saw the scene had been set. Anne and Meg had organized (and posted!) a fabulous-sounding plan: Three kinds of gnocchi, three sauces, a salad, and something delightful for dessert.


Our special guest of the evening was Meg’s dearest friend Donna, beautifully described by Meg as “…my bestest-bestest friend and mother of the two most talented, smartest, cutest and lovable godsons.” So the bar was high! Would Donna enjoy the gnocchi? Would she even like us? We
needn't have worried, though, as we were as tickled to see her as she was to see us:


Seems that these delightful little bowls were gifts to Meg from Donna, who’d bought them in France. Joyce organized this display to show them off a bit!


Meg got us started zesting citrus and slicing fennel for the salad – that way, we’d have the rest of the time to get down and dirty with the gnocchi part.

While there were plenty of tasks, there was still time to mug for the camera – have a look at these beauties!








Meg had won approximately 403,514 shower caps in a recent neighborhood event, and passed some on to Shawn. Shawn decided to see if the blank-eyed shower-cap lady’s stare might be less disturbing if placed atop an actual human body. You can see for yourself that the answer to that query is a resounding “No.”


We sliced up the fennel and red onion, and mixed it up with orange juice and zest…


Once the salad was prepared, William shared some information about the difference between gnocchi and gnudi. We listened attentively as he described how gnudi have hardly any flour at all, and the benefits of roasting your potatoes for gnocchi-making instead of boiling or steaming them.





Next, we needed to pick a station and get down to business. One look around told us that we would be making all sorts of interesting goodies. First, there were the fixin's to make Saffron Gnocchi with Tomato-Leek Sauce:



 

Next, we planned for Epicurious' basic gnocchi recipe:

And lastly, Martha's Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Drunken Prunes and Amaretti:
For such a daunting task, we prepared ourselves mentally in different ways. Frank gulped down the rest of his champagne and relaxed…

Rick laughed at Fernando’s jokes…

Meg loosened up Joyce’s shoulders for all the potato-pushing that we’d soon be doing…

I’m not sure how many pounds of potatoes Meg and Anne cooked, but here are some of them, pre-riced for our KTC convenience:


This shot is just in case you ever wondered why it was called a potato “ricer” – it really does look just like rice!

Shawn had some fun with Meg’s new copper pan.

The sweet potato puree was REALLY wet. But this photo is cool because it looks like a giant egg on the counter. Maybe an smallish unborn stegosaurus?

Of course, we needed to add actual chicken eggs to make the gnocchi.

But once we added the maple syrup to the mix, it just looked sort of anti-natural for some reason.

Speaking of eggs, Meg really got into the process of cracking eggs for our gnocchi, and ended up mistakenly tossing the usable egg right into the compost bin instead of tossing its shell. Hee hee!

Meanwhile, the saffron gnocchi team was tearing it up. They chopped herbs and grated cheese:

Saffron-laden eggs make this pile of riced potato look like a giant egg, too.

The trick, we learned from William and from Anne and Meg’s research, was to NOT overmix. Overmixing will lead to a tough result instead of teeny bites of pillowy softness. Saffron gnocchi’s team got started really well:

Looks like it must have tasted pretty good, too, based on these two “Oops! You caught me!” faces!

And the “plain ole’ gnocchi” [and/or gnudi - I wrote this entire post and somehow forgot the gnudi!!] team also seemed to be rolling right along:
 

Unfortunately, the sweet potato gnocchi recipe was turning out to be a little more difficult to work with. Here, about half the flour was already incorporated, and the dough was still waaaaay too wet:

We just kept adding more flour, and tried to be as gentle as possible with it, but in the end, all we could really do was laugh about our soggy sweet potatoes.

The other groups had already moved on to rolling, cutting, and pressing with a fork or gnocchi board. 
Here’s Jessica and Fernando hard at work:
 

Frank and Rick had great luck, too – note the perfectly formed gnocco being passed over for admiration in the upper-right corner!

Joyce presents the magic of the gnocchi-board:

And Frank and Rick demonstrate their forking talents:

Anne gets a much-needed massage - After all, forking and rolling is hard work!

