Just the Tip

Over the weekend, a friend of ours invited us and another couple to his place in northern France. We don't get out of Paris nearly enough, so we jumped at the opportunity to be somewhere with wide open space, tons of greenery, and – hell to the yes – a barbecue grill. I'd promised the Gallic crew some real California barbecue, and we were poised to stuff their mouths with a huge portion of West Coast meat.

Extra-amateur food porn. We only had the iPhone camera
for the pix this time around. d'OH!

NOTE: That sound you just heard was half the population of Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, and the Carolinas collapsing at the thought of left coast "BBQ." And, yes, if you have a Dick Cheney-sized stick up your Texan ass, what we do in California isn't barbecue but "grilling," but to-may-to, to-mah-to, it's still freakin' barbecue as far as we're concerned. What y'all do is "smoking."

Backyard barbecue in France – from what we understand, living in a city that's got tight restriction on grills and very few back yards – is usually limited to grilling merguez and chipolata sausages that are then thrown into a baguette sliced like a Subway sandwich. On the other side of the token, if you get anything "barbecue" in a restaurant, it's usually just whatever meat slathered in something masquerading as "barbecue sauce." The only exception we've found was when we were treated to a massive post-wedding-day grilling of lamb over wood coals near Toulouse. That said, doing "grillades au feu de bois" is not uncommon (though it's almost certainly never marinated or rubbed), but it doesn't seem to ingrain the same ritual or mythical status that a barbecue does in the US. Standing around the fire, swigging beers, poking at the coals... You know, man stuff.

So back to importing California to France... No one knows what the hell a tri-tip is in France. In fact, very few people know what a tri-tip is beyond the West Coast of the US. This triangular cut of bottom sirloin was once dirt cheap (I used to buy entire 3-4 lb. tri-tips for $3-4 when I was in college) but due to increasing popularity has risen stratospherically in price. Especially because there are only two pieces per beast. Some French know this, and thus it's called the "aiguillette baronne" (the baron's tip) whose noble name screams "expensive and rarely ordered." Luckily we have a very good butcher who knew exactly what we were talking about when we placed an advance order for the cut... at €30/kilo.

An entire tri-tip (which, unless you insist upon cutting it into steaks, is the only way to go) typically weights 1.5 to 2 kilos. Our butcher's Salers cow, a breed of longhorn from the Cantal region of France, yielded a 1.5'er that, unfortunately, went down to 1.39 kilos after he kindly trimmed off the fat. I was a bit alarmed by this, as I normally prefer to leave the layer of fat on top as I grill a tri-tip to seal in moisture, but as it often goes with Salers beef, it's one moist, juicy piece of cattle. In fact, Salers is the only European breed that even when grass-fed produces beautifully marbleized flesh.)

As for the preparation of the meat, a proper Santa Maria tri-tip (where this form of BBQ originated), requires nothing more than a healthy rub of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. The magic of Santa Maria tri-tip comes from the wood smoke penetrating the meat to give it a distinct flavor.  The trouble is I knew we'd only have access to "regular" charcoal. So we opted to go the other way, the marinated tri-tip.

There's no rule for marinating a tri-tip other than your own. Mine is to marinate overnight, lest the marinade contain a very softening agent like papaya, in which case I wouldn't marinate for more than a couple of hours unless you like your meat turn to mush in your mouth. Otherwise, you can do what you want with it. We went with a "standard" marinade of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, lemon juice and booze and let it rest in the fridge overnight.

Stupid iPhone 3GS camera... at least
it picked up on the lovely pink flesh.

But you know us, we can't leave well-enough alone. I got up early before we had to catch our morning train from Gare du Nord and drained every drop out of my meat. Then I took the tri-tip out of the marinade. After patting it dry, I rubbed it in ground Penja black pepper and dried elephant garlic I'd grated in a pestle and mortar. No need for salt - the bad boy had already soaked up the soy. "What are you doing?" Alannah asked. "Doubling up," I told her.  The objective was to have the marinade for flavor, but to have a nice Santa Maria-style crust.

Come grilling time – 15 minutes on either side for medium, followed by 10 minutes to "rest" before slicing – the marinated-then-dry-rubbed bastard tri-tip looked perfect. And the gustatory result? Well, let's just say we've got some converts who'll be begging for more California meat in their mouths in the near future. In fact, one of the guys is ready to talk to his butcher about aiguillette baronne tri-tip for the rest of his cookouts this summer.

