Dillish

Dill Flavored Gnocchi With Bagna Cauda Sauce

Gnocchi recipe was found in Harumi Kurihara’s ‘Summer’ 2010 seasonal issue that I borrowed from a friend. This homey Italian dish hit my tender spot yet was not a home run with my husband. The ball went too far to the right, I guess.

This is the photo from her book.

I actually threw this recipe past him twice to make sure he did not care for it. First pitch  I thought he was sick or something therefore he couldn’t taste…second time around he just walked. Wait a sec, can you just bunt it?

I improvised her recipe just a little bit to create a gluten free version. There was a slight texture change but not too shabby in my opinion. Although gnocchi taste very bland, salty bagna cauda sauce and parmesan cheese made a great team. I used my blue plate to mimic the style in the book, awesome, ya?

Ingredients and Nippon nin style Instruction for 4-6 servings Print recipe here

For Bagna Cauda Sauce/ バーニャカウダソース

• 2 cloves of garlic finely minced
• 6 fillet of anchovy. I used oil packed, finely minced and pounded
• Olive oil 1 Tablespoon
• Heavy cream 1 cup Note: substitute whole milk if you prefer
• Cornstarch 1 teaspoon
• Water 1 teaspoon
• Salt and pepper to taste 

For Gnocchi

• 2 medium sized potato about 250g. Peeled and quartered
• Butter 3 Tablespoons
• Corn starch 100g Note: her original recipe calls for 50g of bread flour and 50g of low protein flour(薄力粉)
• Salt
• Fresh dill minced 1-2 Tablespoons
• Parmesan cheese for garnish

Make Bagna Cauda Sauce

1. Heat oil in a non- stick frying pan at low heat. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant without burning it.
   
2. Add anchovy and sauté for 1 minute or so.
3. Add cream and cook until it starts boiling.
4. Mix corn starch and water in a small bowl then pour in the pan and sauté till the liquid gets thick. Turn off the heat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Make Gnocchi

1. Put peeled and quartered potato in the bowl and cover with water. Soak for 2-3 minutes.
2. Line with paper towel in a large microwave proof bowl. Put well drained potato then loosely cover with plastic wrap. Microwave for 3-4 minutes or until soft
   .
3. Remove paper towel, mash potato while it’s hot. Add butter and mash until smooth.
   
4. Add cornstarch or flours. Mix well.
5. Add dill. Knead with your hands if necessary to make the potato mixture come together.
6. Divide the dough in half and make two snakes about 1 inch in diameter. Slice in about 1/2 inch pieces. Press surface gently with fork to make lattice design.
   
7. Boil plenty of water in a large pot. Drop the gnocchi in. When the gnocchi floats to the top, scoop up with slotted spoon.
8. Serve with hot bagna cauda sauce. Shave some cheese on top.

 

Experimenting by deep frying Gnocchi – This made them taste like potato buds though I like the crunchiness, a great appetizer. I like this with ketchup.

By the way – It’s hard to fathom that Clayton Kershaw got a $215 million contract from the Dodgers. You know what that means?  It’s over 10,000 dollars each time he pitches at a game! Amazing deal isn’t it?

I had a lunch with my girl friend on Friday then my husband and I dined at Maki Restaurant last Saturday with friend couple. How blessed we are to have a nice meal with great company. Their Spicy Tuna Salad is my favorite at Maki.

I am just surprised that Tuesday came so fast…I’m not good with time management…phew!  I hope you have a great rest of the week!

Goodies

Meatball  Miso soup

We are having warm days lately – last Saturday it reached 80 degrees – and not a good time to find out the air-conditioning in your car is not working properly. I was on a last minute shopping spree before going to Japan. Frantic and rushed, I don’t think I was enjoying the sunshine as much as I should be grateful to feel. 

I must use up all the left over goodies like drying up burdock roots, green onion that was wilting, limp carrots, new-shooting potatoes before the trip and it had to be quick to prepare. Warm soup on a hot day is not ideal but this gives me some breather. Goody! I can cross out something from my travel check list…only 8 more to go.

The recipe I loosely followed was found in a old Japanese magazine and I like the ginger flavor in meatball and no need for dashi stock. The butter is optional yet adds depth and fat of course to it.

Ingredients and instruction Serves 4

• Ground beef 1/2 pound
• Ground pork 1/2 pound
• Grated ginger 1-1/2 Tablespoon
• Green onion 2 stalks finely chopped
• Potato starch or corn starch 2 Tablespoons
• Sake 2 Tablespoons
• Soy sauce or Tamari sauce 1 Tablespoon
• Burdock about 6 inches length peeled and thinly sliced diagonally. Soak in cold water for 5-8 minutes.
  
• 1 small carrot slice into half rounds
• 2 small potato peeled and chopped then soak in cold water for 3-4 minutes.
  
• Miso paste 4-6 Tablespoons
• Broccoli 1 adult-sized fist worth; divide into individual florets 
• Butter 1 teaspoon

1. Put meats, ginger, green onion, starch, sake and soy sauce in large bowl and knead well then make1-1/2 inch balls. Set aside .
2. Boil 5 cups of water in pan. Gently slide the meat balls in and simmer for 1-2 minutes.
   
3. Put burdock, carrots and potatoes into the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes at medium heat. Scoop off white scum that appears on top.
4. Dissolve miso paste in the ladle with little bit of cooking liquid from #3 before adding to the pan. Do the taste test. Add more miso paste if necessary. If it’s too salty, pour some water in.
5. Add broccoli florets and cook for about 1 minute.
6. Add butter (optional) and serve hot.
   

