This is one of those perfect perfect fall-winter recipes that you must make for Thanksgiving. Because it’s super-simple. If you’ve never made gnocchi before, please trust me that it’s easier than you think…please don’t be intimidated by the “gn”

Two throaty letters THAT close together sometimes scare me too.

But I promise you, it’s not bad at all. Here, let me hold your hand and walk you through it.

1. Mix together some canned pumpkin, lemon zest, salt, ricotta cheese, egg yolk and grated parmesan. In a separate bowl, add the flour. Now, here’s a secret shortcut. The recipe calls for “sifted flour” but I’m lazy. I don’t like to sift. I use a whisky-thingy to briskly whisk through the flour which breaks up any clumps. Does the same job. Plus, I like saying “briskly whisk.”

2. Add some of the flour (not all) You’re gonna mix with a spatula until the flour disappears.

3. Now add the rest of the flour and use your fingertips and lightly mix/knead. It’s a wet, sticky dough, but you’ll only do this for a minute. You can add more flour if it’s too sticky.

4. How do you know when you’ve added enough flour? Press your finger into the dough. It should be slightly tacky but clean. Then divide that dough ball into 4…and roll out with your hands one of the sections into a 1-inch diameter, long snake.

5. Cut into 1-inch pieces with a knife. Then you can use your fingers to lightly roll each piece to get them evenly sized. But seriously, this step is not necessary at all – you’ll be pan frying the gnocchi and any fancy handwork or groovy fork-marks will disappear anyways.

6. Heat a pan with some butter, add gnocchi pieces, fry until both sides golden.

7. After you fry all batches, clean the pan. Add new butter and olive oil. Fry the sage until fragrant. Remove and discard the sage. Then whisk in balsamic vinegar. Pour over the gnocchi. THAT’S IT!

8. Shave some parmesan and serve.

See, I told you gnocchi was gneasy.

Hello friends! Please say hi to Rachael, who’ve I’ve been mentoring in the blog-world as a Steamy Kitchen intern.

She’s a kick-ass gyoza ninja and I’ve asked her to write up her super-secret recipe for these savory pan-fried Japanese style dumplings.

Rachael lived in Japan for a number of years and here’s her story and a step by step photo tutorial on how to make Gyoza.

xoxo Jaden

How did a girl who was born in the Rocky Mountains and raised in California and who graduated with French and Law degrees end up writing a food blog called La Fuji Mama and striving to perfect her gyoza recipe?  The story starts seven and a half years ago when I married a man who had lived and studied in Japan.  Six months into our marriage, we moved to Japan, a place completely foreign to me.  Before my marriage, I had traveled all over Europe and lived in Paris, but I had never imagined that I would ever live in Asia.  But there I was, living on the outskirts of Yokohama in a tiny little 400-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood devoid of any other foreigners.

My kitchen consisted of a large sink, a gas range with two burners and a “fish fryer” beneath the burners (like a little mini broiler), a refrigerator that was considerably shorter than I was, a toaster oven, and two cupboards. I spent my free time exploring, eating, watching and listening, and loving each moment more than the last.  After almost a year, we returned to the States.  Three years later, my husband’s company asked him to transfer to Tokyo, which he happily agreed to.  I soon found myself living in Japan for the second time, this time in downtown Tokyo, in a slightly larger 950-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment, with a slightly larger kitchen, and a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji.

I quickly settled into life, feeling much more comfortable the second time around, and trying to embrace the experience.  Our ties to Japan were further strengthened by the birth of our first child in a Japanese hospital.  A piece of my heart will always be in Tokyo because of that experience.

Our move back to the US a year ago was a difficult one, but we try to keep the “homesickness” for Japan at bay with trips to Mitsuwa (our nearest Japanese grocery store) and lots of home cooked Japanese meals.

My first foray into Japanese home cooking started a few weeks after we moved to Japan the first time.  One of my neighbors, a woman named Miki, periodically knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to “cook and talk.”   I looked forward to those knocks – they meant that I got to accompany her to her apartment and spend an hour with her, helping her to both cook a meal and practice her English.  It was in her kitchen that I stuffed and pleated my first gyoza.

