Gourmet’s Thanksgiving Pumpkin and Brown Butter Gnocchi Recipe

Ingredients for the Gnocchi:

6oz Montracet Goat Cheese
12 ½ oz Canned Pumpkin
18oz Flour
1 tsp Salt
¼ tsp Pepper
¼ Cup Eggs
1 ½oz Fresh Parsley
1oz Fresh Thyme
1oz Fresh Rosemary
¼ oz Fresh Tarragon
½ tsp Minced Garlic
½ tsp Minced Shallot
A minimum of ½ Cup of Olive Oil for Marinating

Method:

Begin by stripping the Thyme and Rosemary and Tarragon off the stem and chopping the herbs till they are a fine blend, and chop the parsley in the same method. Then combine your Eggs, Goat Cheese and chopped Herbs in a mixer. Beat until mixed completely mixed together, this will take about 2 minutes on low. Keeping  your mixer on low, sift all of the flour in the mixer, once this is combined add the pumpkin, Salt, Pepper, Garlic and Shallots. Now you can turn your mixer up to a medium setting and allow it to mix until a dough has formed.

Now that you have a dough formed place in a bowl and pour olive oil over the dough till lightly covered, cover with plastic and let the dough rest for a minimum of 3 ½ hours.

Before you start to roll out your dough Fill a large Pot with water and put a pinch of salt in the water place on the stove on medium to bring to a boil.

Once your dough has been marinated and rested, sift flour on a flat surface and roll out your dough into rope like strands. It is best to just use your hands you will not need a rolling pin. I usually take sections of my dough and roll them out sections at a time until I have a what lookes like a rope of ¾ of an inch in diameter, any thicker than that it won’t cook all the way through. Once you have the dough all rolled out in section your going to cut the ropes into ½ inch pieces.

Once your water is at a full boil use a slotted spoon to slowly place the Gnocchi pieces in the water, you are going to par blanch the gnocchi meaning flash cook. You will leave the gnocchi in the boiling water and cook for 6 minutes. Then use the slotted spoon to pull them out.

 *If this is to complicated or if you don’t have enough time your local grocery store will have pre-made Gnocchi in the Gourmet Section.

Ingredients for the Brown Butter:

1T of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 T of Butter
4 Whole Sage LeavesYou will need one sauté pan

Method:

Get your sauté pan really hot, by having it on the stove on medium for 2-3 minutes. Once your pan is hot add the olive oil, butter and sage leaves. Leave your pan uncovered and cook until the butter turns brown. This usually takes about 10-15 minutes depending on your stove, so use color to tell when it is cooked all the way.

The Final Ingredient is Balsamic you can either buy this at the store or if you’re really ambitious here is the recipe:

Ingredients for the Balsamic:

3 Cups of Sherry
Corn Starch
Salt
Pepper

Method:

Using a small pot heat your Sherry until it has reduced by ½ then mix in Cornstarch until you have a thick based Sherry and add Salt and Pepper to your taste. Balsamic is fairly easy to make but the reduction can take awhile and can be very temperamental when adding the corn starch so add the corn starch in slowly until you have thickened to your desire.

Finally, Piecing the Dish Together:

Toss your Gnocchi in the brown butter until all is lightly covered, place on plate and drizzle the balsamic over the Gnocchi and Enjoy!!

Champagne conjures images of tuxedos, festive occasions, luxury and uniqueness.  It is one of the best marketed agricultural commodities in the world.  It is led by lots of governing bodies and rules, and billion dollar conglomerates.  But there is a movement by wine lovers to support and drink wine from small growers in Champagne.  It is like the micro-brewery movement…small, regional breweries that focus on flavor and style, versus the marketing giant of the standard Anheuser Busch or Coronas of the world. It is like buying meat from Conagra versus a local rancher. Officially, the growers are known as recoltants-manipulants and are identified by a tiny “RM’ on their labels.  Champagne houses that buy grapes to make their wines are called negociants-manipulants or “NM”. Champagne is located in the far extremes of sustainable viticulture, the grapes struggle to ripen fully and often have bracing levels of acidity and low sugar levels.  On average Champagne receives about 26 inches of precipitation annually so the vine roots can descend up to 30 meters in fractures of the Cretaceous Chalk to tap moisture below.  (The vines are relatively young, 25 years on average,  due to a killing frost in 1985, but also due to the fact that the growers do not have to grow for quality so the vines are not tended for longevity.) The vineyards are very fragmented, with about 276 000 land parcels whose average does not exceed 13 acres.  It consists of about 84,000 acres.  There are more than one hundred Champagne houses and 19,000 smaller vignerons (vine-growing producers) in Champagne.  Of the 19,000 growers in Champagne, only 5,112 sell Champagne under their own label and of these, just 2,124 make what they sell. Only 30 growers own more than 12 hectares and produce in excess of 6500 cases per year.  Compare this to the annual production of Negociants -  2,200,000 cases of Moet and Chandon, 1,400,000 cases of Nicolas Feuillatte or 850,000 cases of Veuve Clicquot.  There are 200,000 cases of Dom Perignon produced annually, where as our feature, “small grower wine produces just 13,000 cases. Big houses buy grapes from all over Champagne, from as many as 1,000 sites. Whereas, small growers use grapes from a particular place, press them, ferment them into still wine, blend or bottle them as a single vineyard cuvees, re-ferment into sparkling wine, age them and then sell them as domaine Champagnes with their own label. The incentive for most growers is to produce more grapes, but not necessarily better quality, because they are paid by volume. “ The Negociants do not pay higher prices for higher must weights because the prices, along with the date when the harvest may begin, are set by the local government.  Hence the growers who make their living by selling to the houses and cooperatives prefer to pick as early as possible when the grapes are under-ripe.  At this stage the yields are at their maximum and the growers receive more money for them.” (Michael Skurnik Wines). (Another  interesting comparison is to Burgundy which is about 25,000 acres with 600 appellations, whereas, Champagne has only one official appellation.

Grape Varieties: