Farewell Nigel, and a Round-up of My Favourites

If you've been following here for a while then you will most likely know that I am a regular participant and co-host at I Heart Cooking Clubs, where each six months our members elect a new chef with whom we will spend the ensuing six months cooking according to a variety of weekly themes.  You will also know that for the last six months we have been cooking with British cook, Nigel Slater, and this week is time to say our goodbyes.

This is always a bittersweet moment - a little hint of sadness as one journey comes to an end, tinged with the excitement and anticipation of welcoming in a new chef.  You'll find out more about that next week, but for now I wanted to share with you a round-up of my favourite Nigel Slater dishes of the last six months.

Warm Lentil, Leek & Lemon Salad with Prawns & Roasted Tomatoes

This dish was actually inspired by Nigel's "Lentil soup, with lemon, pancetta and mint".  It turned out to be one of those dishes which, in its entirety, was so much greater than the sum of its parts, and was not just every bit as good as I expected it to be, but in actual fact exceeded all my expectations.

Roasted Potato Salad with Black Olive & Roasted Garlic Gremolata

This was a dish which not only drew inspiration from Nigel, but also from my friend Toby at Plate Fodder.  Potatoes are par-boiled, then smashed and oven roasted with rosemary and garlic.  That in itself is a pretty good thing, but then the crispy roasted potatoes are drizzled straight from the oven with a mustardy vinaigrette, and then topped with a gremolata of black olives, rosemary, garlic and lemon zest.  A taste sensation, and the perfect accompaniment to the Sunday night roast chook.

Curried Carrot, Lentil & Roasted Tomato Soup

In many ways carrots are one of my least favourite vegetables, so I'd always been a bit dubious about carrot soup.  This stunning soup, loaded with red lentils, spicy curry powder, fragrant coconut milk and slow roasted tomatoes helped me overcome all my carrot soup fears!

Pumpkin, Date & Chocolate Scones

I turned Nigel's slightly savoury warm pumpkin scones into an ever so slightly sweeter treat with the addition of dates, date syrup and chocolate - just perfect for a leisurely Sunday brunch, or to accompany an afternoon cuppa.

Roasted Pumpkin Laksa

This laksa is perfect for a cold winter evening.  The sweet, soft, nutty pumpkin, silky rice noodles, crispy bok choy and bean sprouts, all bathed in a gorgeously fragrant, coconut-rich broth, makes for a symphony of flavours and textures.

Gnocchi with Chorizo, Gorgonzola & Spinach

This is the ultimate one-pan wonder.  A dish for those occasions when only a big helping of carbs, smothered in cream and cheese, and topped off with a bit of fried sausage, will satisfy, and just enough spinach to assuage the guilt - slightly!

Pumpkin Pangrattato with Merguez Sausage & Black Olives

This was easily my favourite Nigel Slater dish, and in fact one of my favourite dishes I've ever posted.  Chunks of steamed butternut pumpkin, spicy nuggets of merguez sausage, and black olives, are baked under a topping of cheesy, garlicky breadcrumbs.  Seriously, if you only ever try one dish from my blog, this would be a good place to start.

With that, it's time to say "Cheerio" to Nigel, and don't forget to come back next week to see who we'll be welcoming as our next IHCC chef.

If you would like to get to know Nigel Slater a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links ...

... or check out Tender, Vol. 1 and Nigel's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

Gnocchi with Chorizo, Gorgonzola & Spinach

For the first two years of writing this blog, I didn't have a proper kitchen.  I churned out all my meals using nothing more than a small toaster oven (just big enough to roast a chook, if you spatchcocked it first), a single hot plate, a Breville benchtop grill, a crockpot, and a kitchen bench the size of a postage stamp (does anyone remember those?).  Of necessity then, I became the self-proclaimed queen of the "one pan wonder", and a quick and simple one pan meal is still my benchmark of the ideal mid-week dinner.

At I Heart Cooking Clubs this week, we're all about "weeknight favourites", cooking up Nigel Slater dishes that are perfect for those nights when you have neither the time nor the inclination to come up with anything other than something simple and fuss-free.

Leafing through "Tender, Vol I, A cook and his vegetable patch", a simple dish of gnocchi with spinach, cheese and cream looked promising.  It didn't hurt either that the recipe was titled "A filling, carb-rich supper for a winter's evening".  Seriously, how inviting does that sound, and let's face it, who of us doesn't like to load up on a few carbs on a chilly autumn evening?!  And, although I rarely go in for creamy pasta sauces, once in a while a serving of those aforementioned carbs smothered in cream and cheese is a delightful thing.

