Through the stomach to the heart

Seffy and Kibby have weathered a few changes lately and it’s showed in their behaviour. Seffy has been extra short-tempered with Kibbim and me. Kibbim has been full of anger which is what happens when his father is away for too long. Tony was visiting Grandma a fair bit before she passed.  He is now in Townsville supporting TK, who is devastated about Grandma, through his exams. 

     I wanted to do something special for the kids on the weekend and everyone knows reaching someone’s heart is best done through their stomach.  What better way to say ‘I love you’ than cooking them a delicious meal, pesto gnocchi, made from scratch.  I can do foodie food.  I went through a foodie stage in the early 2000s.  In fact I own original editions of Stephanie Alexander’s, A Cook’s Companion and Madhur Jaffrey’s, Indian Cookery.  

      I should confess that Steph and Maddie’s tomes spent more supporting my pastel painting boards than being used for recipes, but I did put them to their proper use for a while.  In fact, I made my first and only batch of gnocchi from Steph’s recipe back in 2001.  A Cook’s Companion is still downstairs, with Indian Cookery amongst five cubic metres of boxed-up stuff and I had no intention of finding them.  This time round I Googled ‘gnocchi’ and scribbled the first recipe that flashed on the screen.

     In the glare of the early afternoon sun, I scrubbed (no time for peeling) and steamed the potato.  I used a bit more potato than the kilo the recipe advised, but I wasn’t sure how many kilos more.  I wanted more than just one meal, maybe two. 

     I was ready to spend the next hour with my darlings and I called the kids in.  However, Kibby was riding with his friend, Leroy from down the street and Seffy was reading on the back deck.  I have dreamed for years about my kids reading without being threatened so I wasn’t going to disturb her ...  unless there was an emergency. 

     While I waited for the spuds to steam, I made the pesto from memory of Stephanie Alexander's recipe.  It wasn’t ideal, but I’d run out of Home Brand parmesan and it was a bit heavy on the cashews so I had to make do with the resulting green substance.  Apparently, pesto is Italian for paste and I had a paste.

     Next I blended the locally grown potato and fresh duck eggs (what an earth mother, am I!) and sifted in flour ... a lot more than the one and a half cups the recipe called for, but again, I was making a couple of meals.  I know I used a one kilogram packet plus more than half of a three kilo packet which wasn’t really enough to make a kneadable dough, but I’d run out of flour.

     Still, I had something that resembled dough.  I started rolling it into sausages then cut and squashed the pieces with a fork.

Gnocchi snags.

     I don’t know how many hours I had spent getting to the point where the gnocchi could be boiled, but there wasn’t much natural light left in the day.

     After I boiled a few loads (and yes, they first sank then rose to the surface as the recipe proclaimed), I called for Seffy.  This was an emergency.  My lower back and legs were aching.  And there was a lot of dough left to be sausaged.

     I rolled and chopped and squashed, Seffy boiled and scooped.  This went on like a bad dream.  She kept disappearing to paint her nails (???), play with Pippa, check Pepper’s new baby.  I kept screaming at her to come back and help.  From the front deck I hollered a few times for Kibby, but he must have been at Leroy’s.  He knows when to vanish.

Enough for a month's meals!

     Kibby and Leroy and his sister came in after dark just as Seffy scooped the last batch of gnocchi from the bubbling boil.  Kibby and co settled in front of the computer and played Minecraft.  Seffy abandoned her kitchen duties, fitted the earphones and switched on the flat screen for New Tricks.  All was quiet on the home front.

     I proudly presented everyone with a piece of gnocchi and offered them dinner.

     “Yuck!”  Kibby spat into his hand and hurled the sticky lump out the window.

     “It’s nice,” Leroy’s sister said in a monotone.  “But no thank you, I’m not hungry.”

     “I’m not hungry either, thank you,” said Leroy.

      Seffy kindly accepted my offer.

The green paste is not unlike Pepper's waste after her nightly bowl of peas.

     As I was serving Seffy’s pesto gnocchi, Kibby started laughing.

     “Mum, Leroy started eating and then spat it in his hand and chucked it out the window.”

     It turns out his sister did the same.  I offered Kibby and his friends eggs on toast which they wolfed down.  Dessert was Home Brand choc hazelnut paste on four day old bread.  Later, I found Seffy's bowl on the bench, my labour of love untouched, cold and congealed.  All four children were content before the two screens.

     The way to my children’s hearts is through their screens.