The grilled cheese from Ad Hoc have been proclaimed around our house several times as being the greatest grilled cheese ever. I don't know if I would necessarily say ever, being that I haven't tried that many different types of grilled cheese. But they are definitely good. Unlike the recipe, I make them on sourdough bread, as everyone enjoys them and I think it fits well with the gruyere cheese the recipe calls for.
Here's the entire process: put gruyere cheese in between bread (I also cut the bread in half), heat butter in a skillet, place bread with cheese in the skillet till it browns on the bottom, flip it, brown the other side, take it out of the skillet and put a little melted butter on both sides (so incredibly healthy), and put in the oven at 350 degrees till the cheese melts. That's it. Do this, and everyone will proclaim you to have made the greatest grilled cheese in the history of mankind.
----
On to the gazpacho. There's nothing difficult at all about The French Laundry's gazpacho recipe. It involves cutting up onions, bell pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, and garlic, and putting it, along with tomato juice, tomato paste, olive oil, salt, white vinegar, thyme, salt, lemon juice, and cayenne in a bowl, and putting it in the fridge overnight. And since I'm sure you all like pictures, here's the ingredients:
I made it slightly more labor intensive for myself because the grocery store only had tomato juice from concentrate. I'm not a fan of using things from concentrate, so I proceeded to make my own tomato juice by blending some tomatoes and straining them through my chinois to make the juice. Yeah, I know I could have done it the easy way and just bought some, but where's the fun in that?
The gazpacho will sit overnight in the fridge, and tomorrow I will conclude the gazpacho with Part 2, which will also involve making the balsamic glaze the book calls for to complement it.
----
Gnocchi. Gnocchi, gnocchi, gnocchi.
It's pretty fun to say, isn't it?
Well..it's pretty freaking time consuming to make when you've never made it before. Especially when the recipe ends up yielding 20 dozen of them. Yes, that's 240 total. I got so tired of rolling and boiling those suckers that I gave up around 200 and still have a ball of gnocchi dough in my freezer that I can use to make some more later. It's my fault though, I shouldn't have started making them so late.
So on to the whole process.
You start with these:
Bake them in the oven like you would when you want to make baked potatoes. Get them all nice and soft on the inside. Then, when they're done baking, take them out and scoop out the inside, like so:
That wonderful white and green contraption in the background is my new potato ricer I bought specifically to use for this recipe. And this is how it works: Potatoes go in, you squeeze the handles together, and potatoes come out looking like this:
After that, you make a well in the center of your newly riced potatoes, add some flour, several egg yolks, some more flour, and salt.
Then you mix it all together really fast with a dough scraper. And when I say fast, I mean...FAST. In all capitals, that way you know I mean business. Actually, Keller says it should take no more than 15-30 seconds, and you don't want to overwork it any more than that. Well, you can picture me frantically chopping away at this mixture with a dough scraper, trying to get it all mixed within a matter of seconds. It wasn't pretty....potato, flour, and egg ended up all over. Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but I did have quite a few bits go flying.
After getting it all mixed up, you roll it into a ball, break off a piece, and roll it out into a "snake" (Keller's wording, not mine).
The picture's kind of blurry, but you get the idea. That's what happens when you try to take a picture with dough-covered hands. Next, you cut the dough into smaller pieces.
Then, roll each piece into a ball, and use the back of a fork (or gnocchi spoon, which I didn't have) to roll the pieces into the traditional gnocchi shape, with grooves and everything.
So my gnocchi rolling skills need improvement. At least Ive got more dough in the freezer to practice with. The gnocchi then go into boiling water, and boil until they float. Once they float, they are plunged into ice water to cool for a couple minutes, then drained on paper towels, and placed on parchment paper on a tray or cookie sheet, and frozen. Once they are completely frozen, they will be put into smaller plastic bags, and available to use anytime I feel like. Which might be tomorrow....we'll see.
So there's the gnocchi. Next up with be Gazpacho Part 2, including the balsamic glaze.
No comments:
Post a Comment