master meals, week 4: jody adams' gnocchi with mushroom fricassee

I have not been looking forward to writing this entry. Jody Adams may have broken our losing streak by becoming the first featured Master Meals chef to make it to the Champions round, but Nathan and I were less successful back in his kitchen. This was easily the worst thing we've cooked all year, including our blue cheese sauce disaster.

The recipe was for homemade gnocchi with mushroom fricassee, and it looked straightforward enough. Sure, I'd heard that making gnocchi can be pretty tricky, but I had done my research and I thought I had a pretty solid grasp of the process.


our gnocchi

Unfortunately, a theoretical understanding of making gnocchi will only take you so far, and we fell more than a little short in the execution. Instead of light, fluffy potato-y pillows, our gnocchi were dense, doughy bricks. It was quite a disappointment. I think that making good gnocchi is probably one of those things that you have to just develop over time, because I couldn't tell you what went wrong. My only thoughts are that I may have over kneaded the dough, and that it would have been lighter had I added more flour. The Jody Adams recipe used about twice as much potato as compared to flour than the other two recipes I was using as a reference.

Anyway, I won't pretend to give you any gnocchi tips, as I could use some good ones myself. I will, however, tell you a bit more about the mushroom fricassee, which was quite delicious and was the only reason I was able to stomach as much of the gnocchi as I did. We sliced and browned a whole pound of button and portabello mushrooms in some butter. We had to do this in two batches so as to not crowd the mushrooms, (a Julia Child tip). Then we removed them from the pan and sauteed up a shallot and a clove of garlic with more butter until soft. Then we tossed the mushrooms back in with a half a cup of marsala wine and let that reduce to a nice glaze. The recipe also called for fresh thyme, but we did without.

On its own, this mushroom fricassee would have been great. Adams poured reduced heavy cream over her gnocchi and spread the mushrooms, chopped tomatoes and parmesan cheese on top to bake. We used canned chopped tomatoes, which actually worked fine-- it was the gnocchi that were the real problem. They were just a leaden mess, and soaking in all the cream probably didn't help any either. Sprinkled with parsley, though, they actually looked pretty good. As we sadly learned, however, appearances can be deceiving.


not bad looking gnocchi

cooking in harlem/chez panisse lobster

dinner on 5th ave

That was the first meal Nathan and I enjoyed in my new Harlem apartment. I have to admit, after a long and exhausting move, to a kitchen with 18 inches of usable counter space, I wasn't in the mood to prepare a big meal. Instead, I breaded and fried some pork chops, an easy favorite of mine. I also cooked up the extra egg and breadcrumbs afterward, which is always a yummy extra treat. For the starch and the veggie I sauteed some spinach and cooked up some tortellini. This time, I went for something a little more unusual than tomato sauce: I defrosted the lobster sauce I had made some months ago while preparing an Alice Water's recipe for lobster stuffed cabbage rolls. We paired it all with a Jose Reyes branded Cabernet that Lauren and Grace had so generously given me. Yes, Jose Reyes has his own wine. Let's go Mets.

a great way to kick off cooking in my new home

Nathan and I had made the initial lobster dish for his mom and his grandma, who had previously given me the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook after we went to the restaurant for what was an absolutely amazing meal. When we tried to recreate Chez Panisse's amazing food in Chelsea, it was among one of the most time consuming and ambitious meals I had ever prepared. However, it did yield lots and lots of a very delicious and flavorful creamy lobster sauce, which was great over Borgatti ravioli, linguini and the tortellini pictured above.

As for Alice's cabbage and lobster, I think it was a particularly impressive meal, and so I've included the recipe, which Nathan and I followed pretty faithfully. However, Alice has a whole crazy menu with lamb and shit that she serves her lobster with as part of a four course meal at Chez Panisse. With a dish this labor intensive, that was obviously not happening. (As it was, we were cooking for four hours, much to Nathan's grandma's displeasure.) So, when Alice says it serves six, keep in mind that is as first course, not a main. We only accompanied our meal with a nice loaf of french bread, and it comfortably fed four, with lots of left over sauce.

