A few developments with regard to the food
I'm planning to bring to a New Year's Day party.

1. A friend who wanted to go, for whom I obtained
an invitation, has dropped out. My original plan
was to make gnudi, then the plan changed to him
and his wife making the gnudi, and I would make
wonton. After he dropped out, I thought I would
make the gnudi AND two kinds of wonton.

2. The eBay seller of the silver basket I was
going to use to serve the wonton has informed me
this morning that she forgot all about it, and
will send it today. She could have sent it a week
ago, in which case I'd have it already, but now
there's no chance I'll have it in time for the
party. Maybe that's for the best -- it may have
been too ambitious to plan simultaneous landings
on the Moon and Mars. One is difficult enough.
By the way, the silver serving tray with glass
insert did arrive. It's never been used before,
as evidenced by the sealed cellophane envelope
containing the handle for the lid and the attachment
screw, and the little bit of tape with a little piece
of gift wrap attached to the outside of the original
box. Probably a wedding present. Hope the divorce
went well! :-)

3. Lidia had a program on TV this morning in which
she made gnudi. I made copious notes, as well as
visiting her web site:

http://recipes.lidiasitaly.com/Produ...?productID=623

I note some variances between the program on TV
and the on-line recipe. No chicken stock was used
on TV -- only the gnudi water was used for making
the sauce. The TV show didn't explain anything
about how to prep the spinach, but the on-line
recipe goes into great detail. On TV, she only
once mentioned the herb used in the sauce, and
I missed it. The on-line recipe is explicit that
it is sage.

Variances from the recipe sf posted from Giada De
Laurentiis include the latter using frozen spinach,
not draining the ricotta before use, and using a
prepared marinara sauce. For sure, I do not want
to use any tomato-based sauce on my gnudi. Lidia
used a sage-butter sauce, and that's exactly what
I was looking for (but did not know it until a few
minutes ago). Thank you, Lidia!

"Mark Thorson" > ha scritto nel messaggio
...
> Variances from the recipe sf posted from Giada De
> Laurentiis include the latter using frozen spinach,
> not draining the ricotta before use, and using a
> prepared marinara sauce. For sure, I do not want
> to use any tomato-based sauce on my gnudi. Lidia
> used a sage-butter sauce, and that's exactly what
> I was looking for (but did not know it until a few
> minutes ago). Thank you, Lidia!

Lidia is a great resource. I often find her more authentic or usable than
Hazan, who is also very good, however. I find the little I've read of Giada
to be very Americanized.

--
http://www.judithgreenwood.com

Mark Thorson wrote:
>
> Lidia had a program on TV this morning in which
> she made gnudi. I made copious notes, as well as
> visiting her web site:
>
> http://recipes.lidiasitaly.com/Produ...?productID=623
>
> I note some variances between the program on TV
> and the on-line recipe. No chicken stock was used
> on TV -- only the gnudi water was used for making
> the sauce. The TV show didn't explain anything
> about how to prep the spinach, but the on-line
> recipe goes into great detail. On TV, she only
> once mentioned the herb used in the sauce, and
> I missed it. The on-line recipe is explicit that
> it is sage.

24 hours ago (a little more, actually), I cut up
a nice baguette into slices which have been drying
ever since, to be used in the "bread crumbs" role.

Today, I spent much of the afternoon inspecting
and de-stemming five bunches of spinach ($1.49/bunch
from the Chinese food store, but more if I bought
it elsewhere). Each bunch was cleansed in a
washing-machine-like motion in my salad spinner
with three changes of water, spun dry, and blanched
in a big pot of boiling salted water for 60 seconds.

I thoroughly shook off the water when removing
the spinach from the boiling water, and set aside
to cool. Additional liquid exuded during cooling
which I collected and drank. It was very good,
not bitter like you might expect. Very savory.
Wow. This might be a discovery of merit.

The spinach is now cooling in the fridge.
I had to get this part done this afternoon,
so I could use my salad spinner as a colander
for draining the ricotta. A variance from
Lidia's recipe is that I am not using
cheesecloth to drain the ricotta. I'm using
Viva Ultra paper towels, which are paper towels
so strong that you can rinse them out, dry them,
and re-use them, though I seldom do that anymore.
You can even use them as coffee filters, if you
run out of filters due to poor, incompetent
planning on your part.

Three pounds of ricotta are currently draining
on paper towel in my salad spinner in my fridge.
That may be more than I need, but I wasn't
prepared to take any chances. I'll be spending
not less than $100 worth of my time making this
gnudi, so taking a chance on saving $4.99 on an
extra pound of ricotta I might not need makes
no sense.

The current plan is to follow Lidia's recipe,
except with regard to the chicken stock. The
sage-butter sauce will be made as seen on TV,
not as described on the web site (i.e. using
the gnudi water rather than chicken broth).

The question which is tormenting me right now
is whether to use my chunk of Pecorino Romano
cheese in the gnudi. The recipe only calls
for ricotta and Parmasean, which I have in the
form of an American ricotta (Calabro brand)
and an Italian Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
My concern is that the romano could be too
overpowering for these other cheeses (mildly
overpowering would be acceptable, but I don't
have a metric for testing that).

My current feeling is that ricotta and parmasean
should be enough, and the risk of ruining
everything with a powerful sheep's milk cheese
just isn't worth the gamble. Now that I'm not
doing wonton anymore or fooling with cream
cheese, I look askance at the block of Romano,
like it was a piece of plutonium. The safe thing
to do is follow Lidia's recipe with no significant
variances.