Miki made it look easy–her hands rhythmically pleating the top layer of the gyoza wrapper and simultaneously pinching it against the smooth bottom layer as she went–finishing each gyoza within moments of having started it.  My first gyoza took me forever to complete, looked sloppy, and didn’t hold together well when cooked.  But with a few pointers from Miki, my gyoza quickly started to look more as they should (although I still can’t stuff and pleat a gyoza as fast as she could).

Over the last seven years I’ve tweaked the gyoza recipe I learned from Miki, adjusting the amounts of ingredients here and there to suit our palates, and adding a couple of ingredients used by other wonderful Japanese cooks I’ve met along the way.  The recipe I’m going to share with you today is that recipe in its latest form (though ask me again in a few months and it will probably already be slightly different).

My most recent adjustment to the gyoza recipe is in the technique I use when mixing the filling.  In Elizabeth Andoh’s cookbook, Washoku, she describes a method that helps tenderize the meat and helps hold the filling together.  She explains that it’s “a bit like baseball practice” because you are gathering the filling into a ball and throwing it back into the bowl repeatedly. The bonus to the technique is that you get to play with your food.

How to make Gyoza

Gyoza are really easy to make.  Just mince, grate, and measure out your ingredients as called for,

and then mix the gyoza ingredients together in a bowl using your hands. 

Yep, you’ve gotta get your hands dirty to make these!  Next you’ll use Elizabeth Andoh’s “baseball practice” technique.  Scoop up the mixture into a ball with your hands and throw it back with some force into the bowl. Repeat this several times to tenderize the meat and help the mixture stick together.  Now it’s time to form your gyoza.  Put a bit of the meat mixture in the center of a wrapper, get your fingertip wet and then trace a line around half of the wrapper.

Then you fold the wrapper in half over the filling,

and pinch it in the center.

Now comes the fun part–the pleating! Holding the wrapper in that middle spot that you just pinched with your left hand, make a pleat in the top part of the wrapper, pinching it against the flat edge of the wrapper at the back.

Holding the filled half-circle in the left hand, pleat the top of the wrapper from the middle out, pressing it to the flat edge of the wrapper at the back (only the front edge will be pleated–the back edge stays flat).  Proceed to make two or three more pleats to the right of the first pleat.

Then switch sides and pleat the other side (to the left of the pinched middle).

Set aside the stuffed dumpling with the pleated-wrapper edge up.

Repeat the process until all of your wrappers have been filled and pleated.  It’s always nice to have a partner in crime for this part because it goes a lot quicker.

Now you can either cover the gyoza with some plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for a couple of hours until you’re ready to cook them (or you could freeze them to keep them for longer) or you can cook them right away.  The gyoza are first fried on their flat side (pleats up),

until the bottom is nice and brown.

Then, water is added and the pan sealed with a lid

until the upper part of the gyoza is steamed.

Then you serve them browned side up with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a few drops of chili oil.

If you can’t find round gyoza wrappers, you can always use square wonton wrappers and cut them into circles using a large biscuit cutter.

Or you can really go all out and make your own wrappers.

These gyoza have a hint of heat from the addition of crushed red chili pepper.  They also contain aka miso paste (red/dark miso paste), which has a wonderful pungent salty flavor.  If you cannot find aka miso paste, you can either leave it out altogether, or subsitute shiro miso paste (white miso paste).  If you leave the miso out, increase the salt by 1/2 teaspoon.  If you substitute shiro miso paste, leave out the sugar and increase the salt by 1/4 teaspoon.

My mom is a Chinese dumpling wrapping queen. She can mix up a batch of filling ingredients and fold them into perfect, little half-moon dumplings faster than the time it takes me to set the table. Mom will usually sit at the breakfast table facing the television and while watching her favorite Chinese soap opera, she’ll be pleating those suckers without once looking down. The problem is that during emotional moments of the dramatic soap, her dumplings would look, well, sad. So, the lesson is, watch happy shows, get happy, fat dumplings!