As is my usual bent, I did make a few minor changes to the recipe.  Firstly, I added some chorizo because, well ... if you're going to have all that pasta and cream and cheese, you might as well throw all calorie-counting caution to the wind and throw a bit of sausage into the mix.  I also simplified the cooking process a bit.  Nigel firstly has you pre-boil vacuum-packed gnocchi in one pan of water, and steam the spinach in another pan, then assemble all the ingredients and cook them in another dish.  I say "fiddle-dee-dee" to all of that - I was pretty confident I could do all of this in one pan, and I think I pulled it off.  Fear not, between a bit of time hanging out in a saute pan and then half an hour baking in the oven, with plenty of liquid, the gnocchi will cook perfectly well without needing to be boiled first.  I didn't have as much cream on hand as was called for in the recipe, but I did have some creme fraiche, so I changed things up a bit there.  Lastly, I used quite a bit less blue cheese than called for and found the amount that I used to be more than enough.  Nigel says, that this makes two servings.  Personally, I found that this was pretty rich and satisfying and with a bit of salad on the side this made three decent sized portions - and, honestly, I have a pretty voracious appetite, so if I say you can feed three out of this you can believe it.  I really do recommend a simple but fresh salad to go with this, as it will help to cut through the richness of all that cheese and cream.

This is definitely not the kind of dish I would eat on a regular basis, but, like an itch that needs to be scratched, every once in a while nothing less than something so decadent and deeply satisfying will do.

Gnocchi with Chorizo, Gorgonzola & Spinach recipe
Adapted from recipe by Nigel Slater
from Tender, Vol I
Serves 3
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

2 tablespoons olive oil
1x chorizo sausage - about 110g (4oz), thinly sliced
500g (1 lb) vacuum packed gnocchi (I use De Cecco)
200g (7 oz) creme fraiche
1/2 cup cream
150g (5 oz) baby spinach leaves
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
100g (3-1/2 oz) Gorgonzola (or blue cheese of your choice), crumbled
freshly grated Parmesan, plenty of

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (390 degrees F).

Heat olive oil in a large ovenproof saute pan over medium heat.  Add chorizo to the pan and saute until golden and beginning to crisp.  Add gnocchi to the pan, and saute until the gnocchi are coated in the oils released from the chorizo (there's loads of spices and flavour in that oil), and beginning to brown a little.  Add cream and creme fraiche to the pan, and stir until the creme fraiche is melted and bubbling.  Remove from heat, season with flaky sea salt (not too much as the blue cheese will be salty) and freshly black pepper, add spinach and stir until the spinach is evenly distributed and wilted.  Add Gorgonzola to the pan, and poke it into the crevices around the gnocchi.  Grate Parmesan cheese liberally over the top.

Place pan in the preheated oven and bake until bubbling and golden - about 30 minutes.  Remove from oven and serve immediately.

If you would like to get to know Nigel Slater a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links ...

... or check out Tender, Vol. 1 and Nigel's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

I'll also be sharing this post this week at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the delightful Michelle at Ms. enPlace, at Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads, at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollum, and at Cook Your Books hosted by the lovely Joyce at Kitchen Flavours.

                                 

Italian Sausage with Gnocchi & Red Peppers

It's hard not to get caught up in Olympic fever.  Every time you turn on the TV or radio or internet, there it is - some captivating image of someone's jubilation in triumph or despair in defeat.  Of course, most of us here in New Zealand are by now suffering severe sleep deprivation, as most of the events are taking place in the middle of the night for us.  It's hard to go off to bed when you want to watch just one more race ... oh, hang on, just one more ... okay, this is definitely the last one - you understand the scenario.

Anyway, London seems to be doing a great job of hosting the games, and even if you are not a huge "sports nut", you can not help but find the skill and power, dedication and determination with which so many athletes participate uplifting and inspiring.

Of course, the games will always have its detractors, and as I understand it the location of the Olympic park in London's East End, and its impact on that community has not found favour with many.  One of the great tragedy's has been the loss of the Manor Garden allotments.  The gardens were established in 1900 by Major Arthur Villiers to provide plots of land for local families in a deprived area to grow vegetables.  Divided into 80 plots, a tight-knit community tended their allotments for over a century.  Although, many plot holders have been long-standing East End families, newer plot holders brought a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds to the community.

One couple to find themselves part of this community was Sam and Sam Clark, the couple behind London's Moro restaurant, and their book Moro East offers a collection of recipes that chronicles a year of life in this community garden.  With the gardens having been demolished in 2007, this book is a real treasure documenting something which is gone forever.  I have read that the gardens may be re-established after the games are over (does anyone know if that is true?), but in my mind some things can never be regained.  Anyway, Moro East is a wonderful book - I've borrowed it from the library on a number of occasions, and have it on my wishlist for adding to my collection.

