Foodie Friday: "That's some real umeboshi shit!"

So exclaimed my friend when I served her these gnocchi con le prugne: potato dumplings stuffed with plums.  This is a recipe from somewhere in Trentino-Alto Adige in Northern Italy, which was until the First World War a part of Austro-Hungary and whose culinary culture owes a lot to the cooking of central Europe.  The combination perhaps sounds odd, but isn't.  The dumplings are starchy, savory, and surprisingly light if made properly; the plums sweet and sour; the dish is served in a butter sauce whose fattiness marries well with the sour fruit.  It is altogether surprising and delightful.  This receipe serves 4.

You will need:

for the gnocchi
a few starchy potatos (about 1 lb.), like Russets, whole and unpeeled
2 cups AP type flour plus more reserved for bench flour
3 large (i.e., small) eggs
a half dozen small "pruning" plums, pitted and quartered
fine sea salt

for the sauce
1 large, very sweet fresh tomato
several big tablespoons of butter
fresh tarragon or other sweet herb
sea salt

First boil the potatos in their skin until very soft and easily pierced with a fork.  Remove and let cool until you can comfortably handle them.  Peel and then grate into a mixing bowl with a regular old box grater.  I have tried every other method--ricers, food processors, food mills--and a plain-jane medium grate produces the best dough.  Combine with the flour, salt, and eggs.  Form into a dough; it should be looser and a little wetter than your typical pasta or bread dough but not so stick that it pulls apart when you handle it.  If it seems a bit dry, splash in some cold water with your fingertips as you form it; if it seems wet, obviously, add a bit more flour.

When the dough is formed, tear off fairly generous pinches and pat them flat in your hand--they should be a bit smaller than your average bank or business card, by way of easy measurement.  Place a plum quarter on the dough in your hand and then fold and roll the dough around it into a stuffed dumpling, which sould be about 1 1/2" by 3/4" when complete.  Keep your hands well-floured during this process or it will become a sticky mess.  Lay each gnocchi individually on wax or parchment paper; if it is very humid you may want to also keep them covered with a light cloth napkin.  Repeat until you run out of either plums or dough.

Bring a pot of water to a very rapid boil.  Add the gnocchi one by one, stirring constantly so they don't stick to the bottom, until they begin to firm up.

Meanwhile, slowly melt the butter in a pan.  Take the tomato, cut it in half or quarters, and, again using a box grater, grate its interior flesh, discarding the skin.  Add along with the herbs to the botter.  Splash in a little bit of the starchy pasta water.  Stir regularly until it emulsifies.

When the gnocchi are floating and bouncing on top of the water, spoon them with slotted spoon directly into the sauce.  Toss together and serve in shallow bowls with a few fine gratings of hard, salty cheese.

The Waldorf Drool

I think Michele Bachmann is just great.  Straight up: no taxes!  Also, you're a genius.  Yes you are!  One of the more interesting signs of decadence in our society is the way our politicians transform themselves into first-grade teachers, the way the mark of a good operative is in their ability to flatter America and boost her self-esteem.  NO AMERICA THOSE JEANS DO NOT MAKE YOU LOOK FAT HAVE YOU LOST WEIGHT THOSE HIGHLIGHTS REALLY BRING OUT YOUR EYES. 

Water. Everywhere.

Now I hate the death penalty and think its existence in the face of human fallibility is the mark of the very sort of hubris that will one day blessedly give the world back to the birds and beasts and fishes. It seems very likely that Troy Davis, just executed in Georgia, was indeed innocent, although I put it to you that hanging opposition to murder on the moral status of the person being killed is a bit of a you'llpardontheexpression cop-out; it is not the persistent execution of the innocent that should trouble your conscience but the mere fact of executions; it is not that people are put to death in error, but that people are put to death.  But I think it is also worth noting that we are doing this every day, every hour, that while your friends whine about, say, Rick Perry's record of executions and carve it as a mark of special barbarism on his image, Barack Obama and his robot army are raining death across the world, and insofar as any randomly selected Republican governor compares poorly to this or any sitting president, it is because of the grossly inferior scale of their monstrousness, crimes standing in rickety place for enormities.

Well, I am sure that President Perry will avail himself of all the tools and Terminators at his disposal and do his damnedest to catch up to his predecessor, and when he does, we'll hear endless amateur psychoanalysis, i.e. psychoanalysis, about how his swift resort to the gibbet predisposed him to invade French Guyana and Tuvalu, but I say that our violent society isn't the well from which we draw our militarism; rather, the opposite--conquest is the well from which we draw our drinking blood, and our whole society is built around it.

Those that tremble as if they were mad

The economy is fake.  Jobs are fake.  The debt crisis is fake.  Unemployment is fake.  Monetary policy is fake.  Fiscal policy is fake.  The jobs plan is fake.  The deficit reduction plan is fake.  The deficit is fake.  Money is fake.

American declinism is fake.

War is real.

Marching Marching

I'm with Mister Smith: the loss of a safe Donk seat due to the dyspepsia of the Zion Bund is a minor dish, but a delicious one.  On one of those NPR call-in shows this weekend, they were really laying it on thick.  Obama is going to lose the Jews for a generation if he doesn't out-Avigdor Lieberman Avigdor Lieberman soon.  I doubt it, of course; Republican-party optics are too Christian and Jews do not trust idolaters--the various ragheads of the world may be a, um, existential threat, but at least they're not pagans; you know where you stand.  Rick Perry's rootin-tootin routine just doesn't appeal to The People no matter how much he and his profess their gross hardon for an undivided Yerushalayim, although Michele Bachman, I must admit, would not look out of place at a Sisterhood meeting at my folks' temple, her feygele husband not unlike any number of Reform-Jewish hubbies I've observed: "My Marcus is such a wonderful cook; he never lets me so much as touch a frying pan.  He even does the dishes!  Such a catch."  Still, the Reform remain the largest sect and reliable democrats; their dissipated version of the tribal faith resembles an endless fireside sing-along at Emma Kaufmann Camp; indeed, camp is the main feature of their worship, and even I, a devout non-believer, am embarrassed when the rabbi mounts the bimah during the days of Awe with a guitar hung around his neck, which feels like walking into a black-tie gala with your dick hanging out your tux's fly.  Conservatives and Orthodox aren't going to abandon the Donk either, except insofar as it fails to appropriately laud Israel; an extraordinary thing, really.  Here you have about as local an election as you get, lost not on a national issue but a sort of transnational one: who pledges allegiance most thoroughly to another country.  This is somehow not considered unusual, although if you try to imagine a congressional race in which the candidates try to outdo each other in fealty to, like, Nicaragua, you'll see just how nuts it really is.