Prunes, prunes, the musical fruit; the more you eat, the more you shit uncontrollably.
So I pretty much dream about prune-stuffed gnocchi with vin santo and foie gras every night. And often during the day, as well. So it’s a good thing that No. 9 Park gives out the recipe on request. And since Chef Barbara Lynch has a cookbook coming out this year and I’m taking the liberty of assuming that this recipe – her signature – will be in it, I feel justified in selecting it as this week’s smackdown.
Because maybe this will help jar the dish from my head. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, YOU DIABOLICAL POTATO PILLOWS.
Also: This meal involves a $55 stick of butter. I am not kidding.
Just the PHOTO of this butter cost $7.
You know how sometimes you really need a block of fresh foie gras, but you also need to macerate your prunes in wine for at least three hours so you don’t have time to scour the city for the foie? I know! If I had a dollar.
I ended up settling for some canned foie. It had truffle bits in it – the horror! – but it was the least adulterated and more pure of all the foie-like products I could find. When the man behind the counter pulled out the foie, he asked, “Just one can?” Like he was surprised. Which will be important later.
I also grabbed some good French butter, prunes, cream, a small chicken, a baguette and a bottle of iced tea. And then I went up to the register, and didn’t really pay attention to the cashier while I packed the food into my messenger bag. And then I turned around to pay, and the cashier said “75.08.” And then, my eye started to twitch, I think I had a small stroke and possibly I was legally dead for a few seconds. But you know my motto: Fuck it. So I bought that shit, and left the store before I could change my mind.
I do still have a question for the counter guy, though: why was it so surprising to you that I only wanted one can? Do you really normally have people coming in and buying multiple $49.99 cans of foie? If so, are they people who look like me? Really? Because I look like a schlub.
Anyway, I toted the tiny can, which I could only assume was lined in platinum and rubies to keep the foie fresh, with me while I stopped off to pick up a bottle of wine. I couldn’t find vin santo (a sweet Italian dessert wine), so I grabbed a late-harvest Riesling to get my prunes a-soakin’.
Primordial Gnocchi
I set some yukon golds to boil for the gnocchi while I made the foie gras butter that would eventually be used to enrich the wine sauce. Foie gras butter = 1 part foie gras to 4 parts butter, and that’s it, because what else do you need? The foie is so fatty that you can use the compound butter to enrich a sauce the same way you would with butter alone. My life will never be the same.
The potatoes I boiled skin-on, to minimize the amount of water they would absorb. Once they were done, Brian used his bionic nerve-less fingers to peel the spuds while they were still steaming hot so we could push them through a ricer; I spread the riced potato on a marble board to cool and dry out and sprinkled them with salt to draw out more moisture.
These potatoes have failed to Step it Up and Dance, starring Elizabeth Berkeley.
Because I am sometimes a fucking idiot, I utterly forgot to weigh the potatoes before I cooked and riced them; I winged the amounts of flour and egg until I got a dough that felt about right – pliable and light, not overly tacky.
She was in Showgirls, you know. Please, refrain from being a hater.
I rolled the dough out to what I though was 1/8 of an inch* and cut out 3 inch circles** for the gnocchi. Brian discovered a hidden talent: gnocchi filler and crimper. I am the master and commander of dough-rolling, but Brian is like a stuffed gnocchi ninja; all his were perfect little half-moons with just the right amount of filling. I knew I married him for a reason!***
*It wasn’t.
**They weren’t either.
***Actual reason: He’s willing to kill the bathroom spiders.
Mis en place. I did this purely in an effort to take a cute photo, and not out of any kind of culinary necessity.
While the gnocchi chilled for a few minutes prior to cooking, I had time to pay attention to the sauce. I’d taken the soaking wine from the prunes and reduced it with thyme, coriander and black peppercorns. The recipe called for 15 springs of thyme, and as much as I trust Barbara Lynch, the smell of thyme was overpowering the entire apartment and causing my nostrils to tingle in a bad way. So I crossed myself, took a deep breath and pulled most of it out.
It’s a good thing I checked the recipe at this point, or I would never have realized that I needed to add heavy cream prior to whisking in the foie butter. And thank goodness; this was almost starting to feel like health food, what with the prunes.
