Kitchen F#!% Ups

I don’t particularly like hazelnuts, so I’ve never used them at home. I’ve started to use them sparingly, because I’ve decided they’re okay in small doses. I had a recipe that called for roasting hazelnuts. First the nuts are roasted in the oven, then you rub them in a clean kitchen towel and the skins come right off. I went to the store, bought the nuts, and roasted them. Took them out of the oven… hey, why aren’t the skins coming off?

Turns out the hazelnuts need to be shelled before roasting. Duh.

I roasted a couple of trays of tomatoes, fresh from our garden today. We have a bumper crop of sauce tomatoes, and I didn’t feel like making a bunch of sauce. This is a great way to use them up. I like the roasted tomatoes just eaten plain as a snack, or on a good grilled cheese sandwich. Or on bruschetta. Don’t ask me why I took these smaller tomatoes and set the oven and timer for the same amount of time as what I use for larger tomatoes. Basic bone-headedness – nothing in the recipe calls for slow-roasting until almost ashy.

• Slow-Roasted Summer Tomatoes (Fine Cooking #66, September 2004, p. 60)

I made gnocchi for the first time ever today. It wasn’t very hard, and it turned out really nice. Until I tried to cook it. The plan was to cook the gnocchi in boiling water, then pan-sear them in butter and shave black truffle on the top. I cooked the gnocchi in the boiling water until it floated to the top. It didn’t take long. Then I heated butter in a skillet and when it stopped foaming, I added the gnocchi. Everything was going fine until the gnocchi started to stick all over the pan. I ended up with a mushy mess, no brown crust on the outside of the gnocchi. It was all stuck to the pan.

Problem number one: I should have cooked the gnocchi slightly longer. The main bonehead move was using a regular pan instead of a nonstick. What was I thinking? I cooked a second batch and it turned out much, much better.

Big gloppy mess:

What it should have looked like:

• Pan-Seared Potato Gnocchi (Fine Cooking #90, January 2008, p. 62) with Browned Butter & Black Truffle

As chiles go, poblanos are fairly mild. Still, it’s generally not recommended that you rub your eye after you’ve been seeding and slicing them.