NO MILK -- NO MEAT -- INTRODUCTION -- We know a plethora of flour & egg soup enrichments - from store-bought dried pasta to fancy homemade creations. Grandma Estela's semolina gnocchi are an exception in every respect: Not only are they huge (the size of an egg to a lemon), but they stand out for their delicious fluffiness and appealing texture. -- BASIC INGREDIENTS -- one "XL" egg will yield ~16 noodles (for a soup for 4 to 8 persons) -- 1 egg - one XL-sized (over 73 g / 2.5 oz) or two S-sized (under 53 g / 1.8 oz) hen's googs -- semolina approx· 80 g / 2.8 oz - adjust the quantity to the egg's volume (the usual consumption is equal to or a little higher than the egg mass used) -- Vegeta 8 g - aka Podravka, 1 teaspoon; can be substituted with ½ cube (5 g) dry bouillon block or ¼ teaspoon salt -- OPTIONAL EXTRAS -- oil 5 ml / 0.15 fl oz - 1 teaspoon; sunflower and rapeseed oils are superior; soy oil carries an unpleasant aftertaste -- butter 5 g / 0.15 oz - 1 teaspoon -- parsley 10 ml / 0.3 fl oz - 1 heaping teaspoon of garden-fresh, finely chopped leaves of parsley, chives or similar aromatic greens -- SHORT PROCEDURE -- Promptly mix the egg, semolina, Vegeta and fats to a smooth paste. -- The freshly prepared dough must be stretchy to runny. It should rest for 10 minutes. -- After 10-minute firming up, use a spoon to cut off the gnocchi. -- Cook for 10 minutes on the lowest heat directly in a lid-covered soup. -- DETAILED COOKING INSTRUCTIONS -- 1. Allow butter (vegetable or cow) to soften. Remembering kitchening plans in advance, take it out of the fridge in the morning to be already mollified by noon. If we have forgotten about it, we can speed up the softening by microwaving it sparingly or placing it in the proximity of warm pots. -- 2. Blend all the ingredients quickly with a fork. Process them to a thin, smoothish blendure in the shortest manageable time by vigorously stirring. Very carefully, keep strewing the last third of the estimated dosage of semolina, provided that the newly mixed batter remains slightly runny to semi-solid. As soon as it starts to turn thicker, do not inmix any more semolina. -- 3. Let motionless at room temperature for 10 minutes. -- 4. Chunk-cut gnocchi from the well-set dough and drop them straight into a boiling soup. Choose the magnitude of the dumplings according to the desired result - count on the fact that the dumplings increase their dimensions roughly two to three times during simmering. -- 5. Slow-cook them on the weakest flame in a soup under a lid. Do not swirl. After ten minutes, we can turn off the heating, and the soup with maxi-gnocchi is ready. -- 6. It is beneficial to let the dumplings steep in the scalding-hot soup without further warming for farther 10 - 15 perfecting minutes. This will enable them to arrive at maximum swelling. -- -- Halved dumplings are softish, lightly cohesive, uniformly coloured on the cross-section, attractively grainy, with sporadic bubbles. -- What happens without oil? -- Is starting with cold water better? -- When to check the dough's readiness? -- What diseases can threaten gnocchi lovers? -- Which diets don't permit semolina dumplings? -- More tips... -- I obey directions strictly, but my dumplings are chewy? -- They already looked so good - why did they suddenly fall apart?? -- The gnocchi came out OK, but the clear soup is now a murky mess??? -- There is a solution for everything! Read on: -- SECRETS OF MASTERY AND SUCCESS -- After gaining skillfulness, fixing semolina dumplings is a matter of mindless routine. If trivial mistakes are avoided, we always get "those heavenly mega-gnocchi" that everyone at the table swoons with bliss over. However, only a couple of seeming trifles separate us from the opposite experience. Either the gnocchi will be "rock-hard", or they will disintegrate and ruin the soup as well: They will convert our tear-like-clear broth into semolina porridge... To ensure that our efforts and Sunday lunches do not culminate into a pappy disaster, we must heed a modicum of basalmost technological principles: The correct thinness of the dough, its optimal pre-cooking rest-time, and calm bubbling-free coddling. -- S-1. We want a semi-liquid dough. Upon demoisturised semolina coming in contact with a water-rich egg, they instantly begin to react with each other. The egg-borne water seeps into the pores on the breaking post-milling superficies of semolina grains. The gigantic slimy proteins cannot accompany the tiny water molecules. They can't penetrate the micropores, rubbing against the surrounding rough exterior. Sucking the moisture out of the egg component densifies its consistence. Consequently, semolina grains become more and more entrapped by the minute. Thanks to this water-exchange-driven transition, the initial slurry-ish mixture gradually solidifies. The sequel is a growing dough viscosity and a gradating degree of mutual reactedness of the watery and waterless raw materials. The coupling interreaction already occurs