Archives for May 2010

To be honest, I was never a fan of gnocchi. I attribute it to a bad gnocchi experience at one of those pasta restaurants that claim to serve “homemade gnocchi”. The gnocchi I tasted back then was dry and bland, hardly worth remembering. Since then, I avoided gnocchi whenever I see it on the menu. My impression of it changed slightly after a meal at a pizza/pasta place in Sorrento, Italy. It was alot tastier, though it was still a tat bit dry. A week ago, I saw a cooking show on Discovery Travel and Living featuring a gnocchi dish. This gnocchi was made of goat cheese and ricotta and looked simply divine. I decided to try to make gnocchi from scratch soon, and today was the day.

I found a recipe on Epicurious that had rather good reviews and decided to try it out. Moisture, I read, is an enemy of gnocchi and hence the potatoes need to be baked, not boiled. How troublesome! Determined to succeed on my first try, I decided to take no chances. Four potatoes went into the oven for one hour. Next, I had to rice the potatoes. I didn’t have a fanciful ricer (those that looked like a giant garlic press) and so did it using a old-fashioned ricer consisting of a sieve like metal plate and a handle. After ricing, the potatoes had to be spread out and cooled till room temperature before it can be mixed and made into a dough. Here’s what the gnocchi looked after they were rolled and cut.

I made a pork mushroom ragu to go with the gnocchi. The tomato based sauce was extremely flavourful, thanks to the black pig ham, Italian sausages, porcini, white wine and a whole load of other stuff. A very satisfying meal indeed.

We had half a packet of brown rice left over from the paella attempt. I looked around for ideas on what to use it for and decided on this. It’s inspired by a recipe found on epicurious; I made several changes to it to suit my taste. The pilaf is really fragrant, thanks to the addition of porcini soaking liquid, butter and some cream. Lemon zest gave it that bit of zing needed to complete the dish.

(Serves 2 as a main)
Ingredients:

3/4 ounces dried porcini
1/2 cup hot water

1 cup brown rice
1 cup chicken stock
1 red onion (chopped)
3/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tbsp cream
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Soak porcini in hot water for 30 minutes.
2. Drain porcini through a sieve and reserve the soaking water. Chop the porcini and set aside.
3. Combine chicken stock and porcini soaking water in a pot and bring it to a boil
4. Add brown rice and simmer for 45-60 minutes until rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed.
5. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat.
6. Add onions and cook till translucent and softened.
7. Add the chopped porcini and cooked brown rice and mix.
8. Add in the parsley and lemon zest. Stir to combine. Lastly, add the cream.
9. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.

This is attempt one at Spanish Paella. The downside? I couldn’t find paella rice at the supermarket. Took the advice of one of the readers on epicurious and substituted brown short grained rice. Big big mistake. It takes twice as long to cook. I would probably use risotto in future, or head to Culina, to attempt to find the correct rice.

Even though the paella took much longer than usual to cook, and I had to change the method of cooking from oven to stove-top, it still tasted mighty good. If I had used the correct rice, it probably would have tasted alot better. Well, well, there’s always attempt two isn’t it?

The meats used in this paella were chicken and italian spicy sausage. The seafood were prawns and salmon (an attempt to finish using up the salmon from last week’s sashimi). Instead of paprika, I used espilette that we had bought from France. Espilette is a spanish red pepper. Here’s a close-up of the paella.

This is a really simple peranakan dish, even though it does require the preparation of a rempah. It is simple because, unlike typical rempah dishes, the rempah does not need to be fried before use. It is one of those “combine everything together and cook” dishes. I modified the original recipe, and added galangal and lemon grass to the rempah. I like the fragrance of the galangal, and the slightly citrusy flavour that the lemon grass brings. Since there is no frying involved, the oil from this dish comes from the chicken skin and the coconut milk added. If you are health conscious, the recipe from Mrs Lee’s book recommends that one removes the chicken skin and use skimmed milk.

I cooked and served this dish in a claypot for extra flavour. In fact, this would make for a great one dish meal when served with white rice. The gravy was simply delicious. Of course, since my mom was over for dinner, I couldn’t just serve this. We had this yummy chicken with some stir fried vegetables, and a simple steamed egg with dried scallops. The soup of the day was sharks fin melon soup. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photograph of this one.