We must consume cucumber also. Made quick pickled cucumber.Cut cucumber in chunks and put in the Ziploc bag. Add vinegar, salt and chili pepper to taste. Push air out, close tight and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. 

We had a wonderful Easter service at our church. What a blessing!The Easter basket/nest plus blue chocolate eggs are from William Sonoma. Very pretty but the chocolate is overly sweet. I hope I could re-use next year, not the eggs.A friend brought me this candle holder filled with Easter candies. So nice of her!Easter dinner made easy by purchasing the honey baked ham.

My son’s friends were here for last games over pizza. My son is concentrating on his own game. Do-over birthday cake- Strawberry short cake for real.I started to make some kind of design yet I couldn’t finish it. I figured that those guys don’t care how the cake looks so I stopped caring like whatever.’Thumbs-up’ taste for sure!And we had some left over for Easter. Spring came in full force.The weeping cherry tree. We didn’t know it’s pink when we planted it.Asian pear tree

Neighbor's cherry blossom. Can you say gorgeous?Hey, you on the right, your days are Round-Up!

Neighbor’s lawn ornament – This is so cute, right?

I’m  hoping to see cherry blossoms in Japan too. My blog will resume sometime in April. Y’all comeback and see me now, ya hear?

Gaelic Breeze

Celebrating St.Patrick Day

My part Irish husband likes (most) everything Irish. Especially Irish music. Like Gaelic Storm, an Irish music band. We went to their gig once and he has all of their CDs. The Corrs, which we also have gone to their concert.

Irish folk singer Jean Redpath and Enya her highness, he likes them all. At 6 o’clock on Saturdays he listens to “The Thistle and Shamrock”, a radio show . He sometimes imitates the host Fiona Ritchie’s Irish accent and laughs at himself. We have an Irish named son who was due in the early part of April but came two weeks early in March. For all of the above reasons, we won’t miss celebrating  St. Patrick’s Day.

My low maintenance, easy to please husband requests corned beef for dinner. We went to get nitrate free corned beef from employee owned Season’s Market. They have many locally grown fresh produce which I am pleased with. This corned beef does not come in a package but rather the store cures it themselves and they gave us brine juice too. I simply pressure cooked the corned beef and skinny potatoes in the brine. I made roasted kale salad with sundried tomato and almonds. For dessert he made creamy orange ricotta tart. It does not go well with Irish theme and he wished to make the OTHER cheese cake but I need to get rid of leftover ricotta cheese fast so I overrode him. I told him to put a couple of drops of green food coloring to make it like an Irish dessert but he intentionally forgot to do so. But what is Irish dessert anyway?

Roasted kale with sundried tomato and almond salad

• Olive oil about 1/4 cup
• A bunch of kale washed and pat dry with paper towel well. Remove tough stems and tear in pieces. Kale will shrink when roasted so buy plenty.
• Soft sundried tomato - came in little pouch - if it’s hard and dry, soak in warm water to soften it.
• Sliver almonds about 1/2 cup
• Salt 1-2 teaspoons

1. Heat oven to 375 F
2. Put kale on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, rub kale with olive oil and coat well and sprinkle salt.
3. Roast kale for 3-4 minutes.
4. Add slivered almonds and sundried tomatoes continue roasting for additional 3-4 minutes. *Keep eye out to not burn the kale or almonds.
5. Sprinkle freshly grind pepper over it if you like.

* Roasting time will vary depending on your preference. I like crispy texture so I keep it in the oven longer but it is hard to eat crispy kale with fork so I use with my fingers. Roasting tomato is optional. You could just add after kale is roasted.

Creamy orange ricotta tart

For crust

• 1 cup cookies (ground in a food processor) – 35 vanilla wafers, 25 chocolate wafers or 9 whole graham crackers
• 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted.

1. Heat oven to 350 F
2. Put your choice of cookies in a food processor and finely ground them.
3. Add butter.
4. Using pulse button, mix all together until the crumbs are evenly moistened.
5. Press the crumb into the 9 inch spring form pan starting at the bottom then up the sides firmly.
6. Bake in oven for 10 minutes.
7. Cool on a rack.

Orange Ricotta Tart

• 15 oz. container whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 3 oz. cream cheese
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 large egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
• 1 tablespoon orange juice
• 1 cookie crust

1. Heat oven to 350F
2. In a electric mixer, combine ricotta and cream cheese at medium speed for about 3 minutes.
3. Add sugar,flour and salt continue beating until well blended.
4. Add the egg yolks,orange zest and orange juice and beat at low speed until incorporated.
5. Use rubber spatula  to scrape the filling into the crust and spread the filling evenly.
6. Bake it in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes. The filling may jiggle but will firm up when cooled.
7. Chill the cooled tart in refrigerator for 3 hours.

We dressed in green and had this simplified version of Irish meal. We welcomed this little silly tradition to have a fun time. I know people in Japan are still suffering and my thoughts are going back there all the time. My friend in Utah participated with bunch of people to have a huge garage/bake sale last weekend to fund raising effort to Japan’s earthquake victims.They made over $14,000. That is so neat! An another one planned for this weekend in Sandy Utah. I’m also thinking of ways to help out besides just donating money.

I received many phone calls and emails from American friends who inquired about my family in Japan. One friend delivered a bouquet of flowers to me. A neighbor brought a plate of cookies to show their empathy. We were also invited to dinner. My family was not at all affected by earthquake or tsunami but I‘m so touched by people’s kindness. I feel very lucky.