This is Joe:He comes replete with thick moustache, strong accent, and a plethora of prostitute jokes. Joe is the resident Italian stereotype at my community center and I can't think of anybody who doesn't love having him around. His description of our relationship? "A-marry on a-Saturday, a-honeymoon on a-Sunday. A-Monday? Deevorce."
He's always bringing us goodies like apricot cake, home-brew wine, and biscotti so I figured that he was good in the kitchen. Last week I asked Joe if he could show me how to make gnocchi because I've always found the store-bought stuff to be pretty vile. Although this nonno cooks the dumplings in tomato sauce for his grandkiddies, I'm serving mine with pesto braised chicken. That's right, I'm whipping up a two-fer in order to try and compensate for my apparent inability to post with any degree of regularity.
Gnocchi-10 medium-sized yukon gold potatoes
(he specified yukon gold, anybody know if the type of potato actually matters?)
-3 cups of flour + more as needed
-water as needed
Note: this will make a ridiculous amount of gnocchi.
Peel and steam the potatoes, once they're fork tender immediately mash them finely with a ricer. Combine the flour and potato and knead into a homogenous mass. If you need a little water or flour to improve the texture go ahead and kind of tinker with adding stuff slowly until the dough feels "right". The texture was akin to fresh out of the can playdough: holds its shape, but still quite soft and only moderately sticky. Joe says that the faster you work with this stuff the better, because the longer you wait the softer the dough gets (making it increasingly difficult to roll).
Lightly flour your work surface, twist off some lumps of dough and roll said lumps into snakes. Maria (Joe's wife) couldn't stop pointing out the fact that my hands were smushing the dough too much as opposed to lightly rolling it out so...y'know...don't do that shit.Once you've got your snakes all rolled out cut them up about 2 cm wide and toss in flour. The portion of this process that I was exceptionally terrible at was rolling the little pillows into slender curls. Maria explained that you use two fingers to softly press into a gnocco while rolling it towards you. I then proceeded to unceremoniously smush mine into the floured board. Er, I was then instructed to return to snake-making duty. Sigh. You might think this an uncessessary process, but the little nook you create helps hold more sauce once they're cooked.
Boil a large pot of salted water and cook these guys for 3-5 minutes, or until they float up to the top of the water. These are smaller gnocchi, suitable for a rich sauce like the one I will show you how to make next (buuut you can make them larger if you like).
Pesto chicken
-6-8 chicken thighs
(skinless, bone-in)
-1/2 cup basil pesto
-3 cups chicken stock
-1 1/2 cups dry white
wine
-a few sprigs of thyme
-5 cloves of garlic,
minced
-1 shallot, minced
-1/2 cup of half and
half cream
salt&pepper to taste
Start by patting your chicken dry with some paper towels and then season with salt and pepper. Put a large pan over high heat and warm up a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Sear the chicken in batches until the outsides are browned, and set the meat aside. I suppose you could use drumsticks as well if you had them on hand. I prefer thighs because their flattened tops tend to brown more nicely. Avoid chicken breasts at all costs; trust me, they develop an off-putting stringiness when cooked this way.
Fry the garlic and shallot in the oil until fragrant and then deglaze the pan with the wine and chicken stock. Add in the thyme sprigs (I just put them in whole and pluck them out afterwards) and let simmer uncovered over medium-high heat for 15 minutes or so to reduce a bit. If the sauce is a little too watery for your liking then by all means reduce it down a litte more and season with salt to taste if need be. Take out the thyme, add in the pesto and dairy, stir it up and then place the chicken back into the sauce. Cook it all covered for 10 minutes then set aside to cool. I suppose that you could eat this stuff right away but trust me when I say it tastes much better a few hours later.Serve by doling out a puddle of sauce atop the gnocchi and your favorite kind of veg. I know the gnocchi kind of look like little green slugs in this photo so I drizzled some tomato olive oil along my plate in order to gross you out a little less. Regardless: LOOK BAD - TASTE GOOOOOD!
