Roman-Style Gnocchi - Gnocchi alla Romana Recipe - Baked Semolina Dumplings

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm live roman-style gnocchi that's right these don't look like yogi which is okay because they don't taste like gnocchi either but despite that they are in fact a tie-pin yaki and an unbelievably delicious type at that in fact I'm gonna make a bold prediction but once you see how easy these are to make they will become your new favorite side dish so despite the possibly confusing name I mean personally I would have called them whatever the Italian word for hockey puck is but anyway possibly confusing names aside I am very excited to show you these and we'll go ahead and begin with the star of the show semolina which kind of sort of looks like a fine-grained cornmeal but it's actually made from durum wheat and it's probably best known for its use in pasta making but as you're hopefully about to find out it works amazingly well in these in the first step in this process is to basically make a semolina porridge if for that we're gonna use some milk that we pour into a saucepan to which we will add some salt and what we're gonna want to do is bring this up to a simmer on medium high heat but this is not actually ever gonna get to a real simmer because what we're gonna do as soon as bubbles just start to break the surface let's go ahead and whisk in our semolina and we probably don't want to just dump it all in we will add it in a steady stream as shown and fair warning this is gonna thicken up very quickly especially since I use a little more semolina than most recipes but anyway we're gonna whisk that in and like I said it's gonna thicken up really quickly in fact check this out as I was stirring I decided to change the camera angle for no apparent reason so I stopped and went from this to this in literally five seconds which is fine that's what we want because what we're gonna do at this point is switch to a wooden spoon and turn our heat down to medium-low and then what we'll do once our heats lowered and we switch to a nice sturdy spoon is simply cook that stirring on medium low for about seven to ten minutes and I say seven to ten because virtually every recipe says ten minutes and yet I usually get tired of stirring around seven minutes and stop and it always works so I guess we'll make that deranged and by the way if you happen to be thinking I would have just started with a wooden spoon well you know what that's a good thought and an even better idea but anyway I never seem to remember to do that and I always end up starting with the whisk and switch into the spoon but regardless like I said once we're on medium-low we will simply cook that for about seven to ten minutes at which point if everything's gone according to plan your semolina port should look something like this and what we'll do once that's been accomplished is remove that from the heat and stir in the rest of the ingredients which will include some cubed up cold butter a whole bunch of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and two egg yolks and because that mixture is very hot and we don't want scrambled egg yolks we'll go ahead and stir that vigorously until everything's combined and I should mention a lot of recipes actually have you add the butter to the milk but I think you get a better texture if you add it with the cheese in the yolks but the one drawback because that butter sort of melting as you're mixing is that it can make this a little trickier to combine and at certain points it might look like it's separating but don't worry just like some of those cookie dough recipes we've done just keep mixing and eventually it will all come together beautifully and if not it kind of looks separated just switch back to the whisk and you really shouldn't have a problem and then what we'll do as soon as that's been successfully combined is switched to a spatula and clean off that spoon before transferring that into a prepared pan and by prepared I just mean lined with some plastic wrap and in case you're keeping score at home that is your standard quarter sheet pan so we'll go ahead and transfer it in and spread it out nice and evenly but don't worry about getting the top perfectly smooth because we're going to do is take another piece of plastic wrap and place that over the top and sort of gently press it down and smooth it out and that is pretty much it for the first phase of Roman style gnocchi because all we have left to do is chill this until it's firm enough to cut which I want to do in the fridge because it's faster so I'm gonna go ahead and pop that in the fridge for about a half-hour or so and while we're waiting for that to firm up we can go ahead and butter our baking dish hey I'm gonna be using this beautiful round of French style gratin dish but any kind of casserole dish will work so we'll go ahead and brush the bottom of that would butter and then fast-forward about a half hour later at which point as you'll see our semolina porridge has firmed up nicely so let's go ahead and unwrap that as it is now officially ready to cut which I like to do with a round biscuit cutter because I enjoy what I'm told is the traditional circular shape but if you do want to save a little time you can just cut these in squares these are really going to cook the same no matter what shape you make but like I said I do prefer the classic round and I should mention as you're doing these do not discard the trimmings well we're gonna use those in a second as you'll see so we'll go ahead and cut out our gnocchi and transfer those into our dish and as you can see I'm gonna overlap those slightly and then what we'll do once those are placed in is gather together all art remains and then we'll simply wet our fingers and palms and as you'll see almost as if by magic we're gonna be able to smush all those scraps together ah ha damn pants is there nothing they can't do so as you can see with a little bit of water on your hands you should be able to press all those trimmings together at which point we can flatten that out between two pieces of plastic and we should be able to cut out three or four more and while they certainly aren't going to be as perfect as the first batch it still works perfectly fine and once these are baked they're gonna look awesome so we'll go ahead and make a few extra from those scraps and place those in at which point we're gonna top these with a generous amount of melted butter maybe even a very generous amount so we'll go ahead and drizzle that over and brush that on and then once that's been applied we'll go ahead and finish this off with a little dusting of cayenne know your Roman friend is right that is not traditional but we usually don't let that stop us and then last but not least we will finish this off with some more freshly grated Parmesan and not just any proper John we definitely need to go with the parmigiano-reggiano and once that surface has been covered as well as select parts of our kitchen towel we are ready to bake so let's go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until beautifully browned and basically looking like one of the greatest things you've ever seen come out of an oven I mean come on look at that and you might be wondering those edges look crispy but are they well let's grab a fork and listen even over the sound of my oven fan you could hear how crispy that is which for me is exactly why Roman style gnocchi is so awesome you get this incredible combination of that crispy buttery outside and casing that creamy custardy inside it's just unreal and in addition to looking great feeling great and tasting great this stuff's also amazingly versatile yes of course it can be served as a side dish with some meatballs and maybe a salad but it's equally spectacular as a first course or pasta course or maybe even throw a wild mushroom sauce over this and do it as a main course so many options but of course that's up to you you are the king George of your savory baked porridge but this time I did go with it as a side dish for meatballs which by the way we're not very good I didn't have time to make homemade and tried some from a new market down the street and they weren't great but I wasn't even mad because he's amazing yaki alla Romana provided more than enough pleasure for the whole plate it is just insanely good but anyway that's it Roman style yaki like I said the intro the name might throw you off a little bit but give it a try anyway because I really do think these are gonna become one of your favorite side dishes or main courses or pasta courses well you get the idea so I really do hope you give these a try soon head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 949,383

Rating: 4.9475675 out of 5

Keywords: Gnocchi alla Romana, Gnocchi, Roman-Style, Recipe, Semolina, Baked, gratin, side dish, chef, john, foodwishes, italian, cooking, food, starch, pasta

Id: DYk7pN1q-Ok

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2016