Pumpkin gnocchi with chorizo, mushrooms and walnuts

Winter always seems to come late to my kitchen, it’s now heading into spring and I’ve only just now decided to bring out the big guns of autumnal flavours, deep earthy tones, rich in salt and fat, with a piquancy to warm the cockles.

I’m no expert when it comes to gnocchi, in fact it’s still a challenge I am learning to master, so instead of doling out advice on a subject I’m no authority on I thought I’d send you off to a good resource and a couple of recipes I’ve made in the past. Firstly there is Lucky Peach’s How to make gnocchi, an awesome article well worth the read, then my own small contributions, potato chip gnocchi and potato flake gnocchi. I made, or rather attempted, swore a lot, and cobbled together passable pumpkin gnocchi, but any gnocchi would work well with the sauce.

There’s really actually not much to this. Get a heavy based pan on a high heat, and add in a splash of oil and a knob of butter, when the sizzling subsides add in the cooked gnocchi and generously brown, but quickly you don’t want to develop too thick of a crust. Transfer to a bowl, or other vessel.

Get the pan back on the heat and top up with butter if needed, toss in the chorizo and cook to release the fragrant fat from the sausage, add the diced shallots and cook until translucent. If you’re going to add a little heat with chilli, sprinkle it in now, then add the mushrooms and brown. Just as the mushrooms are getting done, toss in the mint, rosemary and walnuts, cook until fragrant. Toss the cooked gnocchi through and add a splash or two of the cooking liquid to lubricate. Taste and season, then serve.

What you’ll need for the above.
Mushrooms, sliced
Chorizo, dice
Walnuts, roughly chopped
Rosemary, pulled off the stem
Mint, thinly sliced
Cooked gnocchi
Reserved cooking water
Butter
Shallot, diced
Salt
Pepper
Chilli flakes

Ramen

Alkaline noodles

400g Flour
200ml Water
12 g Baked Soda*

• Dissolve the Baked soda in half the water (warm) then add the other half (cold). 
• Add the flour and knead for 5 minutes, it’s tough work rather like kneading a brick. 
• Wrap in cling-film, leave for 20 minutes at room temp. 
• Knead for another 5 minutes, it’s a little less brick like but still damn hard work. 
• Re-wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour. 
• Cut into 5 portions and run through a pasta machine getting it down to the 2nd thinnest setting.
• Either slice by hand or run through the fine cutter.

Cook for 2–3 minutes in plenty of salted water and give a quick rinse in cold water once cooked.


*Cook baking soda in a 120ºC oven for an hour.

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Pork Cheek

Pork Cheek
Ginger
Garlic
Chilli flakes
Katsuobushi
Oyster sauce
Cider vinegar
Soy sauce
Water
Tamarind
Rice wine
Fennel
Red onion
Celery
Apple
Parsley
Star anise
Bay

• Heat a heavy based oven proof dish over a medium high heat, brown the cheek all over.
• Add the vegetables, large dice, and all the liquids & spices, add enough water to almost cover everything. Place on a lid and braise for 2.5 hours at 130ºC.
• Cool, remove meat and refrigerate in a tight fitting container with some of the cooking liquid.
• Strain the remaining cooking liquid and refrigerate, when cooled the fat will solidify on the top, use this to crisp up the sliced pork cheek.

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Dashi

• Put 3 Litres of water in a pot, add 4-5 six inch pieces of kombu to the pot, bring to the boil cover and turn off the heat, leave it for an hour. 
• Add a packet of dried shiitake mushrooms, simmer for 30 minutes. 
• Scoop off the mushrooms and put in a container, cover with soy sauce, cool and place in the fridge (soy pickled shiitake). 


• Add a good portion of katsuobushi, about 1 cup heaped, simmer for about 30 minutes. 
• Strain, cool and refrigerate until ready to use.

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Soup base

Add a 50/50 mix of Dashi and pork cheek cooking liquid to a pot and bring to a simmer, adjust seasoning with vinegar, chilli flakes and salt.

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13 minute egg

• Bring a pot of water to 75°C, using a large volume of water will make maintaining a constant temperature easier. 
• Place eggs into the water and cook for 13 minutes, don’t use eggs straight from the fridge. Transfer the eggs to an ice bath to cool. 
• Reheat the eggs at 60°C for 10 minutes (run under the hot tap), or store in the fridge for up to 2 days. 
• Crack around the fat end of the egg, remove the shell and pour the egg out.