I had to take out a second mortgage for this butter, but it was totally worth it.
If Donald Trump were going to market his own brand of butter (for all I know, he already does), this would be the butter. It would come in a solid gold box tied with a pink ribbon that matches the pink of his tie, and would be called Trump’s Classy Brand Butter (“It’s gonna be yooge!”). It would retail for $199 per ounce, and would be personally ferried to your door via armored helicopter.
I’m not going to say that I dunked my head right into the pot, but I’m not going to say that I didn’t, either.
I’d made 8 tablespoons’ worth of foie butter and all 8 tablespoons got whisked into the sauce, which at that point amounted to little more than 1/3 of a cup of liquid. As each chunk disappeared into the gradually thickening sauce, the scent became more and more rich and intense.
By the end, I actually had to whisk in a little hot water to thin things out a little. And if you’ve read more than the title of this blog you know that I am not one to shy away from excessive richness (or bacon), especially when it comes to a smackdown (because hey, I’m just following directions), so that should give you some idea of what we were dealing with.
Dear God, it’s beautiful.
Brian roasted the chicken so we’d have something to eat alongside the gnocchi – you can’t really make a meal of these gnocchi, because they’re so beyond the pale that you can’t really eat more than a few at a time. This will also be important later. I plated up the dish, adding a sprinkle of gray salt over the gnocchi and sauce.
Home-cooked food often fails to live up to its restaurant counterpart because home cooks don’t use the mammoth amounts of butter and cream that restaurants feel free to use because you’re not in the kitchen watching them cook and would never suspect how much they’re dumping in.* This recipe does not try to sugarcoat its fat usage; consequently, it was nearly as good as I remembered it being at No. 9. This dish is seriously lush. The gnocchi dough is actually quite light, but the combination of the sweet prunes and wine and the foie butter is truly unctuous. The sea salt creates little pops of crunch and salty punch that cut through the madness of the foie sauce.
I ate 5 gnocchi, 2 more than the restaurant serves. Even though I could have physically fit additional gnocchi in my gut, I had to stop because the richness of the dish creates diminishing pleasure returns the more you eat. Apparently, that sensation is unique to me, because Brian was able to eat ELEVEN of these babies; by the end, he was eating them with his fingers and dipping them right into the pot of leftover sauce.
I wanted to do the same, you must believe me. But I also wanted enough leftovers to be able to take some to work for lunch and gloat remorselessly over my co-workers. Which I now have. Suck it, bitches.
*Or, if you do have a sense of it, your brain compartmentalizes this knowledge and blocks it our for your own self-preservation.
Foie Gras! Yes. You should follow up with a foie gras ice cream. Oh yeah!
Brilliant blow-by-blow account of how to make this fab-sounding dish (the restaurant gives out its recipes?? Half your luck…)
But, uh, give us the actual recipe, too, huh? After all, we’re your loyal and unwavering supporters, right? Y’know, we’ve made you what you are, and all that… 😉
step aside, superman! gnocchi ninja to the rescue!
i’m still chuckling. gnocchi ninja. it’s got a real nice ring to it. 🙂
Seems like that $55 butter was more than worth it – that dish sounds truly amazing!
When in the hell do you guys have dinner at your house? If I tried to make a fabulous dish like this, it would take me all day. On a weeknight, we’d be sitting down to eat at 11:00 p.m.!
I would absolutely die and go to heaven over this dish! I am mad for fois gras, and the fois gras butter….Need I say more? Molto buonissimo!
Whoa, that looks good and I’m not fond of prunes (but I like plums and don’t like raisins though I love grapes). For that price, it had better have been good.
I should not have been drinking tea when I read your post. Your initial comment caused me to need to clean off my monitor after my tea has spurted out my nose.
Holy arterial sclerosis,Batman! And now this after your luscious Hollondaise recipe?! Damn does that ever look good.
BRIAN ATE TEN???
wait a minute…why am I astonished. I once watched him eat 20 white castle burgers in a row and not throw up.
