It’s a bad habit, but I’ve got a lot of books on the go right now. I finally finished one, Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food, by Raymond Sokolov. The thought makes me cringe. That is, to steal your way into a place and to sneak away with a menu. It was advice given to Sokolov early in his career, and one he took to heart, to help make of his life the material for his columns.
The book was an easy ready, with maybe a first quarter easy enough to skip since it’s devoted more to his upbringing and less to his professional career. I especially liked his broad timeline of food going from what he refers to as medieval French, a focus on the table where everything is brought at once; to Russian, a focus on the platter and the new skill of concocting discrete courses; to the modern, and an intense focus on the plate. You could read this as a focus on the group narrowing down to a celebration of the individual. The one perfect plate, for that one perfect person.
Coming back after a week away, with the temperature starting to dip and the leaves just beginning to change, the last thing I want is fussy. I’m home and I want to celebrate the return by trying to cook the feeling I get coming back: I want warm, filling comfort food. Perfect doesn’t need to mean sophisticated or challenging, perfect can be just the opposite, simple, humble and nurturing.
Roast chicken is a popular go-to. It means an easy lunch and a soup on day two. But I wanted something a bit different this time. And I wanted something a little faster. I’d been gone, and didn’t want to spend more time hovering over a stove than I needed to (and of course I wanted her happy I was back, so had to do something to impress).
We settled on gnocchi. Rather than use potatoes as the base, we took advantage of a surplus of cheaply bought carrots, and topped the dish with a sage and mushroom brown-butter sauce. Quick to assemble, the meal still has a lot of rich, filing flavours, and the woodsy smell of the cooking mushrooms nicely fill a kitchen.
Take two pounds of carrots and boil them until nice and soft. Once they’ve cooled, squash them until they are nicely pureed. Leave them aside until they cool. In another bowl, mix ½ cup ricotta, 2 tablespoons of parmesan, 4 egg yolks, ½ cup white flour and 2 tablespoons semolina flour. Add the carrots along with 1 teaspoon of nutmeg. At this point, we found the consistency still too wet, so we added another few tablespoons of white flour. Salt
Working carefully with two spoons, make teaspoon-sized quenelles. Place them on a lightly floured baking sheet, then stash the whole thing in the fridge to set for an hour or more.
When you work up enough energy to get up from the couch, bring a pot of water to boil and gently drop in the gnocchi. Check on them while their cooking. They are dense and will sink to the bottom. You don’t want to have them sticking to bottom of the pot. They are ready once the gnocchi rise to the surface of the water. Rather than use strainer, I pulled them out individually using a slotted spoon, careful not to have the gnocchi lose their shape. Some of the cooking water was reserved in case it’d be needed when adding the sage butter. I opted not to use the reserved water, in the end, since it was orange from the carrots and I thought the carrot flavor would be overpowering as a result. Use your best judgment.
As the water is boiling, start on the sauce. Melt a stick of butter along with a handful or two of mushrooms (I used shitake) and some garlic, salt and pepper. A glug of white wine was added to plump up the mushrooms, in this case, and then six or seven sage leaves were torn up and added to the mix. Once the smell is nicely filling the kitchen, add the gnocchi and stir until the sauce has covered everything.
Serve your special someone, briefly consider your place in the Sokolov’s culinary timeline, and then enjoy. You’re home
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