during mixing. So, which dough density is this recipe actually referring to - considering the property in question is constantly changing? -- To maintain our verbal description suitably coherent, it is vital to establish a fixed reference time-point: The introductory commixing of the ingredients should not exceed one minute. The final adjustment of semolina should take up to another minute. After that, the dough must ripen without being touched. It derives logically that the most appropriate interval for evaluating the dough is the course of the second minute. A minute-ish-long delay will be inconsequential. However, we definitely do not stretch the mingling phase beyond 3 minutes. The dough's toughness shall be assessed at the end of the semolina-addition tuning when all the elements are fully and evenly intermixed. This is the checkpoint at which the dough should be a thickish semi-viscous pulp. -- Deviations from the abovementioned boundaries in whichever direction will be detrimental to the quality of the dumplings: A moderate excess of semolina leads to hardness to the point of "concrete-likeness" of the gnocchi. A large overdose of semolina can predispose the soup-cooked dough to discoherence (if the egg proportion decreases severely, there is nothing to hold the grains conglued). Excessively improper ratios will disappoint us with dense pasta-like balls instead of lightish dumplings - or a combination of overcooked mash with a bready kernel in the middle. On the other hand, an underdose of semolina (i·e· a relative predominance of egg) never causes dumplings to harden. Conversely, it invariably triggers their weakening and spontaneous disintegration on the plate or perhaps their complete dispersion during stewing. -- Note: Beware of infected eggs. Salmonella contamination sometimes passes without observable consequences but also can actuate severe to life-threatening conditions. Besides Salmonellas, we also have other bacteria. Unfortunately, the presence of most of these, like Salmonella, is not recognisable by the human senses. That is why we prefer eggs from safe and/or veterinary-controlled farms. A ten-minute heating-thru time significantly reduces the risk of bacterial infections from soup dumplings, which also plays in our favour. When preparing the dough, we concentrate on detecting the apparent signs of infection: We visually inspect and smell the cracked egg observantly. A healthy fresh egg must not show noticeable colour changes, liquefaction, significant cloudiness or weird odours. Eggs that float near the water's surface should not be used. They may or may not be alright (frequently, these are old or bacterially gassy eggs - we don't need to flood our digestive tract or bloodstream with these). -- S-2. Moveless time-curing. We mentioned that dehydrated semolina sucks the humidity out of the egg. The absorption ongoes whether we agitate the dough or not. Since the semolina grains are small, the water uptake cannot go on forever - it will slow down over time until it finally stops. The soaking progression is hence time-limited. Concurrently, this water-drawing suction is essential for forming the desirable internal structure of future gnocchi: It is the absorbed water with which the dissolved egg proteins are drawn onto the grains. By inter-binding the thickening proteinaceous constituent with the water-hungry semolina, the cohesiveness of the dumpling is ensured. However, their amalgamating bond is relatively weak. Friction effectively breaks the interconnectedness. From all of the above, pragmatically utilisable facts emerge: The more we prolong the interblending stage, the more time we steal from the time-restricted cross-linking reaction. By shortening the interconnecting transformation, we weaken the strength of the nascent dumplings. That is why we try to knead the dough in a minute or two and give it an absolute standstill after the third minute at the latest. It has been found by practical testing that idling for around ten minutes warrants the classiest gourmet-satisfying outcomes. -- Many hopeful cookmanship adepts encounter a fatal misstep after a successfully managed ten-minute rest: The so-called mason reflex kicks in. Whenever a bricklayer returns from his smoke break, he thoroughly churns the settled mortar in his bucket and continues working. This is how a plasterer may proceed, but not a gnocchi-maker. By re-stirring the well-rested dough, they tear the egg-to-semolina bridges formed. A second re-resting may not help this mishap. Imagine grass clippings: These can be spread over the mown lawn, but they will not reattach and regrow. It is analogical with dumpling dough: The water-suction process after 10 minutes has already been completed or is just stopping right now. It's pointless to leave the disturbed dough to re-rest - no additional water will soak anymore into the water-saturated semolina to drag the sticky proteins with it toward the grains. -- Such mistake brings us on the direct way