Sounds fantastic. I’m jealous of how easy it is for New Yorkers to get foie gras. It’s illegal here in Chicago, which is pretty sad. That’s why I bought several tins in France and toted them home with me. 🙂
I found myself nervous in reading your post because I wanted the whole thing to turn out fabulously after all of that expense!! Thank god it did. It looks fab.
I once spent $100 on olives and bread at a gourmet grocery store. Same sort of eye-twitching experience!
your husband is my hero
because he ate eleven – and he is thin
and i bow down to those that can eat and still stay thin
i worship at the alter of sveltness
if i had one wish…
and like, speaking of not being thin?
if there was ANYWAY to snag that recipe…
Jodi – You’ll notice that she corrected the ten to eleven. Because I am an animal. So much so that I used a paring knife to eat the foie that stuck to the bottom of the tin and licked the whisk Michelle used to make the foie butter. Waste not want not, I say.
Claudia – I appreciate the hero compliment, no matter how undeserved. But I have not been referred to as “thin” since I was in high school. And that’s some time ago now. NEVER have I been called “svelt” – that altar is not mine.
holy shit, I ate at no 9 park the last time we were in boston, and, thanks to my husband’s expense account, we had the gnocchi…and we still talk about them, like 4 years later! awesome that you made these. It was also my first time having a cheese course for dessert…all classy like.
I really, really love this. This site has replaced WWTDD and Perez as my “pretend I am working” go to… thats a pretty big deal. Have another party ASAP and put it on your blog! I wanna be in a pic, at least in the back row or something.
That looks insanely, marvelously decadent. If you are willing to spend that much money on butter, you are obviously a good person. I also know allll about those unnecessary but cute photo-ops (ie piles of spices on a wooden chopping board, that sort of thing.) Love your blog! 🙂
You’re killing me! Too too funny.
Too funny! I think you should approach Trump with your marketing idea! Yet another great post.
I have doed and gone to heaven. Foie Gras is banned here and I miss it. I too wou;d have spent the money to recreate this!
james: the only problem is, i can’t afford any more foie gras. ever.
forkful: as soon as i have a little more time to sit and write, i’m going to add the recipe into the post.
grace: doesn’t it? i’m trying to convince him to get a “gnocchi ninja” tattoo, but he’s not going for it.
inne: it was amazing, and now i’m never going to do it again.
susan: i think that night, we ate around 9ish? and we really didn’t get started until around 7.
rachel: i don’t really like prunes either, but apparently, when you cover them in wine and foie, i do. go figure!
i’m glad i could help you clear your sinuses; it is allergy season and all.
LiR: you’re not kidding. i hardly ate anything at all on friday, my body just couldn’t handle it.
jodi: no, he ate ELEVEN.
beth: it’s easy to get the tins here, but i had a hell of a time finding fresh, which is really what i wanted. but i really can’t complain. i would say “i’ll send you some!” but i really don’t feel like taking out a third mortgage.
recipegirl: i feel like there are some ingredients where it can’t help but turn out fab. like, even if the gnocchi had sucked, we would have just poured the foie sauce over some chicken and gone to town.
claudia: i refer you to brian’s response.
brian: i love you.
kitty: expense account? goddamn. did you have the wine pairing? i bet you did.
aimee: does it make me a total nerd that i don’t know what WWTDD is?
laura: thank you for the validation.
mary: i live to serve!
shari: maybe i should try out for the next season of the apprentice. or, i could gouge my eyes out with a spoon.
courtney: although it was heavenly, i think i am – dare i say it? – foie grased out.
Oh shit. I had left, after thinking that I might like to have this someday, when I get brave enough to try Foie Gras and then I started wondering if I should leave a comment. Is it page loads that count or comments? My mother is always complaining that I don’t leave comments on her blog….
Anyway. You are way braver than I and your posts are always quite entertaining, even if it is something I wouldn’t dream of eating. Thanks for going to all that trouble for us.
erin: (1) you SHOULD try it. because i was terrified of foie gras. but the wine and butter make it go down easy. (2) thanks for de-lurking!
Everything is better with butter!
Your posts are fun to read and so refreshingly different!
Sid
good recipe.