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Gnocchi à la Romana
¼ cup butter 1/4 cup flour ¼ cup corn-starch ½ teaspoon salt 2 cups scalded milk Yolks 2 eggs ¾ cup grated cheese Melt butter, and when bubbling, add flour, corn-starch. salt, and milk, gradually. Cook three minutes, stirring constantly. Add yolks of eggs slightly beaten, and one-half cup cheese. Pour into a buttered shallow pan, and cool. Turn on a board, cut in squares, diamonds, or strips. Place on a platter, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and brown in oven.
A stiff milk-and-starch panade, chilled until sliceable, then cut and browned with cheese. The whole dish turns on getting the paste thick enough to set firm.
- The quantitiesRead the fractions as 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 3/4 cup grated cheese to 2 cups milk. That ratio gives a paste that sets solid when cold; less starch and it will slump on the board.
- Cooking the pasteThree minutes of hard stirring is a minimum, not a maximum. Cook until the mass pulls away from the sides of the pan in a single lump, or the cut pieces will weep in the oven.
- Scalded milkRecipes of this period routinely call for scalded milk, and warming it does help the starch swell evenly. Milk merely heated and added gradually to the roux will serve, though the original does specify scalded.
- Tempering the yolksTake the pan off the heat, stir a spoonful or two of the hot paste into the beaten yolks, then return the lot. Added cold to a boiling starch, the yolks will scramble in threads.
- The cheeseThe recipe says only 'grated cheese'. Parmesan is the usual choice for this dish; Gruyere or another dry aged cheese also works. Half goes into the paste, the rest over the cut shapes.
- ChillingSpread about 1/2 inch deep in a buttered pan and refrigerate at least two hours, or until completely firm. A warm center makes ragged cuts.
- BrowningArrange the pieces overlapping in a buttered ovenproof dish, dot with butter, and bake in a hot oven until spotted brown, or finish under the broiler. A serving platter, as the original directs, will not survive that heat unless it is oven-safe stoneware.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two cups of milk's worth of paste will serve roughly four as an entree course or six as a side.
Gnocchi alla romana is the semolina version of gnocchi, distinct from the potato dumpling most Americans now picture: a cooked porridge of grain, cooled, cut into rounds or diamonds, and baked with butter and cheese. This version substitutes flour and cornstarch for semolina, and the result is closer to a fried-cream or panade dish than to the Roman original. The instruction to cut in "squares, diamonds, or strips" belongs to the same aesthetic that gave the era its molded jellies and timbales.