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Build the bowl
Add the cooked noodles to the bowl and lay on slices of the pork cheek, either sliced thinly cold or sliced thicker and grill to give it a nice caramelised side and warm through, pickled vegetables (ginger, daikon), soy pickled shiitake, chilli flakes or fresh slices, scallions, nori sheets and 13 minute eggs, up to you really. Gently pour over the soup base.

Popcorn Grits

Well I managed to stumble my way through my allotted 20 slides, when my turn came up at the City Market Visa Wellington on a Plate event, Pecha Kucha: Imbibe. I won't lie, I was a bunch of nerves standing on stage, all eyes on me, and my slides, mouth dried up, but words managed to flow, I think, although it is a haze, I managed a joke or two, wasn’t booed or humiliated, not suffering from PTSD, in the end it was a lot of fun, and quite proud to be part of the 14 presenters who took to the stage that night. Well on to the regularly scheduled blog post.

I hate waiting for packages, the ten days between seeing “item dispatched” on my orders and the package arriving, I find myself checking the mail daily with growing anticipation followed by soul crushing depression, until it finally turns up. Having a magazine subscription, I get to go through this cycle regularly. The termination of the latest hope-sadness cycle was with Lucky Peach finally landing on my desk, and trying so hard to not to flick through it during work hours, but as soon as I got home I started devouring it page by page.

Flicking my way through the lastest issue, with Americana recipes inspired by the film Diner, which I have ever so vague recollections about, I came across Daniel Patterson's popcorn grits (Lucky Peach, Issue #4, page 83), and I knew I had to make it.


Ingredients
½ cup Popcorn Kernels
¼ cup Oil (something neutral, such as rice bran, rapeseed or canola)
3 cups Water
7 Tablespoons Butter, unsalted
Salt, to taste

• Over a medium heat, pop the corn in the oil. Be very careful not burn it, sacrifice a few kernels if you have to, but if you burn it, or it smells slightly acrid, bin it.

• Bring lightly salted water and butter to a simmer.
• Add a third of the popped corn to the water and simmer for 1 minute.
• Strain through a sieve, reserving the liquid.
• Pour the liquid back into the pot, bring back to a simmer.
• With the back of a spoon press the simmered popped corn through the sieve, scraping the underside into a bowl.
• Repeat with the other two thirds of the popped corn.

• Put the purée into a pot loosen with some of the popcorn ‘stock’, I used almost all of mine.
• Season with salt.

It sounds like it’s a more effort than it actually is, it really only takes a few minutes to prepare, and it’s totally worth it, there’s something odd about eating something with the texture of loose polenta and tasting exactly like buttered popcorn, odd but damn delicious. I sautéed chorizo and field mushrooms to pile on to the grits, spicy earthy flavours to cut through the rich buttery grits.

Corn and mushrooms are pretty good friends on a plate together, corn sweet and nutty, mushrooms earthy and can be meaty and nutty, heck even nature puts it together, and man puts it in a can, à la huitlacoche the fungal infected swollen corn kernels.

Risotto

There is something therapeutic about making risotto, taking very simple ingredients, rice and stock, and turning them into a velvety pile of soul warming goodness. The more attention you give, the better the results, taking time to finely dice and slowly soften the onion or even better shallots, then toasting the rice, slowly stirring in stock one ladleful at a time, patiently waiting for each dose to be absorbed, helping release the starch from the grains making a smooth sauce.

Risotto is best simple with uncomplicated flavours, but it can be embellished to your hearts desire. I have two favourites I like to make at home, extra cheesy with a good squeeze of lemon, or like the one I’ve made recently, mushroom. I don’t always finely mince the mushrooms, as I have in this recipe, if I had something other than field mushroom I would make a simple lemon risotto and top it with mushrooms sautéed in butter. However, it was the ever so common field mushroom I had my hands on, so they got minced.

