madbaker | Rice, rice, baby

This week's Resolution Recipe: Rice. (aka Herb Gnocchi.)

Take young herbs, lettuce, parsley, marjoram, two or three leaves of mint and blanch the said herbs and chop very fine and squeeze very hard. To assemble, strong good cheese pounded or crumbled as much as the herbs and some flour mixed throughout, a little of fine spice, three or four egg yolks seasoned with salt, all well mixed together and fashioned into little bits of sausages by rolling with your hands, along with flour, and when you want to serve, cook them in boiling water, lightly salted, and let them boil just until they come up to the top of the boiling water. Then take them out and place on a plate with fresh melted butter and cheese sprinkled on top. Serve hot. (Livre Fort, 1555)

2 cups "young herbs": combination of 3 large leaves red lettuce, three leaves mint, parsley, marjoram, arugula, purslane, some random one we got in our CSA box...
300 g hard goat cheese
1 3/4 cups white flour
3 egg yolks
1/2 tsp fine spice mixture:
1/4 tsp salt

Bring a pot of water to a boil and blanch the greens for 1 minute. Drain, dry thoroughly, and chop/grind. Grate the cheese and mix into the greens with the spices and egg yolks. Knead in the flour. Form into 1 Tbsp balls.

Bring a clean pot of water to a low boil and cook the gnocchi at a simmer until they float to the surface, about seven minutes. Drain and serve hot with melted butter and grated cheese.

What worked: This was a recipe I tried at the war; it wasn't really a success then. Trying to chop herbs super-finely under tourney conditions is hard, as is trying to mix them all together thoroughly. I also (in an absent-minded fit of political correctness) used rice flour to avoid the evil, evil gluten and that was not a good choice since it was just horribly gummy and didn't cohere.

All of which is a long-winded explanation for trying it at home. This time I used my tireless kitchen assistant to chop the herbs. His name's Kit. Chenaid.

These were excellent. Pretty, too. Gnocchi with ribbons of green and some random herby flavor.

What didn't: I forgot to drizzle with a bit of melted butter. They were still good.
I'll probably scale this to 1.5x for tourneys, though.

Will I make it again? Going into the tourney rotation. Possibly as early as October. Although like the cheese gnocchi recipe that I have made, I will do these ahead of time and just boil them onsite for dinner.