There’s a brand new book out written by my friend Andrea Nguyen and it’s called  Asian Dumplings. With full color photos, step-by-step illustrations on how to wrap over 75 Asian dumplings from samosas to spring rolls, it’s definitely a book I’d recommend. I’ve adapted her Chinese water dumpling recipe for you to try. The folding technique is simple enough for you master while watching a light-hearted, happy show on TV.

How to Fold Chinese Dumplings

Step 1: Place about a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper. Dip your finger in the cornstarch slurry and paint the top half’s edge. If you put too much slurry on the wrapper, it will get soggy and make it difficult to fold. So just the top half– along the edge.

Step 2: Bring the bottom edge up to meet the top.

Step 3: Pinch the center.

Step 4: Now pinch the rest of the edges together – use the meaty part of your thumb to really pinch and seal good, while pushing any extra air out of the dumpling.

I go over the edge, pinching one more time, to ensure there are no holes. If you have a hole, dumpling filling will leak out.

There should be no air bubbles in the Chinese dumplings – the middle is all filling. Air bubbles will cause the dumpling to rupture when you boil them.

Step 5: Lay them flat out on a plate or baking sheet, keep them covered with a barely damp towel or plastic wrap. Try to give each dumpling space – so that they don’t stick to each other.  Cook the Chinese Dumplings (see recipe below) or cover and refrigerate if you are cooking same-day. Freeze as-is on the plate/baking sheet if saving for another day. Once frozen, you can gather them up and put them in a freezer bag.

It’s the LAST WEEK of Summer Fest! Where did all the time go? We’re onto our final round of celebrating the garden and onto Tomatoes. If you haven’t yet heard about Summer Fest, it’s a four-week celebration of fresh-from-the-garden food: recipes, growing tips, even tricks for storing and preserving summer’s best with my co-hosts White on Rice, Away to Garden, Simmer Till Done, Paige of The Sister Project and Matt Bites. Of course, It’s not a party without your participation! And I’ll tell you how in just a bit.

When we first threw the idea of Summer Fest around, I was just ending my early Summer season of tomatoes. It’s just way too hot here where I live in Florida to grow much of anything in the thick of summer. I SHOULD be starting my tomatoes for our Fall/Winter-ish season (there’s no such thing as Winter here, it’s still like 80F in December) but I haven’t started, because this is what happens to my tomato garden when I travel too much:

Um yeah. So my Earthboxes are still empty.

Wait…you don’t believe me that I can harvest tomatoes in the winter? Oh let me show you what I picked on Christmas Eve in 2007:

Okay, so it was only 1 itty bitty leeeetle tomato. But still! Christmas Eve harvest!

But there are SOME things that are growing:

So I’ve got basil…LOTS of basil and had to cheat with the tomato and get that at a farmer’s market to make Caprese Salad with Basil Vinaigrette.

When tomato is THIS good, I hate to do anything other than enjoy it fresh in a salad. My Basil Vinaigrette is simple to make, takes 5 minutes in a blender. You’ll love it. I promise.

First, the Basil Vinaigrette ingredients: fresh basil leaves, shallots, sea salt, a couple slices of fresh chili pepper, good olive oil and a white vinegar (I’m in love with Dehydr8).

First you gotta chop up the shallots and the pepper in the blender.

Next goes in the torn basil leaves, salt, vinegar and 2 tablespoons of water. You need that liquid to get things moving in the blender.

Let that baby whirl while you slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Look at that gorgeous mossy green!

Once it calms down a bit, the color turns bright vivid green.

The makings of a Caprese Salad.

Wait. Another beauty shot of the tomato.

Since I’m stacking this Caprese Salad up, I want to make sure that the bottom layer (which uses the bottom of the tomato) is flat — so that the whole stack doesn’t fall over. So lop off the round butt of the tomato so that it has a flat ass to sit on.

Start stacking and layering your Caprese Salad!

Lastly…drizzle the Basil Vinaigrette over your Caprese Salad.

Love that drizzle action!

How you can join Summer Fest

Summer Fest 2009 is a four-week, cross-blog celebration co-created (alphabetically listed) by A Way to Garden, Matt Armendariz of Mattbites, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, and Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple, with guest appearances from Shauna and Daniel Ahern of Gluten-Free Girl, Simmer Till Done’s Marilyn Pollack Naron, and Paige Smith Orloff of The Sister Project.’ And from you that’s critical. Your contributions are desired, and needed.