One thing we've still got to work on, though, is ritual. The sun hid behind the clouds so we immediately took refuge inside, sipping cocktails and then eating the tri-tip off of proper serving plates with cutlery and vegetables on the side. As veteran San Francisco barbecuers, we can say as charming as this all is, the whole attraction of barbecue is gathering around to the pit/kettle/flame, drinking cold ones, poking at the coals... rain/fog/windchill or shine.

We've got our work cut out for us.

Rant: Eat American, Même en France

This post was inspired by finding out this weekend that the only place offering a "Foursquare" special in Paris is the middling Breakfast in America. 

One thing that kills us living in France is the dearth of good American food out there. Not that we'd actually go out regularly to eat it. We can just cook it ourselves. It's easy. Which is why we're so perplexed as to why American food is so damn bad in Paris.

And we're not talking "New American" cuisine or California cuisine or any fancy fusion stuff. We're talking burgers and hot dogs and pancakes and eggs benedict. Stereotypical American food. Stuff so easy, I could pull the gimp out of our caveau and he'd be able to cook it ball-gagged and hog-tied, chained to the stove. It's not rocket science. It's American food, for crying out loud. The land where Sarah Palin still gets paid for speaking engagements.

Yet even the American-run joints here can't serve up a burger worth the 14 euro or so (yeah, that's about 20 freakin' bucks) they charge. What gives? It's not a lack of ingredients. It's certainly not a lack of culinary knowledge.

Maybe it's because American food – because it's the simplistic domain of mouth-breathing Tea Baggers – doesn't accord the necessary respect that all food of any origin should receive. And that's to make it with good ingredients and care.

A perfectly balanced American meal of burger, fries, salad, and beer.

So this weekend we decided to take on one of these careless slingers of overpriced American food, the oft-cited Breakfast in America. With two locations in the Marais and the Left Bank – both hangouts of American tourists and expats who don't know any better – they do a brisk business of selling overpriced, highly mediocre American food. People of all walks of life line up for this shit like basement-dwelling nerds drooling over booth bimbos at a Vegas convention, which as anyone who's ever done this knows, never leads to any satisfaction.

Despite the stupid Supertramp-inspired name, most people there seem to be eating the sub-par burgers. And they pay the equivalent of twenty bucks for what, exactly? Nothing better than even the most culinarily inept can make by themselves. Sure, it takes a little investment of time, but you can have a real burger made with freshly-ground meat, real cheddar cheese, grilled sweet onions, hand-cut double-fried fries, and a beer for just a little coin. Use supermarket ingredients (yes, every damn supermarket and corner mini-market in France has hamburger buns) and you're lowballing the craptacular restaurants by nearly 90%. And it will still taste better. We guarantee it.

Burger with grilled sweet onion, fresh tomato, hand-ground beef from
the butcher, and thick-sliced real cheddar cheese.
Material cost: 2 euro. Maybe 3.

For pocket change and a few minutes of your time, you're able to make at home what's served in only the chicest, upscale restaurants here, who have decided to serve a burger simply because it's trendy, not because it's remotely what they do best.  Seriously: Make a patty, cook it medium-rare, throw it between two toasted pre-made buns, throw on your garnishes of choice.  Look at the picture above. It's no pussy-ass "slider."  (Another passé trend that's made it to these shores, of course.) That hamburger bun's the diameter of a compact disc. So you're lookin' at some monster meat.

The next most popular American item is the humble pancake. We could dedicate chapters to the French notion of the pancake, how it's eaten, how it's served, but we're ragging on an actual American restaurant here.

We know pancakes are very subjective. Everyone has a different recipe. Some actually like the mix that comes out of a box. Some like them thin, some like them thick and biscuity. There's no agreement at all on what makes a good pancake. And, ok, they're not 100% foolproof. When making your own, inevitably you have to go through one or two "test" pancakes 'til you get it right.

Admittedly, the first three were spotty, black discs that looked
like a tranny hooker's leopard-skin panties.

