My perfect Valentine’s Day meal would be something rich and luxurious, comforting yet special, and, of course, homemade. This year’s meal choice definitely hit the nail on the head. If there was ever a time to use “#nailedit” without sarcasm, this is it.

Joe and I absolutely love gnocchi. It’s by far our favorite pasta and I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making it for quite some time. Only problem…I don’t own, or want to own, a potato ricer. We have a long history of small kitchens, so having a kitchen tool that only does one thing…or, even worse, would only really be used for one dish…is one of my no-nos. I just can’t justify the expense or the precious space.

Leave it to Deb of Smitten Kitchen to blow my mind with the tip that you can make gnocchi using a hand grater instead and it’s just as good.

<insert all of the !!!!!!!!!!s here>

She was right.

It was easy. It was delicious. And it was so perfect for Valentine’s Day. I mean, what’s more romantic than a bowl full of soft, pillowy pasta swimming in a rich broth?

Answer: Nothing

Since Joe was helping me, I’ve got tonnnns of step-by-step photos. Four hands > Two. Especially when two are covered in flour for most of the experiment. Let’s get to it!

There are a lot of sauces that pair well with gnocchi, but since we had a killer-rich dessert and the gnocchi is already pretty filling we opted for a tomato-based broth instead of a pesto or butter sauce.

The best part is that you can make the broth a day in advance and reheat right before serving. Total timesaver when your mind can only focus on making your first batch of gnocchi as perfect as possible. There was no time to babysit a sauce too.

You start by sweating out the vegetables. We didn’t have any celery, so I doubled the carrots. I wanted their sweetness.

The broth gets its richness from wine. Normally for a tomato sauce I’d use red wine, but this recipe calls for white. Who am I to argue?

You simmer it for days (not really, just 45 minutes) before straining the vegetables to leave you the most fragrant broth.

Let it cool and pack it up for the fridge until the next day.

Gnocchi can be made with lots of different types of potato: Russet, Yukon, Red, Sweet….whatever you want. The key is to balance each’s water content with the minimum amount of flour needed to make the dough. Deb called for Russets, so that’s what we used. Once cooked in the oven and slightly cooled, we set up our faux-ricer station: a box grater over a large bowl.

The potatoes were still pretty hot, so I worked fast and used smaller sections I could lay flat against the grater. The potatoes will crumble slightly, but you can keep picking up sections and passing them through the largest holes.

You’re left with a bowl of perfect “riced” potatoes. Light and fluffy and ready for flour, salt and an egg. Seriously, it’s that simple.

Once you add everything together, it’s time to knead and develop that lovely gluten. haha

It’s official. I want Joe in the kitchen with me all day, every day. How awesome are his photos? I’d be jealous of his mad skills if I wasn’t so in love with him.

Next up: Slice dough into sections, start rolling out your snakes and cutting the pasta into 1/2-inch pieces.

The recipe calls for 1-inch pieces, which we did, but they puff up so much in the water, so I’d make them much smaller next time to keep ’em dainty.

You can easily stop here and drop these babies in their salty bath (or freeze them in a single layer for later use), or you can make them more official and give them grooves (namely for sauce-holding purposes). We watched a few videos online to master the skill before trying. It’s not hard at all, though.

Flour the fork, press it down, roll it off. Repeat.

Joe got in on the action too.

The key to gnocchi, I’m convinced, is flour. Have it handy to keep that dough moving. It’s a sticky situation otherwise.

Once you’ve prepped and grooved them all, they are ready to be cooked and added to the reheated broth.

Quite a sight.

Top it with parmesan shavings and maybe some chopped basil, and you’re all set.

You can pair just about any vegetable as a side, but we went for roasted asparagus….my favorite vegetable to roast.

We were going to top with hollandaise, but my brain was in gnocchi-mode and I botched it. So, we went with a butter-herb drizzle and it was perfect.

Seriously, between this and the cake, it was the most perfect Valentine’s meal I’ve ever made. (#humblebrag) And, thanks to Joe, I have a million (amazing) photos to prove it.