I don’t have any real quantities to give you for the recipe, but the ratio is simply 1 part rice to 3-4 parts of stock, plus whatever else you’re flavouring the dish with, in this case a handful of mushrooms. So, get a pot on the heat and pour in some stock, my stock comes from the freezer and I like to ‘refresh’ it by simmering with the stems and peelings of the mushrooms, maybe a handful of herbs and let it steep for a while.

While the stock warms up, finely dice an onion or a couple of shallots. Peel the mushrooms and remove the stems (putting them in the stock), place the mushrooms in a food processor and pulse until very finely minced, tip into a bowl and stir in a spoonful or two of crème fraîche.

Add a knob of butter to a sauté pan over a medium heat, add the diced onion and sweat until translucent, make sure not to brown the onions. Next stir in the rice, gently toast the grains, they will become translucent, but still have a solid white core. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine, when evaporated add a ladle of stock and stir, when the stock has been absorbed repeat with another ladle of stock. The rice will take 15-20 minutes to cook, it should still have a bite and not be mushy. Stir through the mushroom mixture and heat through.

Serve in warm bowls, I topped mine with some thin slices of cacciatore sausage, but served plain is good too, or topped with some chopped herbs, or a few sautéed mushrooms.

Buttercup squash Tortellini

Feeling ambitious after my recent success at making ravioli, I decided to try my hand at tortellini. The navel shaped pasta looked complicated, but after a bit of internet searching and YouTube watching, I was relieved to find out they appeared to be relatively simple to assemble.


The filling was made with some very slow roasted buttercup squash, very very slowly roasted. Cut a whole in the top of the squash, scoop out all the seeds and clean any fibres that cling to the inside. Drizzle in some olive oil, a pinch or two of salt and pepper, a couple cloves of garlic and finally stuff it full of tarragon. Replace the cap of the squash and place it in an oven set at 140°C. Cook for about 3 hours. You will notice, about an hour and a half in to cooking the cavity will be full of liquid, it needs to be cooked until all the liquid has gone. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

When the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh out into a bowl, along with all the stuffing, season the with some olive oil, paprika and white pepper. Mash until almost smooth, but leave a little texture in the purée.


Pasta dough is simple, two parts egg (by weight) and three parts flour, combine together in a bowl to form a dough, tip it out on to the bench, knead until smooth, wrap in plastic wrap and let it rest for half an hour. Then roll it out nice and thin, use a machine to do this, it would be very hard work to use a rolling pin. The above picture is a half of a 2 egg dough rolled out.


Cut out rounds from the dough, I used a 6 cm cutter.


Place a small spoonful of the squash purée in the center of the dough.


Fold in half, making sure to get all the air out and seal the edge. If it does not seal well use your finger dipped in water to trace around the edge before folding.


Fold over the flap.


Finally wrap the pasta around your pinky finger (flap on the outside) and pinch together. If you manage to rope in a helper, you can get through a large number quickly.

Cook in plenty of boiling salted water for a few minutes and then toss through a sauce.


We had the the tortellini with a simple mushroom cream sauce.

Sausage, pierogi and mushrooms

For the mushrooms: Remove the stalk from the button mushrooms. Arrange the mushroom caps stalk side up in a roasting pan. Place in each mushroom a couple leaves of oregano, a knob of butter, a few drops of red wine vinegar and a season of salt and pepper. Cooking in a hot oven (180°C–200°C), they should take about 10–15 minutes.




Insert some aromatic bay leaf and oregano in to the rolls of the sausage, cook in a medium-hot pan until cooked through and golden brown. Allow it to rest and fry the pierogi in the sausage fat.

Serve all together with some green oil and creamy mustard (equal parts of dijon mustard and sour cream with a spoon of grainy mustard.

Simple dinner

Sautéed potatoes.


Rump with red wine mushroom sauce.

Chicken in cream sauce, and a couple extras

Sometimes you can't be bothered trying too hard for dinner. Tasty bacon, farm house cheese, rocket, onion and mustard in a hot toasted bun.


Mint Julep, oh so tasty


Some chicken stock with mushroom stalks and peel simmering to extract the mushroom goodness


Mixture of shallots, diced mushroom, carrot and herbs sweating down


Browned chicken added to the mix and topped up with some of the mushroom stock


The liquid was reduced and finished with some cream to make a sauce. Served on top of crushed potato and celeriac and smothered in rich creamy goodness.