But even when burning through a few "guinea pigs" trying to get the skillet to the right temperature, you still only need a ratio of two eggs to two cups of flour, mixed with little dashes of leavening agent, sugar, and fat to make a couple of respectable stacks of flapjacks. (We opted for melted sweet creamery butter and olive oil this time, but that's just getting unnecessarily fancy.)  And contrary to the beliefs of silly expats who go to American epiceries and buy overpriced bottles of fake pancake syrup, real maple syrup is available at all Paris supermarkets... dirt cheap. So cheap you wouldn't mind warming up a whole bottle of the sticky stuff to pour over your short stack.

I'll repeat: It's not fuckin' rocket science.

So yeah, this post is more of a bitch & moan session than anything instructive or remotely informative. Because making a basic hamburger or pancake is one of those skills every red-blooded American (even those who fled the place) should have. Unless you simply don't cook, of course. Then you're off the hook.

But say even if you aren't culinarily challenged. Sometimes you just want a break. To go out, have good food, and be served. Then why go to a place with shit atmosphere and bad service?

As an American, I find it insulting that people accept much of the shit being slung out there, and especially at the prices being charged. Why support these shenanigans? Demand better. Demand the best. Because you're American god dammit. (Or you want to eat like one.)

Fuck Breakfast in America.

If a half Eye-ranian immigrant and his farmgirl wife can pull off the food you see here for what amounts to pocket change (admittedly, with a few 2-euro coins in the mix), imagine what a paid professional should be serving you. Demand. Better.

On the bright side, there are a few upstarts restos out there that are doing an adequate job on burgers and pancakes recently, and at a reasonable price.  We'd share them with you, but half the fun is breaking free of the herd and discovering these little everyday revelations for yourself.

Kamanawanale'a

It's a faux Hawaiian title. Read it out loud. Hur hur. Hur hur.

And this, despite our best efforts, is probably faux Hawaiian food.

Neither of us are Hawaiian. I think Alannah's been there once. I've never even been. But back in California, we have a good number of Hawaiian friends, and one unattainable thing we really crave every once in a while is Hawaiian food.

We were walking through Paris' Chinatown the previous weekend, and like every time, were disappointed when passing by a restaurant called Hawai. Looking at the menu, it's all standard Sino-Vietnamese fare. No loco moco. No kalua pig. Not even a single taro root. In fact, it's probably pronounced "Hah-way" and our fantasies of gravy-slathered beef, pulled pork, and starch overload are just a bout of wishful thinking... At that point, we both thought, "We really need to cook up a Hawaiian feast sometime."

This last weekend we found some more off-the-beaten path ethnic stores (including a handful of tiny Filipino markets in the ritzy 16th arrondissement) and, as it turns out, wound up with what it takes to make an authentic Hawaiian meal. No, not an entire pig to roast in a sandpit under banana leaves, but that other Island staple: Spam.

Spam musubi and Longanisa onigiri

The South Pacific has a longstanding love affair with the canned lunchmeat that's been ridiculed for decades by Johnny Carson and Monty Python. Our friend Arnold over at Inuyaki has an archive of articles on Spam. Frankly, I still find it utterly disgusting. But as soon as we saw the iconic blue can on the shelf of the Marché Manille, Alannah and I turned to each other and said in unison, "Spam musubi!"

Musubi is another term for the Japanese snack onigiri. (Many Hawaiian dishes, I've found, are derived from what I grew up with as Japanese comfort foods.) It's basically a bundle or brick of cold or room-temperature rice stuffed or topped with some sort of non-rice substance. In this case, that non-rice, non-food, non-organic substance is a fried slice of Spam. And it's magical. You can eat it warm. You can eat it cold. You can probably eat it 20 years from now.

NOTE: As conscientious foodies, we try to buy as much organic/locally produced/artisan product as possible. While it's still somewhat inexcusable, we were relieved to learn that this UK-sourced Spam is actually made under license in Denmark using European hog parts. For what it's worth, at least it's all EU.

Of course, with the guy at the Filipino store having hooked us up with some of his buddy's homemade Longanisa, we had to honor his coolness by making some onigiri with said sweet sausage as well. Not to mention it's perfectly fitting, as Filipino foods are as much a part of the Hawaiian melting pot as Japanese, Chinese and mainland. (Or so the menu at the L&L Hawaiian Barbecue chain informs me.)

Despite the setback in bequeathing it with official endangered status, the recent brouhaha over the scarcity of bluefin tuna (which is rarely served or sold in the mainstream marketplace), has seemd to make the price of all tuna go up. Despite the rather ridiculous prices, when I saw some beautiful, deeply-colored, sashimi-grade tuna at our local Sunday market, I had to pony up. All for one dish that'll get hoovered up in two seconds: Poké.