Homemade Gnocchi in Tomato Broth

Source: Smitten Kitchen / Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Tomato broth

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 medium stalk celery, chopped
1 small yellow onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1/2 c. white wine
28-oz can whole or chopped tomatoes with juices
Small handful fresh basil leaves, plus more for garnish
2 cups vegetable stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Gnocchi (Adapted from About.com)

2 lbs. Russet potatoes
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Make tomato broth:
Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium-high heat. One it’s hot, add the carrot, celery, and onion, and cook together for 5 minutes, reducing the heat to medium if they begin to brown. Add the garlic, and cook for one minute more. Pour in the wine, and use it to scrape up any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, then cook the wine unti it is reduced by half, for several minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, mashing them a bit if they’re whole, and the basil and stock, and simmer until the tomato broth thickens slightly, for about 45 minutes. Strain out the vegetables in a fine-mesh colander, and season the broth with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside until needed.(Or let cool completely and store, covered, in fridge until the next day.)

Make gnocchi:
Preheat your oven to 400°F. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork, and bake them on a baking sheet for 45 minutes to one hour, or until they are fork-tender. For best results, turn the potatoes over halfway through the baking time. Let the potatoes cool slightly.

Peel the potatoes, and then grate them over the large holes of a box grater into a large bowl. Add the lightly beaten egg and the salt to the potatoes and mix well with a wooden spoon.

Add the flour to the potatoes a little at a time, using only as much as you need so that the dough will not stick to your hands. When the flour has been incorporated, bring the dough together with your fingertips.

Dump the dough and any remaining floury bits onto a slightly floured surface. Knead the dough as you would bread dough. Press down and away with the heel of your hand, fold the dough over, make a quarter turn, and repeat the process. Knead for about three or four minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and then divide it into 6 smaller balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the six pieces using your fingertips into a long rope about 3/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into 1/2-inch pieces.

You can cook the gnocchi as it is now, but traditional gnocchi has ridges. To create the ridges, press each piece of dough against the tines of a fork. With your finger, gently roll the pressed dough back off the fork. Dip the fork in flour before you press the dough against it.

Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a lightly floured or parchment-lined dish. If you’d like to freeze them for later use, do so on this tray and once they are frozen, drop them into a freezer bag. This ensures that you won’t have one enormous gnocchi mass when you are ready to cook them.

To cook the gnocchi, place them into a pot of boiling and well-salted water. After a few minutes the gnocchi will float to the top. Continue to cook for one minute then remove and set aside.

Assemble dish:
Meanwhile, reheat broth to a simmer. Add drained gnocchi then reheat through. Serve gnocchi and broth together, garnished with a few slivers of basil leaves and/or parmesan shavings.

This is a Valentine’s Day post, but I’m going to take it back a few weeks to the NFL playoffs. Romantic, I know.

Before I knew I’d be spending Super Bowl Sunday on a plane, Joe and I started planning for our gameday treat tradition during the playoffs. While the Seahawks were duking it out with the Packers, Garlic Fries were head-to-head with Beer Cheese Soup. When the Patriots were killing Indianapolis in Deflategate, Boston Cream Pie was earning its title over Fried Pork Sandwiches. Clearly I was elated for that outcome. It was our own Food Feud!

And then my trip overlapped the big event and our showdown of Garlic Fries and Boston Cream Pie never became a reality.

But that dessert lingered in both of our minds and with Valentine’s Day around the corner, and with the Patriots win and all, we thought we’d better just go ahead and make it. It’s my version of taking one for the (winning) team.

My mom made me a Boston Cream Pie…which, for the record, is a cake…for my 15th birthday. Somewhere in Oklahoma I have a photo of me holding the cake plate in my hands with a big smile on my face, shadowed by flickering candles, and my now-brother-in-law smiling over my shoulder.

I remember thinking…”wow, this looks like a lot more work than our normal birthday cakes!” I loved the oozing chocolate and creamy filling. I can vividly remember how content I felt and how delicious it was.

It would be the last time I would eat a slice…until now.

File this under “worth the wait.”

When planning to make the cake I looked no further than Joanne Chang, my Boston-based baking guru, who is responsible for Joe’s favorite cake. When I saw that her recipe, while gorgeous, was three pages long and called for a pan I didn’t own, I then looked to the next best thing: the boys of Baked. (They’ve also never let me down when it comes to cakes.)

Their version looked strikingly similar, but bakes up in regular pans I already had on hand. So I paired their cake with Joanne’s pastry cream and ganache and figured it was the best of all the worlds.

Boston Cream Pie consists of a bouncy sponge cake–a lighter, m-word crumb that pairs beautifully with the dense, rich pastry cream filling and chocolate topping.

