Around My French Table (72 page)

Under the title of the recipe, Paule wrote, "a Caillat family classic," but my guess is that gnocchi à la Parisienne must have found its way into the classic category in other French families, since Paule's recipe originally came from Le Cordon Bleu. It was there, before World War II, that Tante Léo learned it while she was in training to become a
cuisinière en maison bourgeoise,
a cook in a bourgeoisie home.

Paule gave me this recipe one afternoon over lunch, and as she talked about it, she annotated it for me. Her little
trucs,
or tricks of the trade, are included in this version.

A word on timing: If you're not going to rest the dough for a couple of hours, you might want to make the béchamel sauce first.

TO MAKE THE GNOCCHI DOUGH:
Bring the water, butter, and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the flour all at once, and as soon as the water starts to boil again, remove the pan from the heat, even if the butter hasn't melted.

Using a wooden spoon, stir everything together well, then put the pan back over medium heat. Keep stirring energetically and constantly until you have a dough that forms a ball and leaves a light film on the bottom of the pan, about 2 minutes.

Turn the dough into a bowl or the bowl of a mixer and, with a wooden spoon or a mixer (either handheld or stand), beat in the eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg is fully incorporated before you add the next one. (Paule says that Tante Léo would mix 3 eggs and the yolk of the fourth, then she'd beat the egg white until it held peaks and fold it into the dough to make the gnocchi even lighter.)

You can make the gnocchi now (see below), or you can do what Tante Léo used to do: cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rest at room temperature for up to 2 hours.
(Alternatively, you can form the gnocchi, put them on a lined baking sheet, and freeze them; then, when they are solid, pack them into an airtight container and freeze for up to 2 months.)

TO MAKE THE BÉCHAMEL:
Put the milk in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat and heat until it is just about to boil. You want to scald the milk, which means that little bubbles will form around the edges of the pan, but the milk shouldn't boil.

Meanwhile, in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Grab a wooden spoon, add the flour to the pan, and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly so that the flour absorbs the butter but doesn't brown. (You're making a roux and cooking the flour to get rid of its raw taste.) Stir in the hot milk and, still stirring without stopping, increase the heat to medium and bring to a boil. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes more. Pull the pan from the heat, scrape the sauce into a bowl, and press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to keep a skin from forming.

TO COOK AND BAKE THE GNOCCHI:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate (a Pyrex pan is perfect) and dust it with the 2 tablespoons Parmesan. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, then lower the heat so that the water is at a simmer.

Drop teaspoonfuls of the dough into the water, and when the balls rise to the surface, let them float for a minute before lifting them out of the water with a slotted spoon and draining them on a kitchen towel or a double layer of paper towels. Do this in batches—you don't want to crowd the pot or lower the temperature of the water too much or too fast.

Spoon a thin layer of béchamel over the bottom of the pie plate. Put the gnocchi into the pan and pour over the remaining béchamel. Cover the béchamel evenly with the 34 cup cheese, then dot with the butter.

Slide the pan into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees F and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the béchamel is bubbly and browned. If the sauce is bubbling but the cheese isn't as golden brown as you'd like, run the dish under the broiler.

MAKES 6 MAIN-COURSE SERVINGS

SERVING
Gnocchi à la Parisienne is a dish that doesn't wait. As soon as it comes out of the oven, it should go directly to the table. Like macaroni and cheese, this needs nothing but a hearty appetite.

STORING
You can make the béchamel sauce and the dough for the gnocchi ahead of time (you can freeze the shaped gnocchi for up to 2 months—pack them airtight once frozen hard, and boil without defrosting). Once the dish is baked, though, it's meant to be eaten immediately and fully—leftovers won't keep.

T
ECHNICALLY CORSICA IS CONSIDERED
a region of France, like Normandy or Brittany, but when it comes to things culinary, it might as well have rogue-nation status. The island, afloat in the Mediterranean and separated from Italian Sardinia by a spit of water about as wide as a strand of fettuccine, is inhabited by people who have their own way of cooking and their own dialect to describe it and everything else, which explains why when Laetitia Ghipponi, the blithe spirit who helps make Bistrot Paul Bert such a remarkable place, told me she'd send me her father's recipe for
les storzapretis,
I didn't have a clue as to what she was talking about. It was only after a quick study of the ingredient list and instructions that I realized that what Laetitia and her father make is as close a relative as I can think of to ricotta gnocchi.

In Corsica, rather than ricotta, storzapretis would be made with
brocciu,
the island's own fresh sheep's-milk cheese. If you can find it—it's sometimes available at very good cheese shops in the United States—by all means use it; if not, choose a thick whole-milk ricotta, or allow your ricotta to drain in a cheese cloth-lined strainer for a couple of hours before you use it.

