Today's lessons:

1) premade dried gnocchi in a box, though better than mine and infinitely easier to make, is still not as good as I remember. Here's hoping Carey has some luck with gluten and Martha!
2) If you put a spoonful of tomato paste in a sauce towards the end of the sauteing the aromatics (garlic and onion) stage, it adds a really nice smoky hint as the paste cooks in the olive oil.
3) gnocchi stays much hotter in the middle than pasta does, even when the outside is cool to touch.
4) it is very possible to burn the roof of your mouth so badly it blisters in many places.

Here's hoping tomorrow's lessons are easier. :)

Gas Tax Holiday

The house economist has been educating me on the gas tax proposals by McCain and Clinton (which no economist on TV seems to like). If you're interested in this issue and don't have your own economist handy, here's an MSN article that sums up what I've heard from various places. The bottom line in the article for how to save on gas? "Don't drive like a jerk." If you don't want to read the whole article, which isn't long, here's an excerpt:

"Eliminating the federal tax, about 18 cents a gallon, would encourage more driving, putting added pressure on supplies, and driving the underlying price of gasoline higher. Since gasoline taxes go to pay for rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges, this is probably not a good time to do away with them. And making gas cheaper will only postpone progress toward developing alternative ways of fueling cars."

Another interesting point in the article is that reducing gas expenditure by as little as 15% would make a huge impact on cost to consumers, but the White House (the article didn't specify which administration) has rejected the idea of putting the responsibility of conservation on the consumer to help reduce gas prices as "a 'personal virtue' that has no business in U.S. energy policy." That may be, but that doesn't mean it doesn't belong in another official forum, like a speech or something, a la "ask not what your country can do for you," etc etc.

Also, I feel I have to apologize in advance. This is supposed to be a cooking blog, but I fear I may stray more often into politics from now until November. I'm from DC. It's in my blood. I will try to be as fair as I can, though, and you can always skip those entries if you like.

New Poll

Just for fun, I put a new poll up with some of my favorite recipes that I've tried since I started the blog, just to see which ones you all have tried, either my versions or a different one you found somewhere else.

Greeky Lemon Chicken Soup

Get me started on a conversation on the Food Network and you'll soon discover that I can't stand to watch that Semi-homemade woman because every episode I see something that will start a fire, whether it's the can of Pam right next to an open flame or long sleeves dangling frighteningly over the gas burner. However, Beth was kind enough to email me a recipe, so I didn't have to watch it, to help me get over this cold:


Greeky Lemon Chicken Soup
Start to finish: 15 minutes
Makes: 4 servings

3 cans (10.75 ounce each) condensed chicken and rice soup, Cambell's
3 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth, Swanson
1/3 cup lemon juice, ReaLemon
3 large egg yolks
1 precooked chicken breast, shredded (I put in two breasts, and just boiled the suckers before shredding them and plopping them in. It may also taste good it you brown them or something first)
1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley (optional) (My philosophy is that you can never have too much parsley, so I put in 2 tablespoons)
I also added ground pepper, but she didn't

1) In large saucepan, combine soup, chicken broth, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; reduce heat to simmer.
2) In a small bowl, lightly whisk egg yolks. Gradually whisk 1/4 cup of the hot broth mixture into egg yolks to prevent curdling. Slowly pour the egg yolk mixture into remaining hot broth mixture, stirring constantly
3) Stir in chicken; heat through. Stir in parsley (and pepper).
4) Serve with warmed pita bread with hummus on the side.


RESULTS: It was pretty darn good! I chopped up a couple carrots and put them in at the beginning. I had some green onions to use up, so I put those in with the parsley at the end, and I think the added a lot of flavor and texture. I didn't have the energy for chicken, so I left that out, but it would have been better with the chicken. The texture came out very creamy and tasted almost as if there was a stick of butter in there, although of course there wasn't. I would even say it was almost TOO rich, and I might try it next time with only two egg yolks, or one egg yolk and one whole egg. Beth, what do you think? The lemon zing, though, was a nice counterpoint to the richness.

Gnocchi woes

In college, I visited Tula in Palo Alto, and she took me to her favorite Italian restaurant. We sat by the window and looked out over the beautiful cobblestone streets, and as usual I hadn't the faintest idea of what to order. She said her favorite thing there is the gnocchi, so I got that, never having had gnocchi before. It was wonderful, and I've been trying to make it in my kitchen ever since.

