Gnocchi with Chicken Essence, Pancetta and Fresh Perigord Truffle

Last Sunday we hosted a Winter Feast in honour of our friend Indre, who successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation. Nick and I cooked a seven course meal. Most of the dishes were taken from the French Laundry cookbook, by culinary sensei Thomas Keller. Some others were recreations of dishes that Nick had at his brother's restaurant in Aspen. Each dish was carefully paired with its "perfect" wine.

A deceptively simple dish, this one also required quite a bit of advance preparation. The gnocchi were done several days ahead, parboiled, and frozen. The day before the event, I made the chicken jus that was the base of the sauce. This involved roasting several pounds of chicken bits (backs and necks), then simmering them in a stock pot covered with cold water, along with herbs and a blackened onion (for color) for several hours, skimming impurities occasionally.

The resulting stock was strained through cheesecloth and simmered again to reduced by half, to yield a very concentrated, dark and flavorful jus.

Then the dish came together quickly and easily: I coated a sautèe pan with canola oil, heated it, tossed the frozen gnocchi in, let them get fragrant, then poured the chicken jus and let it reduce and thicken unil it coated the gnocchi like a sauce. Toward the end I tossed in some previously crisped pancetta. The fresh truffle was shaved directly on top immediately before digging in.

This was paired with a 2001 Testarossa Pinot Noir.

A collective blog of our experiences of that evening is taking shape at edibles.blogspot.com.