to concocting a dish that an unnamed staff canteen in Prague offered to workers under the name of "Eggy-Foggy Soupe du Jour". Because the re-mixed dumpling-wannabe dough often atomises down to a nebulous murkiness within the first disastrous seconds in a turbulent broth. -- We now understand in sub-detail why the success-optimised technique necessitates a quick co-stirring of the ingredients followed by an undisturbed dough-resting pause: Stir for a minute or two, do not touch for ten minutes. No intermediate check of the dough's denseness is necessary before the dumplings are potted. This recipe is calculated and fine-tuned so that it is sufficient to blindly execute the protocol. We have to rely on our own precise work undertaken in the preparatory steps. -- S-3. Burbling-free thermal maturation. We must handle uncooked gnocchi extremely gently - from the moment we divide the dough till their hardening, we minimise all handling and physical disturbance. Both raw-stage and half-cooked intermediates are mechanically unstable. Moreover, they are not water-resistant (the beaten egg readily dissolves and washes away). For this reason, we only place the cut-offs in boiling-temperature water and noway otherwise. Tepid or hottish water will not suffice: The inserted dumplings would adhere together and thereafter dissolve collectively. The well-balanced compromise is summarised below: -- Pinch off pieces of dough with a thin-walled tablespoon. To preclude the dough sticking to it, we can dip it in soup or in a cup of oil prior to each slicing. Hmm... The latter surely is the strongest non-stick agent, but it will add a greasy piece of dishware to our sink or dishwasher... -- It is an excellent trouble-preventing idea to turn the stove off during the spooning. The soup should be boiling-point hot, yes, but it doesn't have to be bubbling. Immerse the spoon with each dough bit and tenderly shake it off into the still water. The dumplings immediately dive to the bottom. Within tens of seconds, their outward layer pre-hardens to a protective coating. Only when the dumplings are well-cooked-through can they withstand a more vigorous boil. Do not unnecessarily make the water bubble-boil; the gentlest possible heating with an occasional release of a steam ball works best. -- Within 10 minutes the dumplings will multiply their cubage, floating towards the surface. Once full-cooked, they re-sink downwards again. Now they can be ladled out with the adjacent soup and served to diners. They reach the peak of gourmet excellence after additory 10 to 20 minutes in the soup. -- Uneaten dumplings can be left in the leftover soup. They tolerate refrigeration and reheating for the next day's dining unproblematically. -- S-4. Fat in the batter-making is a beginner's salvation. Superiorly puffy "manna-croup" giga-gnocchi can be made without admixed grease. However, then we have to meet the semolina-to-egg ratio quite precisely. The fattening of the dough remarkably increases the tolerance to excessive semolina - even a stiffer base will produce fluffy puffs. Butterfat adds a better flavour. But if we overdo it with the buttering, lukewarm and cold gnocchi will annoy consumers by precipitating waxy plaques on their teeth and palates. For newbies, exclusively an oil-infused, butterless commixture must be recommended. An amateur's debuting trials should start with smaller chunks. Later, advanced cookers can venture to attractivise feasts with mega-sized jumbo dumplings and their fat-free modifications (both of which require mastery precision). -- Bon appetit ! -- Your Dr· Barton and Grandma Estela -- 2 minutes fork-stirring, 10 min∙ still-standing, 3 min∙ spoon-cutting, 10 min∙ pot-boiling = 25 min∙ for gnocchi-making alone. How could Dr∙ Barton conjure up a full-flavoured chicken soup with his semo-gnocchi from tap water and frozen fillets in a comparable amount of time?? Such a culinary master-stroke is among the intriguing subjects of the action-nostalgic novel The Mystery of the Rammed Key. -- DIETING -- LACTOSE-FREE -- ( ± LOW-FAT ) -- LOW PURINES -- MEATLESS -- VEGETARIAN -- LOW-FIBER & SOFT -- RECOVERY -- Semo-dumplings contain no in-dough cowmilk. They suit those with relevant allergies and dairy sugar restrictions (lactose intolerance). The oil- and butter-free version will not be fatless or cholesterol-free, as the egg yolk supplies plentiful storage lipids. However, the total lipidic content will remain decently modest. Semolina dumplings belong to the tastiest choices for dairy-free and low-purine diets (especially for high uric acid - hyperuricemia, and related diseases - gout / gouty arthritis, and some urinary stones). The purely plant-based recipe is unknown, but the egg will bother only a few vegetarians. The dumplings are easily digestible and usually suitable for strengthening the sick or convalescents. -- Semolina is starchy - eat in moderation to prevent the onset or worsening of diabetes mellitus. Celiacs, mind wheat gluten. -- -- --