Don't worry, it's not endangered bluefin. We can't afford dat shit, brudda.

Poké is a Polynesian variant on sashimi or ceviche. You take your fresh fish, slice it up into strips or dice it into cubes, and let it marry with a blend of soy sauce, sesame oil, chilis, and sweet onion. Simple but fantastic. Like with many raw fish dishes like ceviche, it goes really well with a contrasting side like guacamole – or simply sliced avocados. But it's good enough to have straight up. I like to think of it as the steak tartare of the sea.

These cucumbers are here for the sake of not dying
of heart failure before the meal is over.

Going by experiences like the aforementioned L&L (or San Francisco's legendary Hawaiian sit-down, Da Hukilau), no platter of Hawaiian food is complete without a rich, mayonnaise-y macaroni salad. Like Spam, mayonnaise is one of those things where it takes an exception for me to like. Those exceptions are Japanese Kewpie-brand mayonnaise and the homemade stuff.

For this salad, while Kewpie would've been perfect, we simply went with making our own, which is easy: Hand-beat the ever-loving crap out of one egg yolk with a touch of vinegar, slowly adding standard salad oil (olive, peanut, etc.) until it gets to the volume and consistency you like. The approximate ratio is around 200ml (just under one cup) per egg yolk. You can use a machine, but everyone knows a good whipping by hand is where it's at.

We used less mayo than we're accustomed to from Hawaiian joints back on the Left Coast, and even lightened it up with some thinly sliced Japanese-style cucumber to give it some freshness.

Heart attack on a plate.

Of course, a cholesterol-heavy side dish needs an even more fat-laden main course to accompany it. And there's no Hawaiian meal easier or more satisfying to make than loco moco. Take a pile of steamed Japanese rice, top it with a hamburger patty, top that with a fried egg, and then smother it all with brown gravy. If you're insane like we are, add a link of longanisa on the side, just to seal your doom.

This was no ordinary loco moco, though. We used top grade Japanese rice made in filtered water, grade "01" eggs (the top French classification for free-range, cage-free, blah blah blah), and freshly ground steak from our local butcher (that I'd mixed with finely diced sweet onion). The result was the most amazing tasting loco moco we've ever had – largely due to the crazy hambagu steak (as they'd say in Japanese) patty. After the musubi and the onigiri and the poké and the macaroni salad, this was all just overkill.

But, well, that's what a Hawaiian feast is all about. Celebrating the abundance of starch, flesh, fat and sugar that can find its way on to an island chain in the Pacific. Or the Ile-de-France region around Paris.

That's kind of sort of an Island, right?

The Feast of Saint Patrick

This post was supposed to go up on St. Patrick's Day, but we were too destroyed to finish it. No, not by copious amounts of Guinness, but by food coma.

St. Patrick's Day. The day when everybody is Irish. Dress in green day. Annoyingly pinch those who aren't wearing green day. Drink some green beer day. Or as we professional drinkers like to call it: Amateur night.

While my curmudgeonly side likes to deride the, well, amateurs who come out to drink tonight, I do like St. Paddy's. Alannah (as if you couldn't tell by the name) is partially of Irish stock. And the other side is Scottish, who according to my good Irish friend are merely Irish who couldn't swim. Add to that our ability to out-drink people twice our size, and you can see why despite all the douchebaggery, we'd like this holiday.

So imagine my delight coming home from work this commercialized-by-beer-distributors holiday to find Alannah taking on an entire hurling team's worth of Irish. Foods. She was even kind enough to take pictures of what she was doing, knowing I like to show off her stuff on the web.

I came up to the kitchen and saw her furiously whipping something up on the stove. It smelled cheesy. It smelled boozy. It was... Welsh?

Surprise number one: Welsh rarebit. Following the recipe perfected by Fergus Henderson. You know, that famous chef in London. Ok, so maybe none of this was Irish, but it's the same archipelago, right? Besides, ever since eating at St. John on our latest trip to London, I'd been jonesing for the very version of beer-and-Worcestershire-spiked cheese-on-toast perfected by Henderson. Paired with a glass of port, I was having myself a very happy evening.