So why am I telling you all this.  Well, apart from the fact that it's a story which I think is worth the telling, the recipe I'm sharing with you today is adapted from one which I came across in a recent issue of Cuisine magazine, and on reading the introduction to the recipe I noted that it was adapted from a recipe in Moro East.  And that is the end of the story.

Now, on to the food!!  This dish could not be simpler to make.  It is a one-pan-wonder which is totally my favourite kind of dish, both to cook and to eat.  I used gnocchi instead of the potatoes called for in the original recipe, making this a dish that can be knocked out in about 10 minutes flat instead of half an hour.  I was thinking to add in some chillies for a bit of extra heat, but then I noticed that my sausages were already seasoned with red pepper flakes, so instead I added in some red peppers, making this somewhat reminiscent of another of my favourite recipes from Lidia's Italy by Lidia Bastianich.  This needs nothing more than a fresh green salad on the side and a good glass of wine, to make a quick and easy dinner that is sure to become a real family favourite.

Italian Sausage with Gnocchi & Red Peppers Recipe

Adapted from this recipe in Cuisine Magazine

Serves 3-4 normal people or 2 gluttons

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

300-350g Italian pork and fennel sausages

1x red pepper, cored, deseeded & cut into strips

olive oil (approx 3 tablespoons)

flaky sea salt

500g gnocchi (I used De Cecco brand)

1x bay leaf

1-1/2 cups chicken stock

1/2 preserved lemon

1 tablespoon capers

generous handful flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Remove the sausages from their casings.  This is easily done by just running a sharp knife down the full length of the sausage, then peeling the casing away.  Then break the sausage meat into bite-sized pieces.

Set a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat, and add a tablespoon of olive oil.  As soon as the oil is heated, add the sausages pieces.  Move them around in the pan from time to time, and when they look as though they are half-cooked, add the red pepper strips.  Sprinkle with a small pinch of flaky sea salt (be restrained, as there will be saltiness from the sausages, chicken stock and preserved lemon), and continue cooking until the sausages are brown and crispy and the peppers softened.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add another couple of tablespoons of olive oil to the pan, and then add the gnocchi.  Stir them around to coat them all in the oil, and then fry for a few minutes to brown a little.  You will get bits that stick to the bottom of the pan, but those little stuck bits soon become little crispy bits, and they will all lift when you add the chicken stock and help to make the sauce.

As soon as the gnocchi have browned a bit, add the sausages and peppers back into the pan, stir to combine, add the bay leaf, and then pour in 1 cup of the chicken stock.  Stir and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen all those stuck bits, and keep stirring as the liquid thickens.  If needed add the remaining 1/2 cup of stock.

Remove from the heat.  Discard the flesh from the preserved lemon, retaining just the peel.  Thinly slice the peel and stir into the pan along with capers.  Sprinkle parsley over the top and serve immediately.

This dish ticks all the classic comfort food boxes, while the spicy heat of the sausages coupled with the little hits of preserved lemon and capers elevate it to something less ordinary than just sausage and potatoes.  I hope you'll give it a try.

Moro East, and other Moro cookbooks are available from Amazon in the US, Amazon UK, or Fishpond in New Zealand.

This week I'm sharing this post with at Gallery of Favourites hosted by April at The 21st Century Housewife and at See Ya in The Gumbo hosted by Michelle at Ms. enPlace.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with Sage Butter Recipe - Cooking Italy 6

For some unknown reason, I've always had a rather irrational fear of making gnocchi - I had managed to convince myself that they were impossibly difficult to make, that I would end up with something that either resembled bullets or, worse yet, would fall to bits when cooked and that I would be left with some kind of raft of horrible sludge bobbing around atop a pot of boiling water.

So when making spinach gnocchi was presented as an assignment for the Cooking Italy group, I thought it was time to face my fears and give them a try.  (Go and visit Angela at Spinach Tiger or view my Cooking Italy page to learn more about the group and see what some of the others have been cooking.)  To cut a long story short, our mission, should we decide to accept it was to cook the Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, served with a creamy tomato sauce.

Well, maybe it was beginner's luck, but I found these to actually be incredibly easy to make (a little bit fiddly maybe, but certainly not difficult), and the resulting little "pillows" of spinach and ricotta were light as air and never even hinted at falling apart. Despite the fact that I left out the onion (since we don't do onion in our house), these gnocchi were certainly not short on flavour - the ricotta is light and delicate, the flavour of the spinach is earthy and mellow, and then they were spiked with the sharp, salty tang of prosciutto (you could simply omit this for a vegetarian version) and parmesan, and a bit of freshly grated nutmeg pulls it all together.

