Stinging Nettle Ravioli with Sage Butter

As I posted yesterday, it's stinging nettle time in the Northwest lowlands. In the next few weeks I'll harvest enough to last me through winter, and as spring reaches higher up in elevation I'll periodically bring home a fresh young batch.

Nettles are best when a foot or less off the ground; later in the season you can harvest the tops, but eventually they become too fibrous. This year I've decided to stretch myself in the nettle cookery department, and what better way to kick off a new season than with Stinging Nettle Ravioli.

Every time I go through the trouble of finding our pasta maker buried beneath all the other kitchen detritus in the back of the cabinet and then go through the rather long process of making my own, I still wonder, Why don't I do this more often? There's no substitute for homemade pasta.

Filling

Make the filling while your pasta dough is "resting" in the fridge. The hardest part in this step is dealing with the nettles. Wear gloves and clean up carefully—you don't want a stray leaf nabbing you when you least expect it.

10 oz stinging nettles (equivalent to 1 package frozen spinach)
1 15 oz ricotta
1/2 cup grated parm
1/4 cup whipped cream cheese
1 egg
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp grated nutmeg

1. Blanche nettles for 1 minute in boiling water and drain. This is enough to neutralize the sting. Squeeze out excess water. Chop nettles. Later in the season, when the nettles are more robust, you'll want to remove the lower stem.

2. Combine cheeses, seasoning, and egg into a bowl. Stir in chopped nettles.

Pasta

I follow Marcella Hazan's recipe, which calls for 2 large eggs per cup of flour and a half-teaspoon of milk for filled pasta. I doubled the amounts. (Be prepared to add more flour as necessary; as with baking, anything can influence the making of fresh pasta: heat, humidity, the stock market...)

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 tsp milk

Unlike Marcella, however, I combine my pasta ingredients in a food processor (horrors!), removing the dough when it starts to ball up and adding more flour by hand until I can reach a finger into the dough and pull it out without any dough sticking.

Next I commence to kneading. The technique here is to use the heel of your palm and push down on the dough, flattening it in the middle, then turning the dough clockwise a half turn, folding it over and pressing the heel of your hand into the dough again. Repeat. Repeat some more. Repeat until it's smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom, no less than eight minutes according to Marcella. Now refrigerate in plastic wrap while you make the filling.

After retrieving the pasta dough from the fridge, roll it into a log and cut it into a dozen equal parts (Marcella calls for six parts per 2 eggs). Each part then gets fed into the pasta maker, starting at 1 and finishing at 6.

Make two leaves at a time (top and bottom layers), trim them, and use a melon ball scoop to add the filling at intervals. Next sandwich the two leaves and use a fluted pasta wheel to get those nice scalloped edges, making sure to firmly press the two leaves together around each dumpling.

Sage Butter Sauce

Figure a minimum of a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of chopped fresh sage per serving (with more butter for those of us not hung up about fat content). Melt butter in small saute pan over medium heat. While the butter is starting to melt, gently drop ravioli into a pot of salted water on low boil. Add sage to butter. The ravioli should start floating to the surface after a couple minutes. Remove to a warm plate with slotted spoon. Meanwhile, stir the butter and sage as the butter foams, and just as it starts to brown a tiny bit kill the heat and pour sauce over ravioli. Add a few grindings of salt. The specks of brown, caramelized butter sweeten the sauce ever so slightly, and combined with the sage, this simple sauce packs a wallop that belies its meager list of ingredients.

Serves 6-8.

The Gnostic Nuances of Oxtail Gnocchi

Lately I've been drawing inspiration from my fellow bloggers, from Chicken Cacciatore to Stewed Pork Loin with Porcini. Now add Oxtail Gnocchi to the list. With snow on the ground the other day and my mind in a wintry mood, Matt Wright's post on the comforts of braised and slow-cooked oxtails had me pining for the sort of rich ragu that fills a home with its warmth and aroma.

This might be the one recipe that food writers are allowed to call unctuous. I made a few changes to Matt's toothsome version to see what would happen, flouring the oxtails, substituting white wine for red in the tradition of an old-style Bolognese sauce, and adding pulverized, rehydrated porcini to the mix. I've been on a porcini roll lately, so why stop now? This has been the snowiest winter in Seattle I can remember. The deep, earthy flavors of porcini are just what is needed in such bone-chilling times.

For best results make this at least a day in advance before serving. Overnight refrigeration intensifies and marries the flavors.

Oxtail Ragu with Porcini

2 lbs oxtails
2-3 oz dried porcini, pulverized
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 bottle white wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
several sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 dried bay leaves
olive oil
basil for garnish

1. Using a food processor, pulverize a handful of dried porcini (2-3 oz) into dust. Cover with warm water, about 2 cups. Let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Season oxtails with salt and pepper and dredge in flour. With a large pan over medium-high heat, brown in olive oil and then set aside.

3. Pre-heat oven to 320 degrees. Reduce burner heat to moderate and add more oil if necessary before sauteing onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. When soft and translucent, deglaze with wine. Stir in tomato paste.

4. Arrange oxtails in a dutch oven or other heavy, lidded cooking vessel. Tuck sprigs of thyme and bay leaves between and around meat. Add contents of saute pan and rehydrated mushrooms with their liquid. The oxtails should be immersed to halfway mark; if not, add water or stock. Cover and put in oven for four hours, turning occasionally.

5. Maintain braising level by adding water or stock. Meat is done when it's fall-off-the-bone. Carefully remove meat and let cool. Also remove thyme stems and bay leaves. Next separate meat and discard bones and any large pieces of gristle. Use immersion blender to blend and thicken sauce. Return meat to pot and bring to simmer on stovetop for a half-hour or so until reaching desired consistency.

