SC - gnocchi (v long)

[Lee-Gwen]

- ----- Original Message -----
From: Angeline
> Does anyone know of a period recipe for gnocchis and where would I find
it?

>From "The Medieval Kitchen" by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, & Silvano
Serventi.

'"If you want some gnocchi, take some fresh cheese and mash it, then take
some flour and mix with egg yolks as in making migliacci.  Put a pot of
water on the fire and, when it begins to boil, put the mixture on a dish and
drop it into the pot with a ladle.  And when they are cooked, place them on
dishes and sprinkle with plenty of grated cheese." (Gu33)

'Nowadays the word "gnocchi" generally means either boiled balls of dough
made from flour, mashed potato (or even pumpkin) and eggs, or discs of
cooked semolina browned in the oven.  Nothing like either of these seems to
have existed in the Middle Ages, which is hardly surprising given that
potato did not arrive from the Americas until centuries later.  These
gnocchi are miniature dumplings made of flour, fresh cheese, and egg yolks
are cooked in boiling water.  The gnocchi in another Italian source are made
from flour, bread, and eggs.

[Authors' Redation]

1 1/4 (one and a quarter) pounds (600g) of cream cheese
1 1/2  (one and a half) cups of flour
6 egg yolks
6 - 8 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt

Mash the cream cheese into a creamy paste; if it is too stiff, force it
through a sieve.  With your hand, mix the flour.  Add salt to taste and
blend in the egg yolks, one by one.  Continue kneading to form a smooth
mixture, neither too firm nor too soft.

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and lower the heat to simmer.
Put the cheese mixture on a plate, and drop half teaspoonfuls of the mixture
into the simmering water.  It is quicker for two people to do this
simultaneously.

Cook for a few minutes, until the gnocchi rises to the surface of the water.
Drain and turn into a heated serving dish.  Sprinkle generously with grated
parmesan and serve immediately.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- -----

I haven't tried it myself - I did a cheese gnocchi once and found it more
trouble than it was worth - but this does sound good.  The recipes in this
book are (to quote the blurb on the cover) "expertly reconstructed from
fourteenth - and fifteenth - century sources and carefully adapted to suit
the modern kitchen".  About this recipe, the authors say:

'The text from which we took this gnocchi was edited in 1887 Olindo
Guerrini.  In the nineteenth century it was customary for scholarly Italians
to edit a short text as a wedding gift, preferably a literary or historical
curiosity.  Weddings thus gave senior gentlemen the right to contemplate
workaday matters.  At a time when history had room only for politicians and
soldiers, cookery could be nothing more than curiosity.  Guerrini presented
his edition of this culinary treatise to his friend and fellow professor at
the University of Bologna, Giosue Carducci - who was also a poet and a
future Nobel prize winner (in 1906) - on the occasion of the wedding of his
daughter.

'This text is contained in the Codex in the library of the University of
Bologna, where it precedes the treatise edited by Francesco Zambrini.  They
are at the end of the volume which, contrary to tradition for such
manuscripts, contains only literary and spiritual texts.  Like other texts,
Laura Carducci's gift book was written in Tuscan, although the editor
modified the spelling.  It is one of the collections written for twelve
servings, like the text edited by S. Morpuggo and L. Frati and like the
unpublished manuscript of the Bibliotheque de Cessole, Nice.'

Gwynydd (btw, all this information comes courtesy of my daughter who wanted
"to dictate".)