On Dumplings and Cousins

I've mentioned before that professional cooking is about numbers. How many portions of fish did you get from that salmon? How many olives per chicken garnish? Have we enough beef cheeks to last the weekend? All this purposeful counting leads to unintentional counting. I find myself counting along as I peel potatoes, or shell prawns, or dice tomatoes. This habit is mostly annoying, especially when I do it aloud, because no one, myself included, cares how many carrots I've peeled. I would definitely rather not know how many gnocchi I've made in my cooking career. (In case you are wondering, it's a shitload.)

If I'm making them, someone is eating them. Lots of them, in fact. Gnocchi, in whatever form I've served it over the years, is always one of the most popular dishes on my menu. A quick bit of googling reveals a near-infinite list of gnocchi recipes on the internets. Browsing through a page or two I'm struck by one common element: every recipe calls for potato.



But that, I can hear you say, is what gnocchi are made of; you mix potato (usually roasted, sometimes boiled), with flour and cheese to make a dough, roll it into little balls and boil them until they are cooked. That's how you make gnocchi.

Well, it the most popular, modern method, anyway. Gnocchi is a generic term for a dumpling, and can be made from any type of dough. Some gnocchi are made from nothing more than flour and water. Italians have been making gnocchi since Roman times, when they adopted the Middle Eastern habit of blanching paste made from flour and water. In fact, pasta and gnocchi share a common history, and it is difficult to tell sometimes what should be classified as pasta and what gnocchi. Potato gnocchi, obviously, didn't exist on the peninsula until well after the introduction of spuds to the Old World in the 1500s.

For whatever reason, the potato variety is clearly the most popular, meaning that many of the other versions are rarely served.

One such is the French version: gnocchis à la parisienne. These dumplings are made not of potato but a savory choux pastry. They are airy and light, much less stodgy than even the best example of their potato cousins. And like their counterparts, they are infinitely versatile. You can brown them up in a bit of butter and they'll be delicious, or you can create with them an accompaniment to any meal.



If you like potato gnocchi at all, you've got to try these.

Gnocchis à la Parisienne

Not only are choux pastry gnocchi lighter than most other forms of the dumplings, they are much easier to make, and require lass of a cleanup; no roasting of potatoes, rolling of dough, flour everywhere. Joy.

I've flavored these with lemon thyme, but you can use most any herb.

180ml water
90g unsalted butter
½ Tbsp salt flakes
120g flour
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp chopped lemon thyme
½ tsp cracked black pepper
25g parmesan, grated
3 eggs + 1 yolk

In a medium saucepan, bring the water, butter and salt to a simmer. Whisking, add the flour. Stir with a wooden spoon until a dough forms and pulls away from the sides and bottom of the pot. Reduce the heat to low and continue working the dough in the pot for about 3 minutes, allowing some of the moisture in the dough to evaporate. Remove from the heat and transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Stir in the mustard, thyme, and pepper. When these are well incorporated, add the cheese. Stirring constantly, add the three eggs one at a time, making sure each is completely mixed in before adding the next.

When the three eggs have been mixed in the dough should be sticky and soft, but not slack. If it seems too firm, add the additional yolk.

Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with a 1cm nozzle and rest. (The dough, not your arm).

While the dough is resting, bring a large pot of water to the boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer. Holding the nozzle over the edge of the pot squeeze the dough out and, using a knife, cut little dumplings into the boiling water. Cook about 30 gnocchi at a time.

When the dumplings float, give them a further 2 or 3 minutes to cook and then remove them with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels.

Once all the gnocchi are cooked, refrigerate for at least half an hour before finishing.

To finish the gnocchi, heat a pan on medium-high heat, add a touch of oil or butter and sauté until browned and puffy.

You can serve these dumplings as you would any gnocchi dish. Here I rendered some speck, sautéd some zucchini, and then browned the gnocchi in some of the reserved speck fat. Yum.