Day 20 – Gnoc Gnoc? Who’s there? Gnocchi!

Yes tonight we made Gnocchi. That I’m kinda like pasta, but I’m not, but more like a dumpling, but I’m not dish. They’re a very hearty dish. First you must bake your potato, then rice it, add some flour and egg yolk, mix that up, roll it out and cut into, well basically giant chicklets. Let those freeze up. Once they’re frozen you can cook them, just drop them into some salted boiling water and let them sink When they rise to the surface let them cook for about 2 minutes. Take them and put them into the refrigerator till you’re ready to add your sauce. For our sauce we did a browned butter with fresh chopped sage and garnished with Parmesan cheese. Very tasty indeed. I think when I next I make these at home I’ll cover them with marinara sauce and perhaps add some type of sausage.

Next on our plate – New England Clam Chowder. One word for this dish YUCK!!!!! I don’t mind cooking the clams, cleaning the clams but please don’t make me taste it…please, please, please…oh nuts..I’m gonna have to do it to check for seasoning. All I could do was put a bit to my tongue to see if it was salty enough. There was no way I was going to take a full spoonful.

The most interesting thing of the evening was watching a few of the students turn green while the chef demo’d cleaning then little buggers. I hope they don’t freak out more with the lobsters, baby pigs, lamb and steer we have to do in our next segment.

The best part of the evening was when Chef told us that we had one other dish to prepare and it would be our choice – Mystery Box! We had so much stuff left over from the buffet (and this is my fault. I mentioned doing this to Chef Knight on Friday when she commented on how much extra food we had. I said well how about we all do a dish with these ingredients and make our recipe?) Chef pulled out the box and said we had to use at least 3 ingredients from that box. The dish could not be an omelet either. Some folks got really creative!! There was a breakfast crock, a breakfast themed stuffed bell pepper, breakfast pizzas from the left over crepes and an array of others. What did I make? I took 4 of the crepes and put them into a sauté pan and browned them. While they were browning I parboiled a potato and then shredded it. I browned some sausage and in the oil browned some onions. Using that oil I made a country gravy. I sautéed some of the peppers. So my dish was a layer of crepes, shredded potatoes, browned (drained) sausage, peppers, slices of Roma tomatoes which were all baked till hot through. I think slid it out onto a plate and drizzled the country grave over the top – Breakfast meets Sheppards Pie.

I don’t know what marks I got on it. Still no test scores from last week. I’m hoping their coming soon. Tomorrow we’re taking another knife drill and making a couple of potato dishes. All this week will be review till next week - “Sudden Death of would be Chefs”!