She then led me up to the kitchen to help her with the next dish: Colcannon. Alannah first made this for me last St. Patrick's Day, when I learned a) that it's delicious and b) that I'd had it before as part of an airline meal under its English name, "Bubble & Squeak."

"Colcannon" sounds much more manly, like an Irish porn star with a thick mustache. The English name sounds like there's a mouse squished in it. Nomenclature aside, it's a hash of potatoes and cabbage, fried like a patty. Simple, but delicious. Of course, Alannah can't leave well enough alone, so she used red cabbage and savoy cabbage. She had me fry up bits of smoky bacon to add to the melange before it was fried, just to make sure it was customized enough to qualify for an episode of Pimp My Ride.

Speaking of customization, she put me to work on the next treat: Soda bread. Irish soda bread is a quickbread. In lieu of making a yeasty dough and proving it over the course of hours, you use baking soda as the leavening agent and bake it straight away. It's like an English scone or American biscuit, only it's often made in a huge round as opposed to little individual morsels. Again, Alannah couldn't leave it alone. Borrowing from my Iranian side, she asked me to put in a fistful of barberries, aka zereshk. Along with a fistful of caraway seeds and a fat pinch of sugar, this customization makes for the most flavorful soda bread, lovingly bastardized with Persian flair. I fear our kids will look like this soda bread.

While I was on boulanger duty, Alannah was doing a bit of kneading of her own, working on her magical pie crust. For she had spent much of the day preparing the filling for what would become a Guinness-brisket-trotter pie.

For the uninitiated, a trotter is a pig's foot. It's smelly. Kinda hairy. And doesn't particularly have much meat. In fact, in the wrong hands, it's downright disgusting. (Have you seen the film Precious? There's some pig foot up in that joint.) But, again, Alannah was plying me with food perfected by Fergus Henderson. And thus, she'd spent the afternoon on "trotter gear." She scrubbed clean the pig's foot, chopped up the aromatics, then drowned it all in port. Delicious tawny port.

How 'bout a pictorial spread?

Tawny port. As Alannah told me she did it: Some for the pig.
Some for the cook. Repeat.

The trotter and its aromatics. Alannah says,
"Trust me, you need all the aromatics you can get."

Starting the stew side of things.

The trotter concoction had to simmer for hours, letting loose all the collagen from the skin and connective tissue, and infusing it all with a rich, fatty, gelatinous property. In the end, there's not really any meat to use, but liquid richness.

In the meantime, she had also started a cast iron pot of a standard beef stew, using a nice fatty brisket. Brisket isn't easy to come by in France. We learned this when trying to make corned beef last year. Alannah had to overcome her language barrier to explain to the butcher that we wanted cow belly. Not pork belly. Not veal belly. Full grown moooooo. At least, that's how I imagine she explained it. This year, it was much easier, because the butcher had apparently remembered last year's exchange.

Anyway, she went with brisket because she knew I love corned beef brisket, but simply didn't have three days to brine it and somehow manage to surprise me. And because it tastes good. No other meat has the texture of beef brisket. Stringy, striated, chewy, and unique to the cut.

When making a stew, it's good to brown the meat and vegetables before adding any liquid. In northern France, as with in the Isles, it's assumed that you'll do the browning with butter. Lots of it.

To quote Hugh Jackman in that horrible romantic comedy
with Meg Ryan, "Rich. Creamery. BUTTER."

We buy our butter and eggs in bulk from a dairy family at the local marché. First off because we go through a lot of it. When you bake as much as Alannah does, you need to buy in near industrial quantities. When you eat like I do, you want to be as far from industrial as possible, as much to stave off the early death from this sort of consumption, as well as because artisanal ingredients taste better. That and even the fanciest of packaged butters – even the one that every food blogger in France pimps and goes on about like a bleating goat – contains stabilizers and flavor-enhancing compounds you're not supposed to know about. So we buy huge hunks of butter by the kilo.

But I digress. The butter is important because it's also what makes the magical pie crust so damn magical. You know that scene in American Pie? You know which one. Yeah, well, Alannah's pie crust will make you want to recreate it.

So, back to the filling, eventually you do need to add liquid. In this case, the liquid is Guinness. Again, some for the stew, some for the cook. Note that his beer is, obviously, black. (Ok, it's a very deep brown, but even in Ireland, it goes by "the black stuff.") Green beer should never be consumed. Hell, beer in a green bottle is even a no-no by beer snob standards.