Laetitia's storzapretis are speckled with chopped spinach, accented with fresh mint (my usual choice) or marjoram, both native to Corsica's hillsides, and then baked under a light blanket of tomato sauce and grated cheese. They can be served as either a starter or a main course; it's a question of how large you make the portions.

Wash the spinach in several changes of cool water—fresh spinach can be sandy—and when it's clean, toss it into a large pot, with the water still clinging to the leaves. Place the pot over medium-low heat, cover, and cook the spinach, turning often, until it is soft, about 5 minutes. Turn the spinach into a colander and shake out as much of the water as possible.

When the spinach is cool enough to handle, press out the remainder of the water (or as much as you can) by squeezing small bunches of the spinach between your palms or by twisting them in a kitchen towel. Coarsely chop the spinach, toss it into a bowl, and use your fingers to pull the clumps of spinach apart as best as you can.

With a sturdy rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, beat the ricotta or
brocciu
into the spinach, followed by the egg. Stir in half of the grated cheese and the mint or marjoram, sprinkle over the flour, season with salt and pepper, and blend. You'll have a soft, malleable mixture.

Line a baking sheet or tray that will fit in the fridge or freezer with plastic wrap. Make a mound of about ¼ cup flour on your work surface.

Working with two soupspoons, scoop up a tablespoonful of the cheese mixture with one spoon and then scrape the mix from one spoon to the other until you've formed a cohesive quenelle. Drop the quenelle into the mound of flour, cover it with flour, and then toss it gently from hand to hand to shake off the excess. After working the mixture this way, your quenelle will probably look like a large, slightly misshapen bullet, and that's just fine. Put the nugget on the lined sheet and continue until you've used all the dough; you'll have about 3 dozen storzapretis. Chill or freeze the storzapretis for about 30 minutes, just to firm them a bit.
(Once they are firm, you can cover and refrigerate them overnight or freeze them, packed airtight, for up to 2 months.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a 7-×-11-inch or 9-×-13-inch baking dish (glass, porcelain, or pottery, since the tomato sauce might react with a metal pan).

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and have a big bowl of ice and cold water nearby.

Remove the storzapretis from the refrigerator or freezer. Lower the heat under the pot so that the water is at a simmer, and carefully drop some storzapretis into the pot—don't crowd the pot; the storzapretis need room to float around (figure on cooking about 8 at a time if your pot is large). The nuggets will sink to the bottom of the pot and then pop to the top. After they do, let them gently bob around in the pot for 5 minutes, then lift them out of the simmering water with a skimmer or slotted spoon and drop them into the ice water to cool rapidly. Continue poaching and cooling the rest.

Drain the storzapretis, dry between sheets of paper towels—be careful, they're soft and fragile—and arrange them in the oiled pan. Pour the tomato sauce over the storzapretis, top with the remaining grated cheese, and slide the pan into the oven.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling hot, the cheese melted, and the storzapretis heated through. Serve immediately.

MAKES 6 SIDE-DISH OR STARTER SERVINGS OR 4 MAIN-COURSE SERVINGS

SERVING
I like to serve these as a first course on their own, but they can certainly be a side dish or a main course, in which case I think they're great with a big leafy green salad.

STORING
Once formed, the storzapretis can be refrigerated overnight. They can also be frozen; when they're solid, transfer to an airtight container and keep in the freezer for up to 2 months. When you're ready to cook them, drop them into boiling salted water without defrosting—just adjust the poaching time as necessary.

T
RADITIONAL POT-AU-FEU,
a mix of hearty cuts of meat, root vegetables, and a warming-down-to-your-toes broth, is an unequivocally wintry dish, perfect after a mountain hike or a day in the great outdoors. But it's a dish with too many possibilities to be shelved when the weather changes, which is why some form of pot-au-feu is made year-round, its concept remaining constant, the ingredients taking seasonal star turns: meat in fall and winter, fish (
[>]
) or vegetables in spring and summer.

The underpinnings of classic pot-au-feu, the onions, carrots, leeks, and potatoes, are here, but in their young spring form. And in this can-be-vegetarian version, they cook briefly, keep their colors, and share their light broth with asparagus and spinach, harbingers of warmer times.

My recipe should be a jumping-off point for you. Choose whatever is young and fresh at your market. Because you add the vegetables in succession, you can easily use ingredients with widely different cooking times. Green beans or peas are a good addition, as are newly dug turnips, small pieces of squash (acorn, pattypan, or zucchini), tiny tomatoes, and corn cut from the cob.

You could omit the poached or soft-boiled eggs, but I hope you won't—they add richness to an otherwise lean but tasty broth. And, while the herb coulis is optional, again, I hope you'll include it—it tilts the dish a little toward Provence, and what could be nicer when the temperature registers sultry?