Well, 9 years and many many failures later, I've decided to give up. I've tried making it up on my own, looking on the internet, trying numerous versions in the Spoon, with potato and without potato. Friday, I tried Julia Child's potato recipe, and it was so awful, despite the two hours it took me to make, we threw it in the trash; actually, gnocchi is really the only food I've ever had to throw away because they've been so awful. Once I tried flour gnocchi, and the recipe said it was baked with just some butter dotted on top, and after a few minutes in the oven the individual pieces had all melted together to form a sheet of goey, buttery awfulness. I'd happily order it in restaurants, but I haven't seen it anywhere. The saddest thing is that the pictures with the recipes look so good, and cookbooks always say how easy it is to make gnocchi, but I've ever done it right. Sigh! Chris ended up going out and buying me gnocchi that you just put in boiling water for a few minutes, like fresh pasta. We'll see how that goes.

Mustard Greens

I think I've developed a love-hate relationship with lettuce salad. It's cold, hard to eat, it's not very filling or satisfying, and it's essentially a vehicle for salad dressing, which removes basically all the healthfulness of a salad. At the farmer's market last weekend I bought a teeny weeny baby swiss chard, and I'm looking forward to trying that if it EVER decides to grow, but in the meantime I went to Kroger and got some mustard greens. Wowee! I love them! They are HUGELY bitter, and really do taste like mustard, so obviously not for everyone. I never really took to sauteed spinach because it basically turns to green stringy mush, but the mustard greens really held up to sauteing, and they were so much more filling and satisfying to eat, and probably had a lot more vitamins and minerals than Romaine. Cheaper than lettuce, too. All I did was clean them really well by swishing a few leaves at a time in a big bowl of water. I trimmed the stems off by folding the leaves in half lengthwise and then cutting down the length of the stem. I threw them in a saute pan with some olive oil (and garlic?) and salted them, and then just let them cook down until they wilted. I stirred a little bit, too, but that's basically it. Oh, I threw on a little dash of Parmesan cheese, just for kicks. Would also be good with bacon, I imagine.

In other news, I've just about completely lost my voice today. It comes and goes, but mostly goes. The only thing I can think of is this cold I've had. It only hurts a little, but it feels like there's something physically blocking the noise from coming out, even though I know it's just that my voice box is strained. Any suggestions for getting my voice back? It's better for a little bit if I haven't talked for a while, but then once I start talking again I lose it. I know I should just not talk for a while, but I sort of have to for my job and, you know, communicating with fellow humans. Harper knows hand signals.

I finally got to see Obama in person last night at a rally at Assembly Hall, which is where the basketball games are played. I've never been to a rally before, and it was decidedly more rambunctious than, say, the Dalai Lama's trip to Assembly Hall. It was fun to see people I knew having roles there, like the econ department's bookstore rep was the guy in charge of throwing the beach balls back up into the stands if they came down to the floor. There were a lot of people there. Both Clintons and the Lama only had half of the hall, they put a curtain in lengthwise to make it more intimate, but this was a surprise visit and everything was already set up for graduation, so Obama had the whole Hall, and I'd say about 85% of the 17,500 seats were filled. By contrast, I think I read that about 3,000 people showed up for Hilary.

Highlights include:

• Obama making fun of his bowling (in)ability, saying he's going to take out the bowling alley in the white house and put in a basketball court and play basketball with IN rep Baron Hill (who's in the Indiana basketball hall of fame. Yes, Indiana has it's own basketball hall of fame)
  
• Seeing the correspondent from the Daily Show (the ex-marine who went to Iraq) do some filming. If it wasn't on last night, keep an eye out for tonight.
• Bookstore rep guy getting help throwing the beach ball up into the stands from a 5 year old
• Obama's speech was pretty interesting. He didn't talk a whole lot about policies, but it was a rally to get out the vote, not a stump speech. He gave a lot of information about where to early vote, like locations and times the buildings are open. He is also a very good speaker, I don't know if you've heard. Everything was either memorized or off the cuff (no prompters) and there were times that I felt myself close to tears because I really really want a lot of the things that he was talking about trying to do, and it feels like the Bush administration has let us all down on those things. I guess it was bitterness combined with hopefulness. Anyway, this isn't a political blog, so I don't want to get into it, but he's a good speaker.
  
• It was funny, although in poor sportsmanship, when the crowd would boo when Obama first mentioned the names of his two opponents and Bush. I didn't boo. I'm not a booer, except for important things, like Dallas Cowboy draft picks.