Anyway, the stew must also simmer for several hours to break down nicely. The trotter gear must then be drained so that the gelatinous substance that's left can be added to the stew to create the world's richest, booziest pie filling.

To be honest, it doesn't look very good. But it's a pie filling, for fuck's sake. It's going to be hidden by a crust of golden, buttery, flaky, delicious dough.

Guinness-brisket-trotter pie.
The richness will nearly kill you.

Once covered with a crust, a brief 20 minutes in the oven is all you need. It seems short after hours and hours of stewing, and the smell emanating from the kitchen is intoxicating and satisfying in and of itself. If you're feeling impatient, you can wait it out by having a Guinness.

Of course, such a dish must be enjoyed with yet another pint of the black stuff. (Or a Smithwick's if you can find it. No such luck this year in Paris.) The point isn't to get hammered, but to enjoy the richness and depth of meats cooked low-and-slow with the earthy, mild bitterness of a good beer. A good brew adds more dimension to a meal like this, and it's a reason the beer is in the stew to begin with.

But wait! There's more!

A proper holiday meal just isn't complete until dessert is served. Though I couldn't eat another bite, I always have room for Alannah's chocolate-stout cupcakes. Which are made with, you guessed it, Guinness.

Here's the thing: I hate cupcakes. I'm not sure it's because the whole cupcake trend was kicked off by the equally deplorable Sex & the City, or because something about the confection doesn't jibe with me. Maybe because they were (and in 4-years-behind-California-in-most-food-trends Paris, still are) trendy above all else, and utterly destroyed by all the people cashing in on the trend and producing fancified little chocolate or red velvet turds covered in buttercream. Read the only trashing review of the beloved Kara's Cupcakes in San Francisco, by yours truly. Then spread the gospel.

But Alannah's little cuppies are tha bomb. They're the first to sell out at every Paris charity sale she brings them to, and they're the first and only ones I've ever actually begged for. In fact, she refused to ever bake them for me until she knew I was the right guy.

They're that good. And even better with a little tawny port.

Happy amateur night to all.

We Did It All for the Gnocchi

There's nothing quite as warming on a winter night as when Alannah works a big, hard piece of meat until it gives out and goes totally soft, left to swim in its juices until sopped up...

We're talking of course, about tough stewing beef - combined with aromatics and wine and cooked for hours and hours in a cast-iron pot. The anticipation for such a dish can be maddening... What's a couple to do while they're waiting seemingly forever for their daube de boeuf to be ready?

Make gnocchi, of course.

As expected for anyone's first time, it was pretty messy... but surprisingly not very painful. A little mashing, a lot of kneading, and about a thousand attempts to roll the "little pillows" off the back of a fork to get it just so.

At the end, a beautiful, chocolate brown daube over tender, handmade gnocchi.

Behind the Scenes
Making a beef daube is easy. Take hunks of the cheapest stewing meat you can find, and sautée it in a Dutch oven or cast iron pot with diced aromatics like onion, carrots and celery. Once they've got a good sheen to them and the meat is browned on the outside, dump in a bottle of dry red wine. You can go cheap here, too, but as a rule, don't go any cheaper than what you'd take to one of your Craigslist casual encounters dates. (i.e. nothing less than $4 or €3 a bottle) The secret: Throw in a square or two of dark chocolate. But no more, unless you want your meat to taste like Chocolate Salty Balls. Then slide the pot into a medium-high oven and let it stew for hours - don't pull out!

Gnocchi - like an Italian woman -is a bit more involved and needs a lot of attention. Boil and mash some potatoes. Prepare a large mixing bowl with some flour and an egg. Add your mashed potatoes and work into a dough. Keep working it until its consistent and has a pasta dough-like consistency. If necessary, sprinkle in more flour as you go along. Once you think you're done (you're probably not!), take balls of the dough and roll them out into long rods, no more than 3/4" or 2cm in diameter. With a sharp knife, slice off little cylinders - about the size of gnocchi. If you ask a guy, they should be about 6" in length. A girl will tell you more accurately that it's less than an inch. Roll the little cylinders along the tines of the back of a fork to get the little ridges that gnocchi - for some reason - is supposed to have. (Told you it's complicated!) Then lay on a dish or tray with lots of flour sprinkled around so they don't stick together, until it's time to give them a very quick boil, just before serving.