And Shawn and Meg finally added enough flour to begin rolling.

The dough was still super soft and sticky, and Shawn, bored with adding flour and scraping, tried to make a long cowboy-style moustache out of a roll of the dough, but you’ll see that it didn’t go so well.

But, as you know, no one can accuse Shawn of being a quitter. She made due with the moustache bits she had left. Sort of.

What a nice-looking group! Joyce’s “Snap it from a chair” technique is one we should use at all our meetings – everyone looks nice! Must be more fun to be a tall person if everyone looks fabulous from the higher vantage point…

In any case, the sweet potato gnocchi saga continued. Shawn and Meg made some progress.

Joyce displays the bounty to be achieved by maintaining perfect gnocchi-rolling posture:

And still we rolled…
 

And rolled…

And something really strange happened. All that dough manipulation apparently made Rick feel punchy. I’m not able to explain this photograph, so I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. I’ll just say that this somehow looked even more vulgar in person.

Finally, we could say, “I can’t believe we rolled the whole thing!”
 
 

We ended up with three distinctive kinds of gnocchi. Clockwise from top are (surprise!) the sweet potato, the traditional potato, and the saffron gnocchi. [Again, my apologies - I forgot the gnudi!  Boo!]

Our work wasn’t over, though – we still needed to make sauces! I ducked in for a bathroom break, where I met Meg’s new chickens, who were living in makeshift housing in Meg's bathtub. There they are under the screen!

I’m pretty sure this one stood up and said, “Who the hell are you? And why do you have sweet potato residue all over your face?”

One sauce had Marsala wine and prunes in it, doesn’t it sound divine?
 

Isn’t it beautiful?

We crushed up some amaretti cookies too, to garnish this sauce and give it a bit of textural interest.

We chopped some onions and leeks…
And put it on to cook down…

We added some Marzano tomatoes, lovingly crushed by (I think?) Meg’s capable hands.

After cooking a while, it looked like this. Yum!

Shawn did a little sage chiffonade…

 


Then we browned some butter…

Threw in the sage to crisp it a bit and infuse the butter…

And voilà. Yum again!

We had the sauce a-saucin’ – now, we needed to get the gnocchi in the pot, plate our aforementioned fennel-orange salad, and set the table. We began at the beginning.

Gnocchi went into pots of simmering water. When they floated to the top, they were done, and we fished them out with a spider.

We plated the salad, which looked absolutely stunning…Dressing was simply cream with lemon juice – and it was a gorgeous interplay of flavors.

We set the table…

And settled in…

Who’s hungry?

Well, now that I’m nearly to the end of writing all about our meal, I realize I forgot there were FOUR varieties – must have been sweet potato, saffron, potato, and then ricotta-based gnudi. Is that right? Terribly sorry for the confusion! I don’t know who did what – you guys can duke it out later this afternoon or comment below and I can update. Let’s raise a glass to short-term memory loss, woo-hoo! Ahem.

Back to business. FOUR varieties of goodies:
Served with three sauces. Clockwise from top, tomato and leek sauce, gnudi (naked! Oh my!), sweet potato gnocchi served with amaretti and parmesan, the prune and marsala sauce, another gnocchi (herbs? How did I get them all mixed up?) with parmesano, browned butter and sage sauce, and the saffron gnocchi with a touch of cheese.

Dinner and its deliciousness made everyone happy, but this photo was actually taken in a role-play setting in which Joyce informed William that his molar wasn’t worth a damn, and couldn’t be saved. Or something like that!

The proverbial pièce de résistance was next in the form of dessert. A mystery dessert! We were all so intrigued—what would it be?

Feast your eyes on this chocolate soufflé!

We decorated our tiny soufflés with freshly-whipped cream, and some were staid.

Some were rococo.

Others were more whimsical.

But all of them were delicious!


Once again, a rousing success! My apologies again for the oversights, but since we meet again TODAY, I think I’ll just leave things as they are for now. But do let me know if you’d like me to update and correct!


Many thanks again to Meg's special friend (and ours!), Donna, for joining us!


See you after while, kissers!

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