Pasta and Gnocchi alla Fabio Viviani

Somehow, I missed out on the first two seasons of Top Chef, but then I became a convert.  I'm a fan of the Richard Blais, the Voltaggio brothers, Carla Hall, and some of the others, but I was greatly entertained by Fabio Viviani.

Now it happens, that the first time I heard of Fabio and his restaurant out in Moorpark was when William Shatner sang Fabio's praises at one of his charity horse shows and Cafe Firenze provided catering for the event (we didn't have tickets to dinner, sadly.)  Then my hairdresser, who lives out in Moorpark, also gave the place a rave.  That was about the time Fabio showed up on Top Chef.

After he was on Top Chef, I heard he wasn't at the Moorpark restaurant any longer (that's changed and he is back there) and then I heard he had opened a place in North Hollywood.  Lately, he's been hosting Top Chef viewing parties at both restaurants (doing the east coast feed in Moorpark and the west coast feed in North Hollywood.)  He's also teaching cooking classes at both places, though, sadly, not hands-on classes.  At least, not yet, but he promises they are forthcoming.

Fabio is also an avid tweeter, and I happen to follow him (and a lot of other chefs) on Twitter and Facebook.  So I caught the announcement that he would be teaching a pasta and gnocchi class at Firenze Osteria in North Hollywood on February 13.  The class was $40/per person or $70 per couple, so I signed up for two, figuring that if Len couldn't go with me, my son Michael or someone else would.  Michael lucked out because Len started a class on Sunday.

We got to the restaurant about half an hour ahead of start time, which was good, because there were only two people ahead of us in line and it turned out that seating was first-come, first served, and it was a fairly large group.  Women outnumbered men by a factor of about 10 to 1, and there was a huge group of women who all came together, leading me to the obvious conclusion that this celebrity chef has groupies.

We came to watch pasta and gnocchi being made and we got an afternoon at Comedy Central as well.  Fabio is hysterical.  From his good-natured difficulties with English ("the thumb rule" "rule of thumb-a") to his retro male-chauvanist-pig remarks (reminding me why I would never marry an Italian-American male), I laughed until I wanted to cry.

Fabio wanted everyone to understand that making pasta is EASY.  A egg, some salt, some oil, and some flour in a food processor--that's pasta.  Some baked potatoes, an egg, some salt, some nutmeg, some pepper, some flour in a mixer--that's gnocchi.  There was also a big emphasis on common sense--I pinch or a hand of some measurement isn't a child's hand or that of Andre the Giant, use a folded towel to take a hot potato out of the oven and the n let it cool off.  And so on.

Like most of the Italian and Italian-American cooks I have known, there's less about measuring and much more about taste and feel in his methods.  To make pasta, Fabio uses one egg per person and he advises working in batches of no more than four eggs.  ("Don't have more than 4 people to dinner!")  So for four eggs, add a pinch of salt, a little olive oil, and about 2/3-3/4 cups of all purpose flour in the food processor until a ball is formed.  Then knead the dough a little and cut it into several pieces to run through the rollers of a pasta machine.  The kneaded dough feels a bit like your earlobe when it is ready to rest.  Depending on the type of pasta, either cut it by hand (after rolling up the sheets of dough) or use a pasta machine to cut the noodles.

He advocates the use of the food processor over the hand-mixing method because it is quick and easy.  He does recommend giving the dough an opportunity to rest between mixing and rolling.

I remember watching my grandmother rolling out her pasta dough by hand.  She made it look so easy, but it is so much faster and easier to use a pasta machine.  I love mine.

After Fabio finished making the pasta, we were all served some with a meat sauce.  Then it was on to gnocchi.

The rough recipe for gnocchi, which won rave reviews every time he made them on Top Chef, involves baking potatoes, letting them cool, and running them through a meat grinder or a ricer after peeling them.  Do not mash them--it give the wrong consistency.  It looked like he used about 4 cups of ground, cooked potatoes to 1 egg, two pinches of salt, one pinch of pepper, about a half-teaspoon of nutmeg, and a handful and a half of grated Parmesan.  This was mixed with a paddle in a Kitchen-aid mixer.

(There were lots of ooohs and aaahs over the mixer and a number of people were whispering about how expensive they are.  I will say that my Kitchen-aid is one of the best investments in the kitchen I ever made, and the one I had before that was one my mother owned for 30 years.  I've had my K5A for twenty years now and I expect to leave it to my son.  My sister may still own the one our grandmother had.)

After mixing those ingredients together, Fabio added flour to reach the consistency he wanted.  It is a softer consistency than the pasta dough.  I would guess that he added around 1-1/2 to 2 cups of all purpose flour to get the consistency he wanted.  After that, he took lemon or tennis ball lumps of the dough, shaped it into cylinders of about 3/4" thick and 10" long and cut them into approximately 3/4" pieces.  He used very little flour on the counter and on his hands to keep things from sticking because adding too much flour to the gnocchi makes them heavy.

