gnoc­chi, my would-be Waterloo

Well, I can­not pro­fess to have a recipe for gnoc­chi, although I suc­cess­ful­ly made gnoc­chi this evening. How to explain this conun­drum? It’s a very flex­i­ble dish. Let me explain.

My dear friend Char­lie, our house­guest this week­end, gave me a lov­ing­ly and extrav­a­gant­ly inscribed copy of Anto­nio Car­luc­cio’s Sim­ple Cook­ing. In his over 50 years of cook­ing, it’s no sur­prise he can come up with a rather slim and gor­geous­ly pho­tographed book of sim­ple tips, easy recipes, pantry advice, you name it. It’s a book you may have bought by many oth­er peo­ple, many oth­er times. Mar­cel­la Haz­an? Guil­iano Haz­an? Jamie Oliv­er, even, or in Amer­i­ca, Mario Batali or Gia­da di Lau­ren­ti­is. Basic instruc­tions, things you would think I could follow.

Except that I sim­ply can­not fol­low a recipe. Unless I’m REAL­LY scared. And for some rea­son, because gnoc­chi was Ital­ian, I was­n’t scared. Enough.

So I thought, triple the spinach, why not? I love spinach. I’ll tell you why not. Because spinach adds, more even than fla­vor, LIQ­UID to a recipe. And if you’re mak­ing pas­ta, liq­uid mat­ters. Sigh.

I found myself hav­ing reli­gious­ly fol­lowed the pro­por­tions of the oth­er ingre­di­ents: flour, egg and mashed pota­to. So reli­gious­ly that I dragged John out of the house to the hard­ware store to buy bat­ter­ies for my scale. And then, what did I do? I sim­ply flung spinach at the recipe as though it were being rationed. And the dough, my dears? Too, too sticky for words. Too sticky to live! What was a girl to do?

I had already clev­er­ly tak­en the left­over mashed pota­to (after its reli­gious weigh­ing) and turned it into prop­er mashed pota­toes, as with but­ter and cream. Well, I felt I should fling it in, to make up for the incred­i­ble amount of extra flour I knew was com­ing. And it WAS. A cou­ple of abortive tech­nol­o­gy-failed transat­lantic phone calls to my Ital­ian moth­er in law (with the brief inter­ven­tion of my annoyed hus­band: “why can’t you just fol­low a recipe, and no I will NOT be the trans­la­tor on this phone call because you’re cov­ered in flour!”) elicit­ed the brief and wise advice, “Sift in some flour, very gen­tly and work it in.” Leav­ing aside the fact that I do not own a sifter, I drift­ed in some flour. And some more and some MORE. Final­ly I rolled the lit­tle dev­ils out and placed them upon plat­ters where… they STUCK. Like grim death.

Din­ner time arrived. “The toma­to sauce smells ter­rif­ic,” John said, and I thought, peo­ple have exist­ed on less. I wrest­ed the lit­tle blobs of green gnoc­chi from their plat­ters and sim­ply threw them in the boil­ing water. Sure enough, they blobbed to the top just as Anto­nio told me they would. I scooped them out, added a bit of the pas­ta water to thin the toma­to sauce, topped them with moz­zarel­la cubes, a scat­ter­ing of chif­fon­ade of basil, and some parme­san, and…

DIVINE.

What on earth happened?

Light, fluffy (remind­ing me of Char­lie’s nick­name for Avery, “part-time fluffy”), coat­ed in per­fect­ly gar­licky toma­to sauce. A rev­e­la­tion. What happened?

A very, very for­giv­ing recipe, is all I can say. The next time I try it, I promise — hand on heart — to fol­low the instruc­tions STRICT­LY and report a real recipe. But my imme­di­ate advice would be: find a con­ge­nial recipe, change what­ev­er you like, and… fly by the seat of your pants.

So tonight we ate, hearts on our lips, and enjoyed a gor­geous sal­ad to fol­low of an Ital­ian air-and spice-cured beef, with rock­et, chilli oil, lemon juice and pep­per. Just bril­liant. And here I’d pic­tured fam­i­ly-wide scram­bled eggs at 9 p.m.

The les­son? None at all, except be grate­ful you have a fam­i­ly who will sit down to Lord knows what, and that there is a cui­sine like Ital­ian which pro­fess­es to have recipes, but can accom­mo­date any num­ber of stu­pid errors. And for fresh-grat­ed parme­san, which makes EVERY­THING all right.

Also, my din­ner was proof that if you have a lit­tle rock­et, a lit­tle pre­served meat, and a good oil, you have a sal­ad. In this coun­try, it’s sur­pris­ing­ly easy to accom­plish. Peo­ple may moan about pack­ag­ing (so much plas­tic, and yes it’s true), or so many air miles (Ital­ian meat, I know). But that aside, my con­science aside, it’s sin­ful­ly sim­ple here in Eng­land to buy gor­geous Ital­ian cured meats, fab­u­lous buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la, bit­ing­ly sharp rock­et, aged Parme­san, and with a lit­tle spicy olive or truf­fle oil, you have a sal­ad. Such was our expe­ri­ence at din­ner at my friend Sal­ly’s last week.

The lady has no few­er than four chil­dren, and a work­ing lad for a hus­band, tired out from the city. You’d nev­er know it at their house: can­dles glow­ing, art with a very def­i­nite sen­si­bil­i­ty on the walls, two of their girls con­coct­ing Sal­ly’s sal­ad as we arrived. Figs! Pro­sciut­to! Rock­et, spinach, moz­zarel­la, bal­sam­ic vine­gar. Quite perfect.

And this week­end, reunit­ing Avery’s friend Sylvie with her fam­i­ly, and intro­duc­ing Char­lie to them all, at La Fro­magerie. Quite sim­ply the most CHARM­ING of all com­mu­nal tables, in the heart of Maryle­bone, attached to the cheese-mon­gery but ris­ing far above such lim­i­ta­tions to offer a char­cu­terie plate to Sylvie’s broth­er of aston­ish­ing pro­por­tions: chori­zo, sala­mi, saucis­son sec, you name it, all sur­round­ed by cor­ni­chons and cen­tered with an amaz­ing cele­ri­ac slaw. Avery had a toma­to tart, John and Char­lie a mush­room tart, I a fish plat­ter with smoked mack­er­el AND smoked trout pates, smoked salmon, and fresh tara­masala­ta. Simon ordered the cheese plat­ter for us all to share. A friend­ly din, a hap­py shar­ing men­tal­i­ty, and adjoin­ing us, a Swedish fel­low about to go back there, and deter­mined to pay his entire bill in Eng­lish COINS! Labo­ri­ous­ly piled in stacks per denom­i­na­tion! Some­how the love­ly French wait­ress found this charm­ing, and did not bring out a pis­tol to shoot him in his Scan­di­na­vian knees.

Final­ly, off we went, part­ing from Char­lie (sob) and Sylvie’s fam­i­ly, to col­lect our… NEW CAR! Min­now, she’s been chris­tened, pearly gray as she is. TINY, sim­ply tiny. We tooled off in the after­noon sun, filled with sad mem­o­ries of Emmy, the beloved Mini, but ready to start a new era with the Cinque­cen­to. And in that Ital­ian frame of mind… gnoc­chi, as well. Sante!