pasta-gnocchi-msg – 5/15/06

Period gnocchi pasta. 

NOTE: See also the files: pasta-msg, pasta-stufed-msg, flour-msg, dumplings-msg, fd-Italy-msg, potatoes-msg.

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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 11:59:33 -0800
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: RE: SC - Homemade period noodles/pasta

>I'd have to check which reference it came from, but I
>also have a great recipe for period gnocci.  Instead
>of potatos, they are based on flour and cheese.  In
>camp, we sit around the pot of boiling water with our
>spoons and drop the dough in to the pot.  As they
>rise, we fish them out, sprikle a little hard cheese
>and have at!  I'll check for the reference if anyone
>wants.
>
>M. Elenore Armstrong

There's a recipe for them in "The Medieval Kitchen" by Redon et al.

I was thrilled to see it, as i had a similar recipe that i'd save 
from either "Woman's Day" or "Family Circle", cheapie women's 
magazine, back in the early 1970's. I really don't care for potato 
gnocchi, but ricotta gnocchi is wonderful and i lost the recipe at 
least 2 decades ago and missed it. Then someone served the Medieval 
Kitchen recipe at a feast, apologizing because he, an Italian, felt 
they hadn't come out right. I scarfed up my share and longed for 
more, because they were so like the old recipe i'd had.

Anahita al-shazhyya


Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 12:19:50 -0800
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: RE: SC - Homemade period noodles/pasta

OK, here's the recipe...

The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy
Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban & Silvano Serventi
translated by Edward Schneider

Chapter: Soups and Pasta: Potages
Recipe 9. Cheese Gnocchi
p. 63-64

If you want some gnocchi, take some fresh cheese and mash it, then 
take some flour and mix with egg yolks as in the making migliacci. 
Put a pot full 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. (from Grammento di un libro di cucina del sec. XIV)

Modern Recipe
12 servings
1-1/4 lb. cream cheese (600 g.)
1-1/2 cups flour (200 g.)
6 egg yolks
6 to 8 tablespoons 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 in 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 a 
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 rise to the surface of the 
water. Drain and turn into a heated serving dish. Sprinkle generously 
with grated parmesan and serve immediately.

- ---------------
My Comments
I seriously doubt the original used "cream cheese". The women's 
magazine version used cottage cheese and i have used ricotta. I 
suspect Farmer Cheese or Pot Cheese might also work, but they're a 
bit dry and might need moistening with some cream. I had some Queso 
de Burgos in Spain, a kind of spongey fresh white cheese rather like 
uncut curds, and it sure seemed like it would be suitable. The French 
"Fromage Frais" is rather like sour cream and, i think, unsuitable. 
So you have to weight the virtues of various "fresh cheeses". Maybe a 
Mexican Queso Fresco would also work...

Anahita al-shazhiyya


Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 16:22:13 +1100
From: "Lee-Gwen" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: Re: SC - gnocchi (v long)

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".)


Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 09:07:45 -0500
From: Jane Boyko <jboyko at magma.ca>
Subject: Re: SC - gnocchi (v long)

I made this recipe last year when doing a test feast of all the recipes for
Pikeman's Pleasure in Peterborough.  I ended up choosing something different
to serve in place of it as I found that it was very sticky to put into the
water and to cook the amount I needed for the feast would have taken far to
long in the kitchen I was using.  On the other hand they were delightful to
eat.  Came out as lumpy white things but were incredibly tasteful and went
well with my beef rolls (from the same text-just don't have the reference
at the moment).  I would certainly cook them at a feast if I had more stove
space to have more than one pot of boiling water on the stove and lots of
help for cooking these.  It really is useful to have two people per pot.

Marina

>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)


Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 10:15:52 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - gnocchi (v long)

Lee-Gwen wrote:
> 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.

etc., etc.

On the subject of what makes gnocchi gnocchi, or what characteristic
defines gnocchiness: Why Redon, Sabban, and Serventi should quibble
about boiled balls of dough being gnocchi in the modern sense and then
give a recipe for boiled balls of a paste made of flour, cheese, and
eggs, and state that nothing like modern gnocchi existed in the Middle
Ages, I have no idea. The word "gnocchi" seems to derive (as do nockerl,
noque, and even quenelle and knˆdel) from Indo-European roots meaning
"lump". Their resemblance to roots meaning "nut", shown in words like
"nucato", named for the nuts themselves and not for any lumpiness, may
or may not be coincidental.  

Adamantius


Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 11:18:36 -0500
From: grizly at mindspring.com
Subject: Re: Re: SC - gnocchi (v long)

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
<<< . . . SNIP . . . and to cook the amount I needed for the feast would have taken far to long in the kitchen I was using.  On the other hand they were delightful to eat.  Came out as lumpy white things but were incredibly tasteful and went well with my beef rolls (from the same text-just don't have the reference at the moment).  I would certainly cook them at a feast if I had more stove space to have more than one pot of boiling water on the stove and lots of help for cooking these.  It really is useful to have two people per pot. >>>

My suggestion to anyone planning to make these in a modernish kitchen is to get an 18 qt. electric roaster and use that.  You can set it and forget it for the most part.  Determine the temperature to which you desire to poach the little nubs, set the thermostatic knob, and you can theoretocally hold them all day, month, year (theoretically) since the set temperature will never overcook them.  You may end up doing multiple batches, but the timing headache and labor to stand over the simmering/boiling pot to tend them are removed from the equation.  Just remember to go back every 20 or 30 minutes ot check and remove when done.  Then, they reheat the same way.  I plan to utilize this technology soon as I have two of these roasters at my disposal.  Not medieval cooking technology, but not evil either :o)

niccolo difrancesco


Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:48:17 -0800
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Gnocchi
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Sharon wrote:
>  8) Gnocchi--though it's not period, I have had some excellent pumpkin
>  gnocchi.  No recipe, alas.

Well, gnocchi is period, just not the kind made with mashed potatoes
or orange pumpkins (i figure i can track down a recipe for the
pumpkin kind with a minute amount of googling).

The first time i made gnocchi (i'd never eaten them) was in the
mid-1970s, from a recipe from one of those woman's magazines at the
check out stand in the stupormarket - either Family Circle or Woman's
Day - they actually had some decent recipes much of the time.

The gnocchi it produced was really delicious. Alas, the recipe
disappeared during the course of my life. I eventually ate some
potato gnocchi and was not impressed. Then i was quite pleasantly
surprised to discover the gnocchi recipe in "The Medieval Kitchen" by
Sabin, Redon, & Servetti when it was published in English. It was
pretty much what had been in that woman's magazine over 30 years ago!
Mmm-mmm-mmm!

It was rather amusing when a local Laurel brought some he'd made
using The Medieval Kitchen recipe to the period pot-luck of a Shire
we hang out with. He is of Italian extraction and was disappointed
with them, since all he was used to was the potato kind. I, on the
other hand, was delighted to eat them, since they tasted like those
i'd made 30 or so years before.

So, yes, Virginia, there is SCA-period gnocchi. And it beats the heck
out of potato gnocchi. In my opinion.

Anahita

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Edited by Mark S. Harris	pasta-gnocchi-msg	Page 6 of 6