When cooking the gnocchi (and the pasta) he advises adding olive oil to the pot.  With the gnocchi, don't stir them in the pot and, no matter how many are in the pot, scoop them out and drain them all when two or three of them have risen in the water to float.  To do otherwise will water-log the gnocchi and make them fall apart.

We got to sample the gnocchi in a marinara sauce.  Heavenly.

Fabio spent quite a bit of time answering questions from the room.  And then we got an added surprise--door prizes for four of the attendees.  We were told to check under our seats and this note is what I found under mine:

And this is what it redeemed:

It is a Bialetti ceramic-lined, nonstick saute pan.  Fabio will be selling it on QVC or some such channel in the not too distant future.

I planned to upload some video of the class, but I'm having big problem with it.  So I am sorry.  If I figure out what to do, it may just be another entry.  Fabio will be teaching a risotto class at Firenze Osteria on Sunday, and I think there are still spaces available.  It is a fine bit of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.

Nanny's Kitchen Table

Food plays a far too important symbolic place in my life. That's the kind of thing that interferes with dieting and really argues against the Weight Watchers' mantra of "nothing tastes as good as being thin feels." Not true. Not at all. Food is about family and friends, good conversation, great times, and comfort.

My mother's mother died when I was 10. Before that, she was the person who watched over us while my parents worked. Some of my earliest memories are of watching her cook for her extended Italo-Americano family in a long kitchen with an old stove and refrigerator. She had six children, a husband, and a mother-in-law who died only a few years before Nanny did. There were always lots of people around, the married children dropping in for the weekend, along with nieces, nephews, cousins, and the inevitable grandchildren. While most of the family would head out to Sunday mass, Nanny would be in the kitchen from dawn, preparing a massive mid-day meal that everyone would eat before heading home--often to New York City or Long Island.

When I think of my maternal grandmother, I always smell flour and eggs. She was constantly making pasta--or "home made macanoni" as the first of my brothers called it--on that Formica-topped kitchen table which could not have been as big as I remember it. Noodles and cavatelli, all made by hand, were a daily occupation. I still sit in wonder at the idea that she cut her long noodles evenly with a knife after rolling them out with a rolling pin. I've got a pasta machine for that, thank you. I've never really been able to master the cavatelli, rolling the little balls of dough and doing the three-finger drag that create the elongated shape that curls into itself of sufficient thinness that it cooks evenly and doesn't taste of raw flour when it is done.

My other grandmother and namesake, Nanny Christine, was Czech and had a whole different culinary heritage. I've heard tales about how she could hand-stretch a strudel dough paper thin on a table. She died when I was seven or eight, so I don't remember her well. I do have her recipe for kolachki, a time-consuming, filled-pastry cookie which I sometimes make at Christmas.

I also own a piece of furniture which came from Nanny Christine's family: the bottom half of a Hoosier kitchen. It has an enamel top which is the best surface for working dough short of a marble counter-top, I suspect. For many years, my cousins used it for storing clothes or toys and then my mother managed to get it from one of her sisters-in-law. I honestly don't remember where she had it in the house, and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to wrangle it away from her around 30 years ago, but I am awfully glad I did. It is my favorite prep space because it is about 6" lower than the kitchen cabinets' surface and I can get much better leverage when kneading bread or rolling pie crust. I sometimes wish I had the upper cabinet for storage, but if it was a choice between them, I'm glad I've got the lower half.

Homemade Pasta

2 Cups Semolina
3 Large Eggs
Pinch of Salt

Mix the semolina and salt in a mound on a clean work surface. Make a well in the middle and break the eggs into it. Using a fork or your fingers, work the semolina into the eggs until there is a mass of dough. Knead the dough until smooth, sprinkling the surface with flour as necessary. (Depending on the size of the eggs or the humidity in the air, the dough might be very stiff until kneaded. It is also possible to make the dough in a food processor.) Let the dough rest, covered with a bowl or plastic wrap to keep it from drying out, for about 20 minutes before proceeding.

To make noodles, break off a piece of dough, knead it a little more, flatten it, and use a rolling pin or pasta machine to roll it out to desired thickness (it will take several, successively narrower, passes through the machine.) Let it rest while repeating with the rest of the dough. Then, use the cutting device on the machine to cut to desired width. Or, roll up the dough unto a cylinder and use a sharp knife to slice the pasta into the desired width. Allow the cut dough to air-dry until ready to cook. Cook in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, which can only be determined by tasting. Serve with your choice of sauce.