So, without further ado:


Lobster in Cabbage Leaves with Roasted Peppers
(from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, published in 1982)
serves 6

lobster in cabbage leaves with roasted red peppers

The Cabbage:
1 head savoy cabbage, about 1½ pounds
Cut out the cone-shaped heart of a firm green savoy cabbage. Remove the outer leaves and blanch the whole cabbage in boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain. When the cabbage is cool enough to handle, separate the leaves and blanch them for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain them and dry them well. Cut out the large ribs of 12 leaves and blanch them for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain them and dry them well. Cut out the large ribs of 12 leaves and trim them into rectangles about 5 inches by 3 inches.

boiled alive

To Cook the Lobster:
3 lively lobsters, 1 to 1½ pounds each
½ cup coarse sea salt
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
1 lemon
10 to 12 black peppercorns
Prepare a court-bouillon of 8 to 10 quarts water, ½ cup coarse sea salt, 2 bay leaves, 4 thyme sprigs, 1 sliced lemon, and 10 to 12 black peppercorns. Bring the court-bouillon to a rapid boil and cook the lobsters in it for about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the lobsters. Strain and reserve the court-bouillon. When the lobsters are cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the tails and claws and reserve it. Remove the gravelly stomach sac and discard it; reserve the shells and the coral, if any.

dismemberment

The Lobster Bisque:
The reserved shells (and coral) from the cooked lobster
2 table spoons olive oil
¼ pound unsalted butter
2 medium carrots
2 medium onions
1 medium leek
1 celery rib
3 shallots
2 tablespoons Armagnac or Cognac
1 cup white wine
3 medium tomatoes
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat and saute the shells of the lobsters for 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and add ¼ pound butter (and the reserved coral). Cook over very low heat until the butter melts. Trim and dice finely 2 carrots, 2 onions, 1 leek, 1 celery rib, and 3 shallots. Add the vegetables to the pan and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Increase the heat and flame with 2 tablespoons Armagnac or Cognac. Add 1 cup white wine, 3 chopped tomatoes, and water to barely cover. Simmer for 30 minutes. Break the shells in a blender and force the shells and sauce through a very fine sieve. Let the sauce rest for 5 minutes to allow the butter to rise to the surface. Skim the butter and reserve it.

lobster bisque simmering

To Assemble the Lobster Packages:
The prepared cabbage leaves
The reserved lobster meat
The reserved lobster butter
12 chervil sprigs
The strained court-bouillon
Allow one half of a claw and one quarter of a tail for each package. Lay the 12 cabbage leaves flat on a worktable. Place the lobster meat, red side down, in the lower center of the leaves. Drizzle some lobster butter over each package and put a sprig of chervil on top of each. Fold the bottom of each leaf over the lobster, then fold in the sides and roll forward over the top of the lead to make a tightly closed package. Steam the packages to 8 to 10 minutes over the simmering court-bouillon.

cabbage lobster rolls in the steamer

The Sauce and the Garnish:
The lobster bisque
½ pound unsalted butter
1 small red pepper, roasted, peeled, and cut into ¼-inch dice
12 chervil sprigs
Reduce the lobster bisque by half over high heat and whisk in ½ pound butter, cut into bits and softened. Remove the sauce from the heat.
Place the lobster packages on warm plates and spoon the sauce over them. Garnish with the diced peppers and chervil.

Labor intensive, but undeniably delicious, successfully preparing this dish gave Nathan and me a huge sense of accomplishment. However, we did make a couple of changes and had a few difficulties which I guess I should make note of:

1. We did not trim the cabbage leaves into rectangles, which seemed overly fussy and a waste of perfectly good cabbage. I see no reason you should either. I also am not sure what savoy cabbage is, but I used a slightly purply looking one I had gotten from the food co-op, and it was just fine.

2. The trickiest step was breaking down the bisque in the blender. Alice says to break the shells in the blender, so we wasted a good deal of time trying to do this in a leaky food processor. Personally, I don't see the point. In our attempts to force the shells through a sieve, we wound up with some tiny tiny but still crunchy pieces of lobster shell, which was kind of gross. If I made this again, I would strain the sauce and remove the shells, making sure they didn't have any of the vegetables lodged inside. Then, I would go to town with my immersion blender. I probably wouldn't even use the sieve, although I'm sure it'd be smoother and more velvety that way.

