Complementary recipes aka gnocchi and pavlova

I know a lot of people are good at storing egg whites in the fridge/freezer/whatever and coming back and using them later, but I tend to forget, or wait too long. Plus I'm convinced that frozen egg whites just won't work, even though the world says otherwise.

So as I was making some gnocchi romana for dinner which uses egg yolks I figured that it was the perfect excuse to make a pavlova, or more specifically a cappuccino pavlova that I have been drooling over the recipe of for over a week now.

I came across the cappuccino recipe on twitter and knew I just had to have it. I'm not usually that successful with pavlova/meringues and I'm pretty sure this one is no different, although I need to wait for the oven to cool until I can check it out. How on earth are you supposed to not over-whip egg whites when you are adding almost 200g of sugar a tbsp at a time?! I erm also forgot the salt at first so that might also be the culprit...

At the moment both the gnocchi dough and the pavlova are cooling down, I hate playing the waiting game. Normally any recipe that involves chilling time is a deal breaker for me.

I've already linked the pavlova recipe above, but I made it with a couple of modifications to match the quantities of egg whites to the number of egg yolks required for gnocchi. Everything was scaled down to work for 3 egg whites instead of 4. I cut the baking time by about 10 minutes and the size of the circle down to about 20cm dia.

The final product looked like this, but only the taste test will tell whether it is a success. I was slightly confused as to why the top was dome shaped and the bottom had formed a similar dome underneath. Thankfully cream covers all sins in this case.

Cappuccino pavlova

Luckily I know I can make successful gnocchi so at least part of the meal is a guaranteed winner.

Gnocchi romana with homemade black olive pesto (adapted from here)

for the gnocchi
1L milk
40g butter
pinch salt
250g semolina
3 egg yolks
3 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

for the pesto
30g pine nuts
4 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated
2 tbsp dried basil
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
black pepper to taste
handful of pitted black olives
about 4tbsp olive oil

Heat the milk with 20g of the butter in a saucepan and add a pinch of salt. When the milk comes up to the boil whisk in the semolina to prevent lumps forming and then stir with a wooden spoon. The mixture will thicken up to form a dough, turn the heat down and cook for a further 15 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, beat in the rest of the butter, then the egg yolks 1 at a time. Finally add the cheese, and taste the dough for seasoning, I added a litte extra salt.
Dampen a baking sheet and a rolling pin, turn the dough out onto the baking sheet and roll to about 1cm thick. Make sure the pin is kept wet or the dough will stick.
Cool the dough for about 2 hours, it should firm up a lot.

It may not be pretty but it is gnocchi. I can't figure out what shape it reminds me of.

Whilst the dough is chilling make the pesto. Combine all the ingredients apart from the oil in a food processor and pulse to form a rough paste. Add the oil and pulse again to form a pesto style sauce. Taste and adjust flavouring, you might want some more herbs or oil.

Mmmm blacky green sludge- tastes significantly better than it looks!

To make the dish cut circles of dough and cover the base of an oven dish with them. After each layer spread some of the pesto over it, and then continue layering until everything has been used up, ending with a pesto layer.

The bottom and middle layers were perfect circles but the top layer not so much...

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 20 minutes until the top starts to go crispy.

Serve with a crispy salad