A rice noodle bowl and some gnocchi prep

I watched Luke Nguyen's Vietnam on cooking channel and really drooled over this rice noodle salad. Unfortunately, the cooking channel's site is obnoxious and wanted me to register in order to see his recipe and I was feeling particularly ornery. So I pulled out our Into the Vietnamese Kitchen book instead and made that one.

The traditional meat for this is pork, but the main recipe in the book called for beef and flank steak is something we have readily available. I picked the ends off the bean sprouts because they are better that way, chopped mint and cilantro, sliced Persian cucumbers marinated and grilled beef, and boiled my rice noodles. Then I put the herbs and veg in the bottom of the bowl as instructed, piled on my noodles, and then my meat. Served the sauce on the side.

Overall, it was only okay. The sauce wasn't a classic nuoc cham so I felt a bit cheated. I'm not sure if I'll try again. Maybe.

The plan was to make Michael Chiarello's luscious ricotta gnocchi. Well, it's still the plan.

I did it the whole milk and buttermilk way. And this time, I actually read the recipe the right way, ladling the whet first, then the curd. I put it into the muslin and let it drain just until it stopped dripping.

It turned out pretty well. I measured out 1 1/2 lbs, what I would need for half of the gnocchi recipe and left that to drain overnight. (I hope it was okay to drain on the counter, because that's what i did...) The rest, I put into the fridge.

Also for the gnocchi, I made a batch of Chiarello's nonna's bitchy old hen sauce. (He tells a story about eating a fiesty hen who bit his nonna.) The sauce calls for a whole chicken, but I opted for chicken thighs instead.

It was for this recipe that I finally pulled the food mill out of the closet. It's very easy to use. I can't believe I haven't used it before now. I put it in the cabinet with the large colander so that I'm more likely to use it.

So with nonna's sauce hot on the stove, I whipped together a quick dinner with some boxed pasta, nonna's sauce, some fresh ricotta, and then a chicken thigh from the sauce.

Josh liked the chicken so much that he had two chicken thighs. The rest are in a baggie in the fridge. And the sauce? Well, it really is damn good.