Is it weird that I want to keep typing “creme” instead of “cream?” That’s how fancy this cake makes me feel.

Boston Creme Pie. 

Once those layers cool completely you have two options: You can slice each layer in half, creating a towering four-layer cake (which I would recommend doubling the cream filling for), or you can leave them whole. Since the original recipe called for 8-inch cake pans and I used 9-inch, I decided to leave them whole. So many options…all of them delicious.

Now that I know how easy pastry cream is to make, I feel like I’ve reached a danger zone. I could easily have eaten the entire chilled bowl. It was like the most glorious of vanilla puddings.

Honey, hush!

You want that ooze factor. This cake is anything but ooze-free.

Time to prep for what will send it over the edge.

Oh, hello, semisweet chocolate. Always nice to see you.

You know what’s better than baking a cake for your Valentine? Having your Valentine in the kitchen to help you.

Magical, isn’t it?

You don’t want to pour the ganache over the entire cake. Pour directly in the center very slowly and then use a butter knife to gently coax it to the edges. Gravity (and the weight of that luxurious chocolate and cream) will do the rest.

Good lord.

I put it in the fridge for a hot cold minute to let the chocolate set while we ate dinner. You want it to be firm, but don’t leave it in too long uncovered or the sponge cake will start to dry out. (Eventually you’ll want to store all leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge…that is, if you don’t consume it all in one sitting like I wanted to do.)

I can officially say that 18 years after that original bite, this cake is just as wonderful as I remember.

Perfect for Super Bowl wins. Perfect for birthdays. Perfect for Valentine’s Day. Perfect for anyone you love.

Go forth and get your creme on! (I’ll be back later this weekend with the rest of our Valentine’s Day meal.)

Boston Cream Pie

Source: Milk Sponge Cake by Baked Explorations, Pastry Cream and Ganache by Flour, Too

Cake:
1 3/4 c. cake flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
6 Tbs. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 c. whole milk
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Pastry Cream (double if making four-layer version):
1 1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. cake flour
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
4 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla

Ganache:
4 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 c. heavy cream

Pastry Cream (make a day in advance of cake):

In a medium saucepan, heat the milk over medium-high heat until small bubbles form along the sides of the pan. While the milk is heating, stir together the sugar, flour and salt in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, whisk the egg yolks until blended, then slowly whisk in the flour mixture. It will be thick and pasty.

Remove the milk from the heat and slowly add to the egg-mixture using a half-cup measuring scoop, whisking constantly. When all of the milk is incorporated, return the contents to the saucepan and heat over medium heat. Whisk continuously and vigorously for about 3 minutes, or until it thickens and comes to a boil. (Once it thickens, stop whisking every few seconds to see if it has come to a boil. As soon as you see bubbles, whisk for 10 seconds and then immediately remove the pan from the heat.)

Pour, push and scrape the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl. Stir in the vanilla and then place plastic wrap against its entire surface. Refrigerate overnight.

Cake:

Preheat the oven to 325-degrees. Butter two 8- or 9-inch cake pans, line bottoms with parchment paper, and butter the parchment. Dust the pans with flour and set aside.

In a large bowl, sift the cake flour, baking powder, and salt together. Set aside.

In a small saucepan over low heat, stir together the butter and milk until the butter is just melted. Do not overheat. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

Set aside. Set aside. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla on medium speed until the mixture is pale and has tripled in volume, about 5 minutes.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and sprinkle a third of the flour mixture over the egg mixture. Gently fold the two together, using a rubber spatula. Add the rest of the flour mixture and fold again.

Add the warm milk mixture (if it cooled, reheat slightly) to the batter and gently fold until just incorporated.

Divide the batter between the prepared pans and smooth the tops. Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Transfer the cake to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Turn the cakes out onto the rack and let cool completely. Remove the parchment.

Once cool, place on cake plate or stand and spread pastry creme between layers. (If slicing layers, it’s easier to cut when the layers are slightly frozen.)

Ganache:

Place the chocolate in a large measuring glass (I used a 4-cup glass). In a small saucepan, heat the cream over high heat until small bubbles form along the sides of the pan. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let sit for 30 seconds. Slowly whisk the chocolate and cream together until mixture is completely smooth.

Let ganache cool to room temperature. When ready to use, pour slowly on center of top cake layer and use a butter knife to gently coax it to the edges, covering the entire top and letting it drip down sides.