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Gnocchi of Farina (Gnocchi di Semolina)
1 pint of milk 1 egg 1/2 cup farina Butter and cheese Put the milk on, and when it boils add salt. Take a wooden spoon and, stirring constantly, add the farina little by little. Cook for ten minutes, stirring constantly. Take off the fire and break into the farina one egg; mix very quickly, so that the egg will not have time to set. Spread the farina onto the bread-board about the height of a finger. Allow it to cool, then cut it into squares or diamonds about two or three inches across. Butter well a baking-dish, and put in the bottom a layer of the squares of farina; sprinkle over a little grated Parmesan cheese (or Gruyere), and put here and there a small dab of butter. Then put in another layer of the squared of farina; add cheese and butter as before. Continue in this way until your baking-dish is full, having on the top layer butter and cheese.
Bake in a hot oven until a brown crust forms. Serve in the baking-dish.
This is gnocchi alla romana under an older name: a stiff semolina porridge, cooled, cut, layered with butter and cheese, and browned. Almost everything depends on getting the semolina thick enough to slice.
- Farina means semolinaThe Italian title settles it: use durum wheat semolina (semolina di grano duro), the coarse pale yellow kind, not the soft-wheat breakfast farina sold in American boxes. Fine semolina behaves best here; very coarse pasta-grade semolina takes longer to hydrate.
- Measure by weight if you can1 pint of milk is 2 cups (475 ml); 1/2 cup of semolina is roughly 3 oz / 85 g. That is on the loose side of the traditional ratio, so cook it hard until the spoon leaves a clean track through the bottom of the pan and the mass pulls away from the sides. If after ten minutes it still slumps, keep cooking rather than pouring it out.
- Ten minutes is a minimumSemolina needs time to swell and to lose its raw taste. Expect ten to fifteen minutes over low heat, stirring, and treat the texture rather than the clock as the signal.
- The egg"Mix very quickly, so that the egg will not have time to set" is the hinge: beat the egg in fast once the pan is off the heat, or the very hot semolina scrambles it into threads. The egg cooks further during baking.
- Spreading and cooling"About the height of a finger" is a good half inch, 1 to 1.5 cm. Wet the board or use an oiled sheet pan, smooth the top with a wet spatula, and let it cool at least an hour until firm and dry to the touch; refrigerated, it cuts even more cleanly. Squares two to three inches across are large by modern habit, where a small glass or cutter is used to stamp rounds that are then overlapped like roof tiles.
- A hot oven425F (220C), on an upper rack, roughly 20 to 25 minutes until the top is blistered and brown. A minute under the broiler at the end will finish the crust if the oven alone has not done it.
- Cheese and butterGrated Parmigiano-Reggiano is the standard; Gruyere, as offered here, gives a stringier, less salty result. Be generous with the butter dabs, since there is nothing else keeping the layers from drying out.
- YieldEnough for three or four as a first course, or two as a supper dish with a salad. It reheats well and can be assembled a day ahead and baked from cold, with ten minutes added.
Gnocchi di semolina is the Roman version of gnocchi, and the odd thing about it is that it contains no potato and no dumpling-making at all: the "gnocchi" are simply cut from a slab of cooled semolina porridge, a technique with parallels in other European grain puddings, from polenta to the sliced mush of the American farmhouse. Semolina, the coarse grind of hard durum wheat, was cheap and shelf-stable and closely associated with central and southern Italy, and dishes like this one belong to the frugal end of the repertoire, where milk, an egg and a handful of grated cheese make dinner. Here the English word farina stands in the title with the Italian name beside it, and the parenthetical Italian is the more reliable guide to what was meant.