Gnocchi

Oh well, this is a staple but worth posting. They turned out rather well today, actually.

• 450g boiled, mashed old potatoes
• 175g plain flour
• 1 egg yolk
• 15g butter (melted)
• Salt and pepper

(serves about 3-4, depending on how hungry you are)
Combine ingredients into a nice dough, roll into a sausage and thence cut up into suitable bite-size gnocci. My grandmother used to roll them on a cheesegrater to make them bobbly on top, and I believe nowadays they are sold in packets with a sort of slash-marking on them. It doesn't actually make a difference - I usually just chuck them straight into the salted boiling water until they float nicely and then scoop them out. Done. Very easy and un-fiddly.

Serve with pasta sauce and a nice sprinkling of cheese. Or you can do the whole pesto-starter thing, or in fact use them for anything you want. One word of caution - I swear these things grow in size after being ingested so don't eat until you're full or you'll be in trouble later. Take it easy on the portions, although usually they're very tasty so it's a tough thing to do.

Guanciale di manzo (o Maiale)

Guanciale

Put a 2 inch thick layer of smallish pieces of onion, celery and carrot at the bottom of the saucepan with a knob of butter and a spoonful of oil, cook for a short while. Dredge in flour some pieces of cheek of either beef or pork or veal and brown. Place on top of the vegetables, pour over a generous glass of white wine and cover with vegetable stock (stock cube and hot water quite acceptable) . Simmer gently for 2 hours, the chunks of cheek will be very tender and tasty. (Alessandra’s recipe).

Osso Bucco

First time I've cooked this so was expecting a horrid mess of huge toughness and tastelessness - but actually it was OK. Italian people, please correct us and tell us what horrid mistakes and transgressions we've made - I'm sure there are plenty, but in the meantime the result was pretty pleasant.

Also, many thanks to the Woofie, who has added the following details to the piece from a Proper Italian point of view, and they sound very sensible:

"My bible suggests a couple of additions to your recipe, dredge the meat pieces with flour as well as seasoning before browning, and add 3 or 4 anchovy fillets with the garlic at the end before sprinkling with parsley and grated lemon rind. As it is a Milanese dish it should be served with yellow rice(saffron, if you should become rich one day)."

Prepare:

• Chopped carrot, celery, and red onion (it said leek but I didn't have any - red onion turned out rather nice). I did one of each for a three person serving, turned out OK. Also finely chopped garlic, and some nice fresh thyme sprigs.
• A pot with chicken stock (about 750ml for three portions), a couple of bay leaves, grated rinds of a lemon and an orange, and a good blurge of passata (the recipe said finely diced and seeded tomatoes but I had forgoten to buy any).
• And of course, your osso bucco pieces. You'll also need a load of parsley for later.

Then:

• Get your osso bucco pieces and season and brown them, then take out of the pan.
• Brown off your prepared and chopped veg, then add 100ml of what was meant to be Madeira but actually turned out to be just white wine (that's all we had), reduce a bit.
• Add in the browned osso bucco pieces and  cover the lot with the chicken stock/bayleaf/citrus zest/passata or tomato scenario.
• Bubble quietly for an age and a half (about 2 hours at least) until everything is looking extrememly mulched and thick.
• While it's bubbling away in a very fragrant manner, prepare a gremolata by chopping up a load of parsley very fine, adding to it the juice of half a large lemon and a finely chopped clove of garlic and some olive oil. It's meant to be either combined in a food processor or pestle-and-mortared into a pulp but as we currently have neither option I just chopped slightly manically and combined with vehemence. It seemed to work just fine, cannot say for certain whether verbal imprecations add any material fineness to the product but it's always worth a shot.
• Served on this occasion with boiled potatoes and carrots (with the aforementioned gremolata drizzled seductively on top). Pretty damn fine, actually.