stabs it with that same spoon, spreading out the potato shreds and
fanning them with a bench scraper (an essential gnocchi-making
tool, as you’ll find out).
Why is he doing this? “To allow steam to escape.” Steam
equals water. Water equals the need for more flour. More flour
equals heavy gnocchi.
This commonsense approach applies to every dish Canora
cooks. His beef braciola is cooked in a sauce that begins with a
soffrito. (“I live for soffrito,” he tells me. “It’s the starting point
for everything in Italian food.”) In a food processor he combines
50 percent onion, 25 percent celery, and 25 percent carrot. “Do it
by eye,” he says. “This isn’t technical. If the ratio’s a little bit off,
it’s not the end of the world.”
After adding garlic, thyme, parsley, and basil, he whirs the
mixture up with a little olive oil and adds it to the pan in which he
just browned the meat. “All cooking starts with fat,” he says.
“You add flavor to fat,” he continues, pointing to the soffrito in
the pan, “and then you add that flavored fat to something. And
that’s your dish.”
The other dish he teaches me—a salad made with dandelion
greens, white anchovies, and hard-boiled egg—is one that his
mother used to make. “She’d say, ‘You have to eat this because it
cleans your blood!’” he tells me.
But, ladies and gentlemen, you didn’t pay good money for
witty personal anecdotes or soffrito lessons. You paid to watch
the master make his gnocchi. Watch as he sprinkles the now-