Will you play along? Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? Starting today, with the subject of herbs, you can contribute in various ways, big or small. Contribute a whole post, or a comment, whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:

Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.

The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dialog starts simmering.

Or think bigger: Publish entire entire posts of your own, if you wish, and grab the juicy Summer Fest 2009 tomato badge (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites).

Summer Fest 2009 Schedule:

• Tuesday, July 28: HERBS. Any and all.

• Tuesday, August 4: FRUITS FROM TREES (also known as stone fruits, but we won’t scream if you toss in a berry or another fruit, promise).

• Tuesday, August 11: BEANS-AND-GREENS WEEK (either or both, your choice).

• Tuesday, August 18: TOMATO WEEK. How do you like them love apples? (this week!)

What did my co-hosts make for the Summer Fest Party?

Simmer Till Done Made a Savory Upside Down Tomato Basil Bread

Matt Bites does Tomatoes 10 Ways

Away to Garden shows us her Quick Tomato Sauce Ever So Slowly

White on Rice tells us about their kiddie tomato thieves and makes Tomato Jam!

What a cute little girl! Paige from The Sister Project makes Curried Carrot and Tomato Soup

Gluten Free Girl makes Smoked Tomato Salsa

What’s my position on meat? I love it. I crave meat and I probably eat too much of it.

that, and chocolate.

and coffee

oh yes, wine too.

To be healthier, I could give up some of the above.

But I can’t.

You’d have to pry that grilled steak from my hungry, greedy hands. There are too many reasons to keep my meats, starting with braised pork belly and ending with the sizzle of a perfectly grilled Porterhouse.

How can I dream of giving that up, even in the name of a lighter grocery bill and healthier body?

My friend, Kim O’Donnel, has been hosting “Meatless Mondays” for the past few years, featuring a vege-friendly recipe and discussion. Each week I vow to participate. If I can’t become a vegetarian, perhaps I can be one just part-time? Once a week isn’t that big of a deal, right?

A few months ago, I met food writer Joy Manning on Twitter. Her avatar is a blurred out photo of her face, not because she’s funny looking or anything, but because she’s an important restaurant critic in Philadelphia and she doesn’t want to be recognized by restaurant staff. side note- I don’t get the whole disguise thing for restaurant critics…I mean, it’s all about the free desserts, right? Kidding. Totally kidding.

Anyways, Joy and Tara Mataraza Desmond wrote a book called Almost Meatless for us vege-wimps. It’s not about finger-wagging, tsk-tsk-ness of many of the healthy eating cookbooks out there. Almost Meatless is cool with

Hey, baby, I get it. You like meat, that’s all right. How about some recipes with a leeeeetle less meat but still all the flavor?

I’m so down with that. I can totally do that.

From the Almost Meatless cookbook, I chose to cook the Croccante Signore, Joy and Tara’s Italian version of a French Croque Monsieur, or a grilled cheese sandwich.

(loud whisper) it’s a fancy grilled cheese sandwich! With leeeeetle bit of MEAT!

But what is a Croque Monsieur in the first place?

It’s the French version of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich – the “croque” means- crispy – you know, the sound the grilled bread makes when you bite into it! It’s usually made with really good ham and Gruyere cheese. There are multiple varations of the Croque – including adding tomatoes (Croque Provencal); adding a fried egg on top (oh yum!) and even sweet/savory ones like an Apple and Crispy Sage Croque.

This Italian-ish riff on the Croque Monsieur is playfully called The Croccante Signore. Instead of French bread, I used an Italian Ciabatta…and instead of ham, the lovely, salty prosciutto takes its place.

Who else makes Croque Monsieur?

• Simply Recipe’s Croque Monsieur Ham and Cheese Sandwich
• Slash Food lists variations on the Croque
• My friend Kathy of Panini Happy makes a Croque Monsieur on the Panini grill
• La Mange La Ville tries out Nigella Lawson’s Croque Monsieur Bake