Unsurprising gnocchi
Because potato dumplings are always a good idea
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
📻 Word of Mouth: Richard Osman’s love of language. This week’s episode of Michael Rosen’s Radio 4 show, Word of Mouth, featured a long and varied discussion all about language, inventing with it, and breaking it, with the wonderfully clever Richard Osman. The discussion included things like the misunderstandings we have with language as kids, finding the voices of the characters in Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books, and lots of behind-the-scenes details of the surprise hit show Pointless. Definitely worth a listen - I believe it’s available via the BBC Sounds app or the website worldwide, or through your usual podcast app.
📕 Meant to Be Mine by Hannah Orenstein. I read one of Orenstein’s previous novels, Head Over Heels, which is set in the world of competitive gymnastics, during one of the lockdowns, and really enjoyed it. So heaven only knows why it’s taken me this long to pick up another one of her books. Meant to Be Mine, Orenstein’s 2022 release, has a great premise: what if your grandma had a superpower for predicting the date you’d meet the love of your life? It sounds wacky, but leads to reflections on questions like the nature of free will (Affiliate links to Bookshop.org and Amazon - ad).
🍪 The best mid-morning snack ever. I’ve been extra-hungry this week - probably as a result of trying to get over the stinking cold that I developed last week (I blame the packed bar I went to with friends who were visiting Edinburgh for the Six Nations Rugby game…). As a result, my usual snacks just weren’t cutting it. So, in addition to adding dark chocolate chips to natural yoghurt (honestly, try it, if you haven’t), I had to add a BN biscuit to the top. If you’ve never tried a BN, they are a French brand that has just made its latest bid for a UK market. (And if you have heard of BN before, I’m assuming you also have this advert’s jingle running through your head… doo dooo do doo doo, BN BN!… sorry!)
Growing up and leaving home inevitably involves learning that some things are different outside of the place and context in which you grew up. Some of those are things you expect to be different - I knew before I moved to Scotland that banknotes would look different - and others take you by surprise. I thought my friends were having me on when they told me that ‘waft’ is pronounced with a short ‘a’ here (as in ‘tact’; I grew up with it making the same sound as the ‘o’ in ‘often).
It’s the same with things around the home. I think all my friends grew up with different words for the remote control (one called it the donker, because the TV makes a ‘donk’ sound when powering up or down), and things like whether to take your shoes off and where to put your coat wouldn’t be unusual questions to ask on a first visit to someone’s home.
Earlier this week, though, I mentioned a ‘pasta surprise’ to a friend, who was totally lost. Let me explain: in my parents' house, a pasta surprise is a dish that combines pasta with some sort of sauce and whatever is in the fridge, freezer, or cupboards. It might be leftover sausages! Tuna! Green beans! Peppers! Spinach! Tomatoes! You get the idea. Generally with plenty of garlic or other herbs or spices to make it seem vaguely ‘intentional’, but usually made up completely on the fly. The concept can be extended into a rice surprise, or a gnocchi surprise, and that’s what I was thinking about.
On Wednesday night, I made for dinner a big pan of gnocchi surprise. Or did I? You see, it’s the kind of thing that if my dad had made it when I’d been home visiting, it would absolutely have been a surprise. But I had the idea of flavours that might go together, shopped for them, cooked for myself, and then put the leftovers in the fridge. When you live alone, it’s very rare to have any food that’s a surprise - and that’s why eating out is such a treat. It’s the only time I get to choose what I’m eating, and then eat it, without having to complete all the other other steps in the food preparation process.
Hence, unsurprising gnocchi.
This is going to be the very roughest sort of recipe - to serve 4.
Start by heating a little bit of oil in a big heavy frying pan, and tipping in a whole pack of sausages. I used Heck’s Chicken Italia chipolatas, but this would be lovely with Linda McCartney Red Onion & Rosemary veggie sausages, or proper pork and apple sausages too.
While the sausages are sizzling, wash and slice three-ish leeks (the easiest way to wash them is to cut down one side like a baguette and then open them like a book), and either open a 250g pack of sliced mushrooms or slice some up yourself.
Heat some butter or oil in a second frying pan (I used a ‘mini wok’ but if you can fit two big frying pans on your hob at once, go for it) and tip the leeks into there on a medium heat; stir them occasionally but otherwise you’re just going to let them do their thing for a while.
When the sausages are done, put the mushrooms into the pan they’ve been cooking in, and take them out one at a time to slice them into bite size chunks or coins, before returning them to the pan.
When the leeks are most of the way cooked, tip them into the pan with the sausages and gnocchi and give them a good stir; maybe add some garlic purée at this stage, if you like (I do!). Turn the heat down and let it do its thing for a while.
In the smaller pan, heat a little bit of oil, and then tip in a bag of gnocchi (it comes in 500g bags here). To help it along with cooking, you can add a little bit of water and put a lid on the top of the pan. In any case, after 4-5 minutes, you’ll have a pan full of lovely fluffy cooked potato dumplings.
While the gnocchi is cooking, turn the heat off from under your veg and sausages, and stir in some crème fraiche - about three very-heaped tablespoons full, but just keep adding until there’s enough that it’s not just coating what’s in the pan.
Then turn the heat off under the gnocchi and tip it into your bigger frying pan. Give everything a good stir.
Serve with salad leaves, if you like, and of course topped with Parmesan and some sort of pepper - recently I’ve been putting the Santa Maria Chilli Explosion Seasoning on everything, with this dish as no exception.
This dish reheats really well after being in the fridge - I put a big scoop of it in a bowl the next night and microwaved it. The gnocchi goes even softer and more potato-y somehow, and the leeks even meltier. If you try it, please do tell me what you think.
There’s some irony to my having introduced this recipe with a family injoke, I realise - because this dish would go down like a tonne of bricks at my parents’ house: my dad can’t stand chicken and my mum can’t eat mushrooms. All the more for me, then! As an aside, the term for language or vocabulary particular to a family group (and I would include a chosen family in that as well as a genetic family), is a ‘familect’. I am sure I learnt that from a book, but I’ve now no idea which one.
Speak soon,
Lily
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