Bifteck Sauté Marchand de Vins and Gnocchi Gratinés au Fromage

This weekend I took the blog on the road 1,000 miles from Alabama to Minnesota to cook for my boyfriend, Michael. Kitchen space and utensils required a bit of improvising, but the assistance in photography made the process easier to document. In my exploration of French cooking, I've decided that some dishes will be similar from week to week as I learn the subtleties of these techniques. The mushrooms from last week's sauté were so excellent that I decided to replicate them again (ok, I'll admit, they were supposed to go in the gnocchi but I forgot to include them so just jumped on the opportunity to sauté them again). These mushrooms accompanied simple steaks which Julia describes as such: "pan-broiled steak is very French and also a very nice method for cooking small steaks. None of the juice essences are lost, and it is easy to tell when the steak is done." The Marchand de Vins is a red wine sauce with minced shallots, butter (of course), salt, pepper, and a bit of minced parsley. I sautéed the steaks as directed for a few minutes on each side. Mine was a little thicker than Michael's and was perfectly silky and rare on the inside -just how it is supposed to be. Topped with the red wine sauce and eaten with the juicy mushrooms, it was delicious. Despite what my recent blog posts may indicate, I really do not eat much meat and am roughly 90% pescetarian now. But, when I do eat meat, I want it to be prepared like this steak was. Yum.

The real effort this week was making gnocchi, "a useful addition to one's cooking repertoire." Julia describes in MAFC that these little ovals are made of a simple batter called pâte à choux that can be used as a base for many dishes. The cookbook includes two master recipes of gnocchi, one with potatoes and one with the addition of semolina flour. As a potato lover, I obviously used the first. These little dumplings took a number of steps. First, the potatoes were pealed, boiled, and mashed. Then, they were combined with the pâte à choux which is a paste of water, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, flour, and eggs. The batter was then combined with a good Swiss cheese and rolled into oblong balls "on a lightly floured cutting board." However, the batter was extremely sticky and required a great deal of flour to get off my hands let along keep their shape on the board. Here they are stick-free...

Raw gnocchi

The gnocchi balls were then supposed to be simmered for about 15 minutes. Against Julia's directions, I let the first batch of water come to a boil, which, as she stated, made most of them disintegrate. I kept the slush and made a nice fried potato cake the next morning, but they were gnocchi no more.

Boiling gnocchi = no no

The second batch was kept on a much lower temperature with a closer watch and it came out whole. They were then dried on a towel for a few minutes before entering the oven with more cheese on top to make it a golden brown gratiné.

Drying gnocchi

The final plate was a lovely twist on steak and potatoes. We enjoyed it with a Chianti that brought out the rich flavors in the steak and mushrooms and the creaminess of the gnocchi. I was surprised to find a gnocchi recipe in a French cookbook as I've always considered it an Italian dish. These turned out much softer than the dense, al dente, gnocchi I've had before. We both liked them and I think they were worth the trouble. Lesson learned on watching water simmer!