Beginner's Luck Gnocchi

Now people, let me tell you that this ragu was actually the easy part. The next step, a day later, was what I dreaded: Gnocchi. True, I had never made gnocchi before, but I had read enough horror stories to know what I was up against. "My half-dozen attempts have all failed," mewled one agonized cook online. "I want those hours of my life BACK!" I knew anything could go wrong. The gnocchi could turn out like dense little balls of blech. Or they could go to pieces as soon as they hit the boiling water.

My own experiences eating gnocchi—never mind cooking it (them?)—had been mixed as well. Even at decent restaurants, more often than not the little potato and flour dumplings did not approach the pillowy soft ideal. In fact, my best gnocchi memory isn't from an acclaimed Italian ristorante at all—it's from a gastropub in Seattle called Quinn's where the gnocchi were so feather-light and velvety smooth that I momentarily considered dispatching my dining partner with a steak knife so I could horde the rest.

After hours of web study, I opted to go with 101 Cookbook's How to Make Gnocchi Like an Italian Grandmother Recipe. And while this recipe uses the controversial ingredient of egg, which some sniff at, suggesting the binding power makes gnocchi denser than desired, let me tell you that the result of my efforts, incredibly, was the hands-down second best gnocchi I've ever eaten, and not far from Quinn's.

A couple points about this recipe. I used organic Yukon Gold potatoes. Some have wondered why you peel the potatoes after boiling; while mine is not to reason why, I found the peeling easier at this stage than before boiling. The taters undressed without the slightest hint of coyness, dropping their gowns sometimes in a single peel. Also, the fork method of deconstructing the halves works perfectly well, and the difference between mashing (don't) and simply grating without any lumps (do) will become obvious even to the newbie.

When it came time to mix in the egg and flour, I used slightly less beaten egg than called for in the recipe and slightly more flour. Also, I built a volcano out of the potato and poured the egg and flour into the crater. Keeping the chopping block well-sprinkled with flour from this point on is essential.

Finally, at the moment of truth, my heart skipped a beat when white flakes of dough rose up from the pot. Drat, the fatal error of gnocchi that can't stand up to the boil. I was ready to toss my efforts. But then the flakes subsided and moments later perfect little pillows started floating to the top, none the worse for wear. I'm not sure from whence those errant flakes came, and I'm not going to worry about it. The gnocchi were light and scrumptious. I drizzled some olive oil on a plate, carefully arranged a dozen gnocchi, and ladled the oxtail ragu over the whole enterprise. The ragu juices mixed with the olive oil to form an appetizing orangish gravy on the bottom, and like Matt, I garnished the dish with chopped basil.

The rest of the gnocchi sat fully formed on the counter for the rest of the afternoon and into evening, and when they too came out of the boil later that night for Marty's dinner they were even lighter and fluffier. Such are the mysteries of gnocchi.

Hump Day Night

For a forager—even in the Pac Northwest, where this time of year we can still get clams, oysters, truffles, squid, and so on—the winter remains mostly a time of cooking, of spending hours in the kitchen. And some nights in the kitchen just go entirely awry. After reading Hank Shaw's post about Pheasant Cacciatore in Huntler Angler Gardener Cook on Wednesday afternoon, I was moved to make use of some of the groceries hanging around in my fridge ready to grow fur: past-sell-date chicken thighs, an old yellow pepper, an even older hot pepper that had made the transformation from green to orange entirely on the premises. Plus all those packages of frozen porcini buttons and the dried stuff too.

And then there were the two bottles of wine, one red, one white, both open. Hey, it was Hump Night. Marty came home in a great mood, exclaiming that all her students understood what a thesis statement was. Cheers! On the jambox played the best radio show in America, "The Road House." We sort of lost track of the recipe. I started with Ms. Hazan, dredging the chicken in flour, chopping onion, carrot, and celery, then got annoyed (my usual Marcella complaints: why such restraint on the garlic front? why give in to the tomato police?) and switched over to Hank. Somewhere around the bay leaves and rosemary the whole process slipped away. Why not use all the mushrooms? And dangnabbit, let's throw in another 28 oz can o' diced tomatoes—we like tomatoes.

Erma Franklin's version of "Piece of My Heart" had me dancing on the marmoleum while Marty checked in with Papa Silano. "Dad, " she said, checking her watch to make sure the time-change wasn't beyond the pale, "did you cover the cacciatore?" After all, Marcella says under no circumstances to ever cover a red sauce. I remember distinctly the first time I made a red for dinner guests. I was just out of college, barely able to chop an onion, totally clueless about garlic. The sauce simmered, getting drier and drier, until it was just a bunch of clumped tomato innards. Isn't that what you were supposed to do, reduce it? The idea of periodically adding water to keep the sauce soupy and allow the tomatoes to properly break down and marry with the other ingredients was completely unintuitive.

We compromised and left the lid slaunchwise across the top.

The night went on and so did the sauce. Our kids, exhausted and cranky but steadfastly refusing to go to bed, started competing with each other to see who could make the most valentines, then bestow them upon us with great flourishes while the other screamed and tried to tear the white lace and pink paper confection to pieces. At one point Martha and I just started laughing as they endeavored to express their love in increasingly hostile tournaments. Tears and tantrums. Olives and good bread. Balsamic. Olive oil. The Staple Singers on the radio. Chianti. Pinot Grigio. Basement torn up by the Water-Rite guys. Paint peeling everywhere.

I started this by saying the night had gone awry. Not true. It was glorious, the food a marvel. The kids polished off creamsicles in bed, too tired to stand. That's what the "hunter's dinner" is all about. Mix the bounty of your harvest with whatever is lying around. Let it ride. I fell asleep on the couch, too beat to even hit play on the Dylan documentary, and crawled into bed 'round midnight.