Gnocchi alla Romana

Despite the fact that I've been taught a couple of times how to make gnocchi I've never managed to master it - or at least not to achieve the featherlight consistency that makes it such a delicious thing to eat.

However when I was casting around for recipes for students recently I remembered this easy-to-make Roman version which is really surprisingly delicious. The thing to remember is to get the gnocchi mixture completely cold before you start trying to stamp it out.

And yes, for those of you might feel inclined to remind me, following my blogpost the other day, that it contains both eggs and cheese, I accept that it does. But the crucial thing is that it doesn't taste like it ;-).

Serves 4-6

600ml whole milk (i.e. not semi-skimmed)
150g fine semolina (spotted in Waitrose the other day. Also in Italian delis and some Asian shops)
2 medium eggs or 2 large egg yolks
75g parmesan or Grana Padano cheese
A good slice of butter
Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Pour the milk into a heavy saucepan and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and shake over the semolina gradually, stirring vigorously as you so so. Replace the pan over the heat and stir until the semolina is thick enough to stand a spoon in. Cool for a few minutes then beat in the eggs and three quarters of the cheese. Spread the semolina into a rectangle about 1 cm deep over a wetted baking sheet and leave to get completely cold and firm .(A couple of hours at least. I didn't leave it quite long enough so it was still slightly soft when I started to cut it up.)

Heat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Thickly butter a baking dish. Stamp out circles from the semolina with a scone cutter or the rim of a wine glass and arrange them overlapping in the dish, tucking the offcuts underneath and down the sides. (Or simply cut it into squares and arrange them in the dish).

Melt the butter and pour over the gnocchi then sprinkle generously with the remaining parmesan. Bake the gnocchi for about 20-25 minutes until the top is nicely browned. Serve with a simple tomato sauce and/or a salad.

Cheese and onion soup

Since I tasted a sublime onion and cider soup the other day I've been dying to make one and the few desultory snowflakes this morning were all I needed to get going. This is a much more rustic version but worked rather well. I used the lovely Roscoff onions I bought the other week and a good wedge of Gorwydd Caerphilly I had left over from my purchases at the Cheesefest which interestingly made it taste creamy rather than too obviously cheesy and balanced the sweetness of the onions. Perfect February food!

Serves 3-4
1 tbsp olive oil
25g butter
450g good quality onions, peeled and sliced
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp flour
500ml light vegetable stock (I used 2 tsp Marigold bouillon powder)]
150ml dry cider
50g Gorwydd Caerphilly, rind removed and grated
Salt and white pepper

Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan or casserole, add the butter then tip in the onions, season lightly and stir well. Cook over a low heat for about 20 minutes until soft and golden, stirring occasionally adding the thyme half way through. Stir in the flour, add the stock and cider and bring up to simmering point. Turn the heat down and cook for another 20 minutes or so. Take the pan off the heat, leave for a minute until it's stopped bubbling then stir in the Gorwydd Carphilly. Adjust the seasoning and serve. You could scatter over a bit of chopped parsley if you wanted to pretty it up with something green.

Finn and Mushroom Melt

One of the problems about being a cheeselover is that cheese is not exactly slimming - or at least not in the quantities that I eat it - so I'm always on the lookout for ways to reduce the overall calorie load of any cheese-based meal. Leaving out or reducing the amount of bread, pasta or potatoes is one option. Skipping an accompanying glass of wine another.

At lunch today I fell upon a new way to do a melt. I fried up some sliced portabella mushrooms with a little garlic and parsley then added some sliced Finn, a gloriously rich triple cream-style unpasteurised cow's milk cheese made by Charlie Westhead of the Neal's Yard Creamery in Herefordshire*. It had been at room temperature for an hour so melted beautifully into the mushrooms. The meal was completed by a lightly dressed watercress salad and a small slice of potato bread and frankly was just as good as if I'd made the whole thing on toast (which would probably have gone soggy).

If you can't find Finn, which is available from Neal's Yard and new on-line retailer Pong (from whom I got it) you could use Brie.

Oh-so-tempting Tartiflette

This week I made a wickedly rich, indulgent cheese and potato dish from the Savoie region of France called Tartiflette which is not, as you might imagine, a tart but a dauphinoise-style dish of layered potatoes, onions and bacon topped with Reblochon cheese. I dread to think what the calorie count is but boy, is it good!

Serves 6
2 tbsp sunflower or other light cooking oil
200g/7oz smoked lardons or diced smoked streaky bacon
2 large onions, peeled and finely sliced (about 400g/14oz)
2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
700g/1lb 8 oz waxy potatoes e.g. Desirée, well scrubbed
A sprig of rosemary (optional)
1 small or 1/2 a large Reblochon cheese (about 275g/10oz in weight)
150ml/5 fl oz double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
You will also need a large buttered ovenproof baking dish

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the lardons until beginning to brown. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Tip in the onions, stir and fry for a low heat for about 20-25 minutes until they have collapsed right down and are beginning to brown. Add the garlic about 5 minutes before the end of the cooking time. Meanwhile cut the potatoes, unpeeled, into slices about 1/2 cm/1/3 inch thick, place in a saucepan with a sprig of rosemary if you have some and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and boil for 2 minutes then remove the rosemary, drain the water and set the potatoes aside. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6. Cut the Reblochon into thin slices, removing the rind if you prefer*. Tip half the potatoes into the baking dish, cover with half the onions and bacon and season with black pepper. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, onions and bacon and pour over the cream. Cut the Reblochon into thinnish slices and distribute over the top of the dish then bake for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is brown and bubbling. Serve with a green salad.

*It depends on the cheese. If you have a very mature cheese with a sticky rind you may prefer to remove it. I prefer to use a slightly younger cheese and keep the rind which adds colour and texture.

Is this the cheese recipe of the year?

If you judge the success of a recipe by the number of times it's mentioned in reviews or newspaper articles Rowley Leigh's parmesan custard would already run away with the prize.

For those of you who don't know Rowley, he's one of London's longest-serving and best-loved chefs, former chef of Kensington Place and now of the wonderful Le Café Anglais, an Anglo-French brasserie in Bayswater

Part of its retro charm is its selection of hors d'oeuvres of which this dish is one. It's a warm, slightly wobbly pot of wantonly delicious cheesy custard into which you can dunk fingers or 'soldiers' of toast sandwiched around an anchovy filling. Pure comfort food - I think I could eat one every day for the rest of my life without tiring of it, although there probably won't be any anchovies left to make it in a few years time if reports are to be believed.

It stems, Rowley explains in his weekly Financial Times column, from a chicken and goats' cheese mousse with olives he had on his menu at KP (as it was affectionately known by its regulars) which was almost equally delicious.

The beauty of it is that it doesn't look that difficult to make apart from the fact that the recipe suggests 100g of freshly grated parmesan. That's an awful lot of parmesan as any of you who have weighed parmesan will know. I suspect you can get away with rather less.