a lesson from Allium: gnocchi from Orcas Island

The snow dusted coast of the San Juans

Another blogger told me once that the reason she blogs is because it gives her access to experiences that she would not otherwise have. That really resonated with me. Life is all about savoring and collecting experiences. A blog is just a very public way of declaring my interests and sharing my experiences with others. By sharing myself in this way, I am sometimes invited to see (and taste) things that I otherwise may never have had the chance.

A crossword and a ferry ride to really get away

I have written here before about the friendly and generous Chef Lisa Nakamura, who often answers my cooking questions for me on twitter and inspired my raw beet and roasted balsamic vegetable salad post last month. She is the chef and owner of the new Allium on Orcas restaurant, perched alongside a cove on Orcas Island in the San Juans. Open less than a year, Allium has already been mentioned in the New York Times as one of the places to go in 2011. A woman who has found her passion, you can find her in the kitchen every single day that the restaurant is open, cooking for island locals and tourists alike.

Allium's brunch fresh out of the oven

I added visiting Lisa's restaurant to my list of 101 goals and my husband and I decided to make the one-night trip our first vacation without the baby (another goal of mine). Lisa saw that I had also listed "learn to make perfect gnocchi" to my goal list and she very generously offered to teach me her method. She offers a daily gnocchi on her menu and I had heard about how good they were. When I told her the date that I would be out on the island, she told me to knock on the back kitchen door in the morning for my lesson. I almost skipped all the way there in the morning!

opening soon: Lisa's new venture will sell local ice cream and gift baskets

I am not going to give you a verbatim recipe here, lest my description fails you and you think the fault is with the Chef. The thing about gnocchi is that they are almost always chewy and dense, when they should be like warm, delicate clouds. Watching Lisa, I realized I had been doing every step wrong. I had been making a kind of mashed potato/pasta dumpling hybrid. Here is what Lisa does differently:

• When I arrived, Lisa was pulling hot baked potatoes from the oven. "Mashed potatoes are too wet for gnocchi," she says, adding that they key to the potatoes is working them when they are still piping hot.
• She uses egg yolks only - discard the whites - "one yolk per potato, plus one for good luck."
• All that flour that I was using? She uses a fraction of what most recipes call for. 
• The "kneading" of the dough was really just a quick and light folding of the dough a few times. 

From here, her process begins to resemble what I have seen in other recipes: we rolled out long snakes of dough, cut them into pieces and rolled the pieces into little balls. Using the back of a fork, Lisa rolls the gnocchi down the tines to create ridges that will help hold the sauce later.

I was shocked when the gnocchi bobbed to the surface of the simmering water within a minute of being added to the pot. My former gnocchi took forever to cook and these barely warmed up before they were done and ready to be fished out with a slotted spoon.

Lisa has a bowl of ice water ready to halt the cooking process. She says that at this point, the drained gnocchi can be frozen for later use. If you are ready to eat them right away, you can begin making a pan sauce. Lisa began with oil and white wine, adding the gnocchi, then bacon, mushrooms, reduced chicken stock and cream.

rolling the gnocchi to create ridges

We chatted while the gnocchi simmered away for a few minutes and then I was brought out to the empty early morning dining room, to watch the view of diving seabirds and choppy waters and eat my perfect bowl of gnocchi.

into a hot pan and ready to build a sauce

I think it was the best breakfast I have ever had. It was a meal of experiences - beautiful flavors made with someone I was honored to be cooking with, enjoyed while taking in a dramatic view of winter forest meeting stormy sea, and with the knowledge that my sweet husband would be waking soon and waiting for me to return to our perch above town.

Bon Appetite and happy travels...