3. We couldn't find chervil, which I must admit I've never cooked with, so I don't really know what it tastes like or if it would have improved the dish. I do know there were supposed to be chervil sprigs in each cabbage roll, and that fresh thyme sprigs were not a great substitution-- the stems are too woody.

4. We had spent hours getting everything done, and rolled and steamed all our little lobster packages only to discover that we should have been reducing the bisque by half all along. By this point, we had one very impatient and hungry grandmother on our hands, and bisque that was taking forever to reduce. We ended up serving it in a thinner, more broth-like state, without the extra half pound (!!) of butter. It was like a cabbage lobster roll in a bowl of lobster soup. I reduced the large amount of leftover broth the next day, and it was definitely better for it, although it was still really delicious and incredibly flavorful as we served it.

5. OK, there is no note five, but I felt strange leaving off at four, so let me just say that I'd probably just make the bisque part of this recipe and do something else with the lobster. I might just even eat it plain with melted butter. Yum. Or make lobster roll sandwiches, which I love. This is not to say that the cabbage rolls weren't tasty, but they did hide the beautiful lobster, and I'd like to try serving my lobster in a different way next time. However, I'd DEFINITELY use the shells to make the amazing and delicious bisque. So. Good.

not the liveliest lobster, but still slightly startling, right Nathan?

an old standby

spaghetti carbonara

One of the first things I ever tried to make myself for dinner was spaghetti carbonara. It is deceptively simple: just linguine, eggs, half and half, grated romano cheese, parsley, bacon, garlic, salt and pepper. However, the proportions of these things are extremely important. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my general tendency to wing things, which generally serves me well, often is my undoing when it comes to carbonara.

Unfortunately, this particular evening was a prime example of poorly proportioned carbonara-- dry, and short on bacon. Plus the problems were exacerbated by two less than ideal substitutions: spaghetti for linguine and a particularly pungent parmesan for romano. Nathan will disagree with me but I really feel that the creamy sauce coats the flat linguine noodle much better than it does a round spaghetti strand. That being said, I think that this linguine's biggest problem was the parmesan, which we got from Whole Foods. Normally, I use grated Romano, which is cheaper, but I'm always happy when restaurants serve parmesan. The grated cheese is a big part of the recipe, but with parmesan, it became quite overpowering. I'm not sure whether to chalk this up to simply adding too much cheese, or to the parmesan being more strongly flavored than the romano and therefore serving better as an accent than as a main component of the sauce. You live you learn, although that's not to to say it still wasn't pretty tasty.

I've asked my dad for the exact recipe for my own future reference and to also benefit our non existent readers. Unfortunately, even that's a bit sketchy on the exact ratios. What he's written down is a quarter pound bacon and "lots of garlic," one egg and four tablespoons half and half. I'm not sure how much cheese he uses, or even how much pasta that's for. I know he normally doubles those quantities, so maybe that is what he uses for a half pound linguini? Haha, I guess this is where I get my tendency to just add ingredients haphazardly without measuring. I will add that it is a good idea to reserve some of the pasta water to add to the sauce if you find that it is too dry. This probably would have helped me out on this particular occasion.

We accompanied our pasta with a fresh green salad that we made up at Whole Foods. This is generally a good plan for us since we don't have to buy a whole head of lettuce, which will often go bad before it is used up. We make sure not to add too many heavy toppings to keep the weight and by extension, the price, down. For example, we can make up a hard boiled egg once we get home if we so desire. Usually Nathan is on salad making duty, but on this night I took the helm. I used all three salad mixes they offered at the salad bar: spinach, arugula and micro greens, and topped it off with some red onions and plenty of croutons and blue cheese. I don't recall exactly, but I think we just dressed it with some simple olive oil and vinegar.


blue cheese salad

I'll leave you with a shot of the lovely Picket Fence wine that completed our meal, which Nathan got from his dad for Christmas. I won't tell you what our evening activity was that night, but the eagle eyed reader will take note of the subtle clue in the following photo.


picket fence wine