I knew the creamy tomato sauce wouldn't be that popular in our household, and as I happened to have a nice bunch of sage on hand, I opted to serve these with Marcella's Butter and Sage Sauce.   This added a note of richness, and I thought made this seem rather elegant - okay, so my presentation in these pictures doesn't look particularly elegant - but I think had I served half a dozen of these in a beautiful wide bowl and drizzled the sauce over the top a little more artfully, this could have been a very stylish dish indeed.

Another thing that is particularly appealing about this dish is that every step of this can be prepared in advance, in fact the gnocchi freeze beautifully and can be cooked from frozen.  Getting them to the table is then a simple matter of boiling water, literally just 3-4 minutes of cooking time, and melting butter.  Perfect for making on a wet Sunday afternoon, and bringing out for a quick and easy week night dinner.

Spinach & Ricotta Gnocchi Recipe

with Butter & Sage Sauce

Adapted from Marcella Hazan's

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Serves 4

Vegetarian

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

For the gnocchi:

450g spinach, fresh or frozen

2 tablespoons butter

2 slices prosciutto (optional)

salt

3/4 cup fresh ricotta

2/3 cup plain flour

2 egg yolks

1 cup parmesan, freshly grated

nutmeg, freshly grated

extra parmesan for serving

For the sauce:

4-5 tablespoons butter

6-8 fresh sage leaves

First prepare the spinach.  

If using fresh spinach (which is what I used), remove stems, then soak leaves in a sink full of cold water, and swish around gently with your hand to remove any dirt or bugs.  Drain and repeat several times if necessary.  Drain.  Then, using no more water than what is still clinging to the leaves, put the spinach into a large pan, add 1 tablespoon of salt, cover, and set over medium heat until wilted down and tender.  This will take about 4-5 minutes.  Drain, and once the spinach is cool enough to handle, squeeze as much moisture out of it as you can, chop coarsely and set aside.

If using frozen spinach, Marcella says to "cook in a covered pan with salt for about 5 minutes".  Now, I can't vouch for this because I've never used frozen spinach, but I wouldn't have thought that this step was necessary, as I would have expected it to be already cooked, but I suggest that you perhaps follow the directions on the packet.  Either way, once it is cooked it needs to drained, cooled, squeezed to remove any moisture, and then chopped.

Next heat the butter in a pan over medium heat, then add the chopped prosciutto.  Cook just for a few seconds - really just enough to coat the prosciutto in the butter - you are not aiming for crispy here.  Then add the chopped spinach, a generous pinch of salt, and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

Empty the pan into a bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.  Once cooled, add the flour and the ricotta, mixing together well.  Add the egg yolks, grated parmesan, and a "smidgeon" of freshly grated nutmeg (about 1/8th teaspoon), and mix together until everything is incorporated.  Taste and adjust seasoning.

Roll small amounts of the mixture in the palm of your hand to make "small pellets", dusting your hands with a little flour if you find the mixture is sticking to your palms.  Marcella says:  "Ideally they should be no bigger than 1/2 inch across, but if you find it troublesome to make them that small you can try for 3/4 inch.  The smaller the better, because they cook more quickly and favour a better distribution of sauce."  I have to say that I didn't get my ruler out to check the size of mine, and I expect that mine were probably a little on the large side - but I'm not one to fuss, and I'm calling them "rustic".  I got 40 gnocchi out of this quantity of ingredients, and froze half of them - I just popped them in the freezer in a single layer on a baking tray till frozen, then put them into a snaplock bag.

To serve - bring a large pot of water to the boil, and salt liberally.  Drop the gnocchi, a few at a time, into the boiling water.  They will sink to the bottom of the pot, and then when they bob back up to the surface (which will take about 4 or 5 minutes) they are ready.  Using a slotted spoon, scoop the gnocchi out and place in a warm serving bowl.  Spoon a little of your chosen sauce over them.  Continue cooking your gnocchi a few at a time, adding each batch with a little more sauce to your serving bowl as you go.  Once they are all done, pour any remaining sauce over the top, and serve with grated parmesan.

For the Butter and Sage Sauce:

Put the butter in a small pan over medium heat.  Once the butter has melted it will begin to boil and foam up quite dramatically.  Be brave - the foam will begin to subside, and the colour will turn to deep gold.  Then add the sage leaves, cook for just a few seconds, turning them around in the butter, then pour the butter and leaves over the gnocchi.

I know that this is a recipe I will be making again and again - those bags in the freezer are so perfect to bring out when you need a quick dinner.

Available from Amazon, Book Depository UK, or Fishpond NZ.